Well, that was exciting, and we all had a bit of fun.
Woke up this morning to find that the power on half the ship was out, the
computer network was down, and the engineering crew was running around the
corridors in the lower deck trying to figure out where the smell of smoke was
coming from. Apparently, "something blew up" in the lower computer lab. Just
what you want to hear in the middle of the ocean, eh?
Anyway, I guess they sorted it out, because the power is mostly back on and the
network is mostly up and the ship didn't sink. We didn't even have to put on
our chic orange life vests or anything. But there's no internet again, and the
e-mail is kind of sporadic, and the CTD console is missing one of its displays,
which sticks me with a new set of mental calculations to do on each rosette cast
and completely throws off the nice, automatic routine I'd developed over the
past month. I suppose this is the universe's way of checking to make sure I'm
paying attention.
We're quite close to San Diego now -- only a few hours away if we just sailed
straight there, but because of the remaining casts we won't dock until sometime
on Friday. The casts are getting really shallow. Well, relatively so, anyway.
For most of the cruise, we'd be casting down to about 5500 meters, but now we're
at around 1600 or so. The surface water is getting noticeably colder -- I can
tell just from the sampling, since I'm splashing the stuff all over my hands on
a regular basis.
There's some minor excitement over some traces of fluorocarbons found in deep
water, in places where we weren't expecting traces and where there's no obvious
source. Apparently one of the scientists is actually likely to get a paper out
of it. This is pretty cool, since the cruise wasn't really meant to be a
research cruise as such, but mainly a data-collecting project. (The data is
made publicly available shortly after the end of the cruise to any scientist who
wants it, anywhere in the world. Which is also, I think, pretty cool.)
Less than two days left to go at sea. I can't believe how fast this month went.
computer network was down, and the engineering crew was running around the
corridors in the lower deck trying to figure out where the smell of smoke was
coming from. Apparently, "something blew up" in the lower computer lab. Just
what you want to hear in the middle of the ocean, eh?
Anyway, I guess they sorted it out, because the power is mostly back on and the
network is mostly up and the ship didn't sink. We didn't even have to put on
our chic orange life vests or anything. But there's no internet again, and the
e-mail is kind of sporadic, and the CTD console is missing one of its displays,
which sticks me with a new set of mental calculations to do on each rosette cast
and completely throws off the nice, automatic routine I'd developed over the
past month. I suppose this is the universe's way of checking to make sure I'm
paying attention.
We're quite close to San Diego now -- only a few hours away if we just sailed
straight there, but because of the remaining casts we won't dock until sometime
on Friday. The casts are getting really shallow. Well, relatively so, anyway.
For most of the cruise, we'd be casting down to about 5500 meters, but now we're
at around 1600 or so. The surface water is getting noticeably colder -- I can
tell just from the sampling, since I'm splashing the stuff all over my hands on
a regular basis.
There's some minor excitement over some traces of fluorocarbons found in deep
water, in places where we weren't expecting traces and where there's no obvious
source. Apparently one of the scientists is actually likely to get a paper out
of it. This is pretty cool, since the cruise wasn't really meant to be a
research cruise as such, but mainly a data-collecting project. (The data is
made publicly available shortly after the end of the cruise to any scientist who
wants it, anywhere in the world. Which is also, I think, pretty cool.)
Less than two days left to go at sea. I can't believe how fast this month went.