UCI at sea: A scientist's diary

A seven person UC Irvine-Chapman University research team is traveling across the Pacific Ocean, taking water and air samples that will better clarify the effect that certain chemicals, such as methyl bromide, have on the ozone layer. The team is being led by UCI researcher Eric Saltzman, who is sending periodic reports to the Orange County Register from the research vessel Wecoma.

Latest dispatch: June 6, 2004

It's night and we're crossing the ITCZ for the third time, this time headed southeast. We'll do one more zig-zag across it (between 2 and 6 degrees north), then anchor off Christmas Island to pick up our water pump. We're still limping along on the pump the engineers managed to cobble together. It blew up once and we went back on very tight water restrictions, then they got it working again.

The measurements are going well. We've made some progress on the detection of acetone in surface seawater. Acetone is naturally produced in the ocean, and emitted into the atmosphere. Over the ocean it can be transported to higher altitudes, where it plays a role in ozone formation. Our seawater acetone measurements are the first in the Pacific ocean and our rough calculations show that the flux out of the ocean here is large enough to explain most of the acetone in the overlying air.

The work is getting more routine - we've split into day and night shifts now, so the science team is together only at breakfast and dinner. That way the measurements can go around the clock. Two students are still struggling to make their experiments work - one because he can't explain his measurements, and another because her equipment has had a series of malfunctions. It's quite amazing what odd ways equipment finds to fail when you are in the field. For example, a stainless steel fan blade in a high temperature oven fell apart, fortunately, without damaging anything else. One of the ship's engineers managed to rivet it back together (a very clever piece of work), but it's now much heavier than the original and we're not sure how the motor bearings will hold out.

The equator crossing "festivities" are still going on. Tonight, we wogs had to entertain the shellbacks. We put on a fine dramatic performance on the fantail just after sundown. The show included nautical/scientific poetry and a skit which was sort along the general theme of Miss Piggy goes to sea. The show was interrupted by a pirate attack (with interviews by Kermit) and a thorough hosing down of the deserving shellbacks. This performance was produced and directed by our electrical engineer Cyril McCormick and the Wecoma's marine tech, Linda Faylor. Both of them clearly have entirely too much time on their hands. Tomorrow is the final ceremony, at which the shellbacks will get their revenge for tonight's soaking.

We're at the half-way point for this leg of the cruise, and there's still a long way to go.

Cheers,

Eric

Dispatch: June 3, 2004

Last night about 2:00 AM we crossed the equator. Because of our cruise track we were able to make the crossing exactly on the dateline at 180 degrees E (or W, depending on your point of view). Crossing the equator is a big thing for mariners, but crossing at the dateline is a special thing. Equator/dateline crossers who go through the initiation ceremony receive the "golden shellback", instead of the regular shellback status. We've started the initiation rite, which apparently will take some days to complete. For the time being I am declared a "wog" for polywog, who takes orders from the shellbacks. I'm a bit dubious about the value of all this business, but it does help cut the boredom.

Our search for southern hemisphere air has yielded unclear results. We steamed through a fairly intense convergence zone, with lots of dark clouds and high winds. I was sure that when we poked out the other side, we would be in the southern hemisphere. The winds changed to southeast just as I hoped, but the air chemistry wasn't definitive. It looks like we may have hit a patch here or there, but we never broke through. We did go through some ypwelling, where deep, nutrient rich water is brought to the surface, leading to rich biological productivity. This helped the crew's fishing which brought us an excellent tuna dinner. It also brought a large increase in a whole range of gases emitted into the oceans by phytoplankton. That's what we're here for.

Now, we're heading northeast hoping to cross the ITCZ one more time. I'm a little sorry to do this, because we have beautiful weather here at the equator, with gently rolling seas. I know that rougher weather awaits us to the north.

Because we crossed the dateline, we had to set our clocks back one day. That means we had another June 2. Our first June 2 was very nice, with good scientific progress. The second June 2 started in the predawn hours with a blown air pump, and a minor flood that shorted out a refrigeration unit and a stirring motor. Fortunately we had a backup for the refrigeration unit, but not for the little motor. That took a whole day to repair. As Linda Faylor, the marine technician aboard Wecoma said, "I knew we were pushing our luck trying June 2 a second time."

Cheers from the dateline, Eric

Dispatch: May 31, 2004

We are starting to settle into a routine now - most of the equipment is working and we're spending most of our time taking measurements. There's still some head scratching over why something doesn't work, and we've come up with some pretty ingenious solutions to problems that we didn't anticipate. One of our biggest problems is heat. The ship wasn't designed to carry as much equipment as we are running and the air conditioning system can't cope with it. We thought about that beforehand and brought 150 feet of air duct to vent the hot air exhaust from gas chromatograph ovens out of the lab. Even with that it was 93 degrees in one corner of the lab. Scientific instruments don't appreciate that and neither do we! Yesterday we finally figured out that the lab was under negative pressure and was sucking outside air in through our ducts. Once we knew that, we had our solution. We piped the duct into the air conditioning exhause and vila, we're a bearable 86 degrees. Solving these sorts of problems requires both the scientists and the ship's crew working together. Fortunately on the Wecoma, the crew is really helpful and interested in the success of the scientific mission. That makes a huge difference.

We're still steaming southeast. Our plan was to go to 2 degrees N just below the Intertropical Convergence Zone and to cross into Southern Hemisphere air. Unfortunately, we're there and we're still in northeasterly trade winds. We're going to continue south for another day - hopefully the winds will swing around to the southeast, telling us that we're in air from the Southern Hemisphere. We'll be able to see the difference in air chemistry between the two hemispheres - the northern hemisphere has higher levels of man-made refrigerants ike HCFC-22. Studying the difference between N and S hemisphere air reveals man's influence on the atmosphere.

The crew is quite excited about our decision to continue southward. Among sailors, crossing the equator is a big deal. There's an elaborate ceremony for sailors crossing the equator for the first time, which involves costumes and various forms of good-natured(?) abuse by King Neptune. After that you are a "shellback" and get an official card. Carrying the card allows you to avoid the abuse on future crossings (or to participate in dishing it out). The crew of the Wecoma has been working for many years in northern waters, and they rarely travel to the tropics. The captain, Rick Verlini, is fired up for the crossing and they may not get another chance for a while. Atmospheric chemists tend to gravitate towards the low latitudes, since most of the atmosphere is in the tropics. Shari Yvon-Lewis, a NOAA scientist on the cruise has crossed the equator five times, in both the Atlantic and Pacific. More later... Cheers, Eric