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May 11, 2009. Loading day.

In the morning Joe Needoba and Tawnya Peterson picked us up and we went to the DoSE campus of OHSU to pack all our boxes, crates, incubators, etc. into a box truck.  We then climbed into a rented passenger van and caravanned the 2.5 hours to Newport.   Research teams from four campuses (UMCES, OHSU, OSU, UW) assembled on the dock and loaded everything onto the ship. Two US Coast Guard interns also came aboard for marine technician training. I set up the isotope van with Erica, managed the detail work of lab space assignments, bunk assignments, and MSDS forms, and worked on matching faces to names (there are a lot of new people aboard).

I arranged for the R/V New Horizon to remain at the dock a little longer on the morning of the 12th to wait for the R/V Point Sur to arrive so that one of the research groups could retrieve two boxes that are critical to their research. First mate Murray Stein and marine technician Gus Aprans provided an orientation and had us all try on our survival suits. Then several scientists headed to the Rogue brewery for supper. I met with Captain John Manion and Fred Prahl to talk over the cruise plan and to make contingency plans for forecasted bad weather.

Looking over the labs I have to marvel at the tremendous growth of this project and the excellent equipment we are using. We started this project using rather basic sampling and analysis techniques.  Now on this cruise we are running a Flow-through Cytometer, Flow Cam, PAM fluorometer, Gas Chromatograph, DNA extractions, PCR thermocycler, Microarray hybridization unit, ISUS nitrate sensor, PAM fluorometer, and two fluorescein fluorometers for a dye study.-