Mark Twain as oceanographer & wiggly dee-vices (9/5/09)

Watching the Washington shoreline go by while steaming back towards Astoria

I've never been on a research vessel in a river, especially in an area that feels like my backyard. Getting on a ship to do work usually means going places out of the ordinary. In this case, however, I see and recognize landmarks both from my professional work, as well as from my life here in Oregon. It's an interesting experience! I keep thinking of Mark Twain's stories about his life on the river, and wonder what he would think of ours. It certainly is a beautiful river, with it's mountains clouds and bridges. The tankers are a bit intimidating, but they do keep the vistas interesting.

A typical view when anchored off Tongue Point

After the dynamic pacific swells, the river feels incredibly calm and welcoming. We even had the pleasure of anchoring up tonight, permitting the engines to be turned off for the first time in a week. You get so inured to the constant buzzing drone of the engines, that once they are gone, the quiet is profound and quite lovely. I actually had the chance to play guitar out on the deck for a bit this evening. So nice!

The sunsets and cloud formations have been pretty dramatic as an oncoming storm builds

A difficult part of working in the river is dealing with the tides. During full ebb or flood, the velocities pick way up, making the deployment of gear a bit difficult -- especially something with as large a silhouette as our CTD rosette. As soon as that guy hits the water, the flow blows the CTD astern enough to put a pretty steep angle on the wire (opinions differ on the exact angle, but it was crazy! I kid you not, it was absolutely out of control...are you thoroughly impressed yet?) Anyway, we had to swap the CTD rosette for a tighter package -- a little heavily-weighted cage with the CTD mounted inside. This guy still flies astern with the currents, but not as badly. Of course, the downside is that we then have no Nisken bottles to sample water with. For that, we strapped a hose to the CTD cage, and connected it to a pump on deck. Now, once we get the CTD to depth, we can pump as much water as we need. Handling that hose is a bear though -- it has to be clipped onto the wire as the CTD is being lowered.

The new CTD cage, pump, and hose used on the in-estuary deployments

Some of the water that makes it on deck is grabbed and analyzed for methane by Fred and Patrick Prahl, a father/son science powerhouse, working to understand the landscape of the arcane elemental transformations carried out by bacteria and phtytoplankton in the estuary (this is Patrick's first time out on a research vessel, so he's getting first-hand experience in field oceanography).

Fred and Patrick Prahl. Fred's wiggling device can be seen under his right elbow

Part of Fred's methodology makes use of one of my favorite devices on the boat -- "Fred's Wiggler". See, Fred has to feed a gas sample into that big box there to see how much methane he's got. Only problem is, his sample is water. That's where Fred's Wiggler comes in. He slurps up the water sample with a syringe, then adds a big bubble of methane-free air on top. Fred then straps the syringes onto the deck of the Wiggler, throws a switch, and then the magic happens -- the syringes get shaken, with the precision, control and consistency so necessary for our sophisticated ocean-science methodologies. Once the methane partial pressure in the air bubble equlibrates with the water sample, Fred can inject the gas into the big box and get a methane level. It's a little labor intensive, but Fred is developing technologies that automate the process. Once the kinks are worked out, the new technology will allow him to map out the distribution of methane in the Columbia River estuary. These data will help Fred understand how important a role the Columbia River estuary plays in generating atmospheric methane -- a greenhouse gas.