BATS 295 Days 2 and 3

This post was actually written last night but unfortunately I couldn't get the internet to work - so you will be getting another post this afternoon as well!  

The past two days have been very busy here at BATS! Friday started with net tows for both the BATS and Princeton University groups. The afternoon was exciting with the deployment of WHOI’s neutrally buoyant sediment traps (NBSTs) which I will talk about in a post tomorrow! We also deployed the BATS sediment trap array which we will be recovering in a couple of days. 

Attaching a host to the CTD to pump water up to the ship from 200m

Day three started nice and early for the BATS team at 3am with the deployment of the production array. After one of the smoothest and quickest deployments I've ever seen we went back to bed to get some sleep before a busy afternoon. This evening we recovered the production array and currently there is a phytoplankton net tow in the water which the Princeton Uni group will be sampling from. 

During the day we sampled the CTD. Here is a little explanation about what a CTD is…  

The CTD going into the water

CTD stands for Conductivity, Temperature and Depth. It is a large oceanographic instrument that we use to sample for water. It has twenty four niskin bottles which can contain 12 litres of water each. Niskin bottles open at both the top and bottom to sample water of a known depth. As the CTD goes through the water column it is attached to the ship with a cable which allows us to close the bottles at depths we want to take water samples from. It has the ability to measure depth, temperature, salinity, fluorescence and oxygen concentration and relays the information back to the ship.  After we take our samples from the CTD we start the filtration process!... (see image below)

Filtering!

To finish this post here are my five best things of the day:
1. Seeing a whale! No photos unfortunately!
2. Freshly baked cinnamon rolls by the amazing chefs Greg and Dexter! (There will be a whole post coming soon dedicated towards food on the ship!)
3. Amazing sunset across the ocean!

4. Seeing squid swim around the ship at night – so cool!

5. A big thank you to Matt for bringing me snacks whilst I wrote this blog post! – You’re in my top five!

Sorry about the short update – I finished work 10 minutes ago and I am a very sleepy BATS tech so I'm off to bed! Tomorrow I am interviewing Dr Meg Estapa about her new exciting sediment trap project! There will be lots of photos!