Wednesday, 1 February 2012

Preparations continue....


 We met last night to discuss our science plans and the preliminary schedule for the cruise has been decided. We will start with a long section along the North Scotia Ridge east towards South Georgia, followed by three other sections to the south and west across the Scotia Sea, finishing in Drake Passage. For those of you who are not familiar with our work, we will be taking measurements of a tracer (dye) that was put into the ocean on an earlier cruise, taking temperature and salinity measurements, and deploying three different “microstructure profilers” that measure small-scale water velocity variations. All of these techniques, which we will talk more about in later blogposts, are designed to measure mixing in different regions of the ocean.

Last night, we also saw our first wildlife of the cruise. Soon after leaving Montevideo, a group of us saw ten or fifteen seals playing off the front of the ship. Thanks to Neill Mackay for the great photos.

Calm seas

 Seals!


Katy testing the weight release on one of the microstructure profilers - Guinness cans stand is as weights. Hoping for the luck of the Irish?

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