Day 1 B270 Star Date June 14th 2011

Hi my name is Susan Allender and I work as a Research Technician for the PEL lab group at BIOS. At the moment I am out on the Atlantic Explorer Research Vessel. We are on the monthly BATS cruise, http://bats.bios.edu/ will give you an overview of what goes on. It's only the first day so things have been a bit quiet for the PEL group. We have just been organising the lab and looking for wildlife and fixing leaking PITs tubes. Luckily we have a local bird expert on the ship to point out things of interest. We have seen Greater Shearwaters, Corey's Shearwaters and plenty of Tropic Long Tail Birds. So far there have been no mammal sightings, but plenty of flying fish. Weather-wise things have been a little windy making the going a bit choppy. Hopefully tomorrow will be nicer.

Science Update: PITS has just gone in the water, then it's off to BATS.

Out with the BEACON Project

Hello! My name is Emily Greenhalgh and I’m a visiting graduate student from Boston University. Unlike the majority of summer interns at BIOS, I’m not here to work in a lab or dive for the summer. I’m here as a science writer. It’s what I’m getting my Master’s degree in: science writing.

It affords me a unique sort of opportunity here at BIOS, since it means I get to observe many projects instead of just working closely with one. Yesterday I spent the afternoon going out on the boat with the BEACON project. They were diving and taking coral samples off the coast as part of an ocean acidification project.

While I was a built in boat-sitter, my job for the afternoon was to snorkel and take pictures of scientists doing real work so I could write about it later. I’m not quite sure how I got so lucky, as to call this “work,” but I’m pretty sure that the sunburn I’m currently sporting is cosmic payment for such an awesome day.