Byron Crump's blog

We began our sampling at station CR-40 at 1100, and things were working pretty smoothly.< However, during the CTD cast at the next station (CR-35), sustained 35 kt winds caused us to suspend our operations. ;We spent the night offshore riding out the storm. Everyone is a little seasick.

We are out of cell phone range, and for some reason my email does not work over the HighSeasNet internet system, so I'm posting this note here to let everyone know what we are up to. With luck the conditions will improve sometime tomorrow and we can start working again.

Sustained 35 kt winds have caused us to suspend our operations.   We are offshore riding out the storm.   Everyone is a little seasick.  We are out of cell phone range, and for some reason email does not work over the HighSeasNet system, so I'm posting this note here to let everyone know what we are up to. With luck the conditions will improve sometime tomorrow and we can start working again.

The Point Sur arrived at ~0930, and as soon as the boxes were transferred we left the dock and headed out into a wavy ocean.  Winds were at about 10 kts, causing some degree of seasickness for most of the scientists.  I was sick too, but was able to keep functioning thanks to my scopolamine patch.  Several others were not so lucky.  The emergency alarm sounded at about 1030 and we all grabbed our life vests and mustered in the dry lab for a safety meeting.  After some comments from Murray and Gus we wa

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.

Just to catch everyone up, here are my daily blogs.  On May 10th, Mothers Day, I said goodbye to my wife and kids, and left my house at 8:30 am to begin a long day of travel to Portland, OR. I remembered my frozen DNA extraction buffer and enzymes (thank heavens), shoving them deep into my suitcase. I picked up my technician Erica Kiss and drove 1.5 h to Baltimore/Washington international where we caught a flight to Portland via Houston.

Yesterday evening we received waypoints/waytimes from Grant Law for today Feature Tracking Exercise. We did one of these on the 16th during the Spring Tide. Now that it is Neap Tide we are doing it again. We were not able to get to the first way-point in time after pulling the drifter at 08:30, so we started our series a little late. Grant updated the surface salinity forecast for the locations and times we did CTD casts, and the numbers improved.

We pulled the drifter out of the water at 06:30 and motored back to the mouth of the Columbia to do it all again. At 08:00 we deployed a drifter off the stern - the same as yesterday - but it was immediately swept under the ship and broken by the ship's bow thruster. The lesson here is to face the ship into the current when deploying off the stern. So we turned the ship around and deployed the other drifter at 08:30 and set about following it for the next 24 hours. This time the drifter moved northwest and later began to curl back to the northeast.

Today we began a new field campaign for the CMOP program. At the beginning of the strong ebb tide we released an Argos surface drifter at the mouth of the estuary on the south side of the shipping channel. We immediately cast the CTD and collected a surface water sample. Then we followed the drifter as it moved off shore, casting the CTD each hour and collecting a surface water sample every three hours.

Today we attempted to follow an intermediate bottom salinity as it moved up estuary on the flood and down estuary on the ebb. We waited until the strong ebb settled down at about 10:00 pdt and moved to station NC-7, which lies 7 miles up estuary from the mouth. We established a set of stations at half-mile increments from NC-7 to NC-11 near the bridge, including 3 stations spanning the channel at each point. We then worked our way up the estuary with the flood casting the CTD at several of these stations.

Today we set out to collect water samples with no particles at a range of salinities in the North Channel of the Estuary. We did the same thing in the South Channel on July 19th. At the same time the R/V Barnes was positioned in the ETM region of the North Channel collecting ETM samples. We spent most of the day moving between stations NC-7, 9, and 11. Most water samples were collected at a middle depth above the influence of ETM particles. We collected water at the following salinities: 2, 6.5, 10, 18, 26, and 31.