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 17, 2004
It's midnight on the 17th and we're only about 36 hours from Hawaii. Everyone is greatly looking forward to the break - we arrive Friday midmorning and the ship leaves again Monday midmorning. I won't be on the second leg of the trip, but most of the science team will stay on for another two weeks and travel from Honolulu to Newport, Oregon. That leg will take them northward to 45 degrees north. That will take them out of the clear, subtropical gyre waters, into the much colder and more biologically productive subpolar waters. That will make for a stark contrast with the tropical first part of this cruise. It also brings the likelihood of much rougher waters, depending on whether there are storms in the westerlies. This time of year it could be nice, but chances are that they wil encounter some weather. This ship is fairly small and particularly narrow, and in rough seas it will be an experience.
In our few days ashore, everyone wants to get away from ship - go surfing, eat in restaurants, and generally take a break. We also have some work to do. We've had some things shipped to meet us in Hawaii to repair instruments, and we have some new scientists joining us who will need training. Those of us getting off need to readjust our sleep patterns to normal life. Sleep patterns can get very disrupted on board ship, especially on a cruise like this where we've crossed several time zones and date line. Most of us can't remember what time or day it is back home, but we do know what time it is in England. We do our scientific measurements based on GMT (Greenwich Mean Time), so our records don't get confused by time zone changes. This would be particularly bad when crossing the dateline. Imagine the confusion that would result if yesterday's measurements were done before today's.
I've been trying to overlap with both the day and night shifts, so I've been going to bed late (3 or 4 AM) and waking up late (about 9AM). The ship's crew has watches around the clock also, but generally nights are much quieter than days. There's nothing like being alone out on deck in the middle of the night, surrounded by stars and ocean. It would be perfect, except for the relentless hum of the ship's enginges and generators. Once, a long time ago, I was on a ship at night when the generators quit - total peace and quiet, until everyone realized what had happened and then it was bedlam. Being adrift at sea is not a safe state to be in and scientists go crazy when their instruments lose power.
data and posting it around the ship. For some of them, this is the first chance they've had to look up from their work and see what others have found. The students have learned a lot. Elizabeth finished her dissertation research, Christa discovered that she can work at sea and collected enough data to keep her busy for the rest of her graduate career, and Brandon learned that he will NEVER be a seagoing oceanographer unless someone invents a surefire cure for seasickness (and maybe not even then).
From my perspective, this cruise has been a great success. This cruise was an expensive effort - not just in terms of monetary cost, but also in terms of the months of preparation. From what I've seen so far, there will be lots of high quality science and we demonstrated that we could make a lot of hight tech equipment work together smoothly under difficult field conditions. It'll take us a year or so to digest what we've learned from this trip, and then it will be time to start planning the next one...