Byron Crump's blog

May 3. We tried out the Owen tube for the first time today. Before casting we marked the wire every 1m so that we could roughly determine the depth during the cast. The Flood ETM was predicted for 0930. The Winched Profiler was in the water that morning and we detected an ETM with the FLNTU and the LISST sensors. We lowered the Owen Tube off the stern with the A-frame until we could feel the big 300lb weight touch the bottom and then raised it up slightly until the weight was off the bottom. This weight hangs ~1m below the Owen Tube. We then sent the messenger down the line and closed the tube, brought it back on deck, pushed the weight over to the Owen Tube, flipped the tube vertical, placed it in the rack, and started the stopwatch.

May 1. We were delayed a little crossing the bar into the Columbia River estuary by the rapid river flow, but once the current settled down we moved into the estuary and motored up to a site near SATURN-01 in the north channel of the estuary.

April 30. We spend the morning testing equipment in Newport harbor. We deployed the Winched Profiler device for the first time, and we put the CTD in the water to test the sensors and the pump. It took us a while to figure out how to install the batteries properly in the SBE-25 CTD system that I rented from UMCES Horn Point Lab. We figured that out and then went to Fred Meyer to buy more D-cell batteries, cable ties, bungees, electrical tape and duct tape (all the important stuff!). We had a safety briefing at 11 and everyone tried on a survival suit. At 1600 we pulled anchor, left Newport and started motoring up the coast. The weather was rough and many of us got seasick including me! Remarkably, new grad student Lindy Fine did not get sick. She already seems to have her sea legs.

April 29. Loading day. I traveled to Oregon with graduate students Lindy Fine and Dong Yoon Lee yesterday. This morning with help from Joe Needoba we loaded a U-haul truck with equipment at OHSU in Hillsboro and then drove to Newport Oregon to meet the ship. We then spent the rest of the day loading a lot of equipment and supplies onto the R/V Oceanus in Newport, OR, and testing equipment and sensors. Murray Levine, Fred Prahl, and David Langler drove over from Corvallis to help set up our new 12L Owen Tube, which was fashioned from an externally-closed Ocean Dynamics horizontal niskin bottle (see picture). We deployed the new Owen Tube several times to work out our sampling routine. Later that evening we started setting up our amazingly heavy CTD frame, which is designed to handle the extreme currents in the Columbia River estuary without being washed away from the ship.

 Because of threatening weather offshore we decided to leave the estuary a little early on the morning of the 28^th.  We first went 15 miles offshore to dump our holding tank, and then begin our series of CTD casts down the one hundred meter isobath. The weather remained nice and we even had a following current down the coast causing us to complete our survey very quickly.

At 0600 we replaced the long pump hose with a much shorter one to make it easier to prime the pump and get the water flowing.  David Needham set up a primary production measurement at 0700, and the water sampling team collected DNA and RNA samples and measured bacterial production.  Water sampling for methane, CDOM, and nutrients continued until 1200.  Then at 1500 we got underway and steam

We continued to collect samples at the RM-17 station hourly until 1000, and then pulled the anchor and went to the dock at the Job Corp campus on Tongue Point. Colleen Durkin and Sara Bender disembarked with their equipment, and undergraduate intern Lindsey Longway came aboard. We then steamed upriver to the Beaver Army dock at river mile 53, conducted a CTD cast, and then tied up at about 1800. We attached the end of the pump hose to a pole and strapped to the port side of the ship so that the hose end was positioned at 1m depth.

At around noon we crossed back into the estuary, conducted a CTD cast at SATURN-03, and continued up the estuary to an anchor station just off Tongue Point on the south bank of the channel at river mile 17 (RM-17). We began hourly CTD casts at 1400 and collected water for nutrients, POC/N, SPM, and DOC each hour beginning at 1200.

At 0900 we collected a water sample from a bottom depth for a full suite of chemistry and nucleic acid analysis. This sample was fresh water, and it served as the first of five bottom-water samples that spanned the flood tide ETM particle resuspension event. The others were collected at 1200, 1300, 1500, and 1600. Also, a surface water sample was collected at 1300. At 1900 we steamed across the bar and out to the coastal ocean to empty the holding tank and dispose of garbage. We spent the night off shore.