Notes from the Field

There are no days off and there is always more work to be done, but scientist-musicians on board the research vessel find a few minutes to jam.

Muffin O’Clock Through Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, it was discovered that time is not a static measurement, rather it is relative to the observer. Somewhat similarly, time becomes both integral and meaningless while on a boat, completely relative to the scientist’s schedule. Time is integral to the individual with their stopwatch waiting for the precise […]

Almost a month at sea. It’s not the first time. I have been at sea several times in these years but every time is special and unique. It is unique for the research we conduct, for the people we meet, the seas we cross, and the infinite things we still learn from each other at […]

Tumbling along like a tumbling tumbleweed Ok, so the title might just have outed my love for all things Lebowski, but hopefully I will be able to make a link, irregardless of how tenuous it might be, between tumbleweeds and and the subject of this post, drifters. First things first, we have to remind ourselves what […]

Cloud formation depends on several factors, and one of those is the presence of aerosols.  Marine aerosols come from a number of sources (sea salt, biogenic aerosols, continental aerosols that are carried over by wind) and differ in size and composition.  We’ve collected CCN and CPC data to determine, respectively, the concentration of particles that […]

All Quiet in the Main Lab Oceanography is a bunch of tired people filtering the ocean. It reminds me of a Norse story I read a long time ago: Thor was mad at someone so he went to their place to confront them. They were scared of him and his advanced musculature, so they decided […]

It doesn’t take a lot of technology to see that the ocean is blue. And when it comes to the blueness of the ocean, it doesn’t get much more blue than where I am. I’m sitting on the research vessel Nathaniel B. Palmer—the largest icebreaker that supports the United States Antarctic Program—on an oceanographic expedition […]

Sleep.  I don’t mean to say it is taken for granted, but it is dependable. Dependable in the sense that after the day’s activities, we go to sleep. Each and every night.  That’s how it works at home at least.  Here on the ship, work is being conducted 24 hours per day to get the […]

A variety of things during a day at sea The motion woke me up this morning around 10 am. We finally have some weather after days of calm seas. First things first, I made a B-line for the coffee machine in the galley. If you’ve never had a cup of coffee on the deck of […]