The last
few days have been a blur but have been great! Two days ago we started hitting really rough
water and we decided that we should pull into a fiord until the waves died
down. We took this opportunity to sample. The first activity of the day was
Piston coring, which is essentially dropping a tube into the ocean with a 2000-pound
weight on the top to push it into the ground to collect a sample of the
sediment layers. I was involved in a sample called box coring which is dropping
a box into the ocean bottom and closing the bottom to get a large sample of the
ground. Jeniffer White, from Inuvik Northwest Territories, was my partner in
the box core. We pulled out amounts of sediment from the sample and then dumped
it into a mesh and washed away all the dirt to reveal all the little critters
that we’re living in the mud. While we were washing away the mud Jeniffer
sprayed some water in her mouth and she said that science tasted salty. Laurence
and Noemie led that activity. The second sampling was a horizontal net tow to collect
zooplankton led by Jordan and Cyril. I was involved with this activity and
after the nets came up we took the samples inside and sorted out Chaetognaths
and then filtered the rest of the zooplankton into jars. That night I was up
until 2:30am because it was our first full day of sampling and real science.
The next morning we sampled again and I got to take part in a vertical net tow.
Then we filtered more zooplankton. There were other samplings that had been
done that included the CTD Rosette, which is a device that can measure many
physical aspects of water at 24 different depths, the Hydrobios, which is a net
that can open at different depths to catch depth specific organisms. The water
was rough that evening and everyone passed out early feeling a little bit
queasy. The next day was a little bit slow because we were in transit to the
next location so we spent the day working on power points. We also had a
conference call with our schools. I was one of the few students who didn’t have
their school call in. Thanks dad. We all kind of hung out for the rest of the
day. Today was another slow day but we had an awesome tour of the engine room. We haven’t had Internet for the past few days because we have hidden from
the waves in some beautiful fiords. When the Internet is better I will upload
some photos!
-To be
continued… Jaxon!
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