Teacher Logbook:
Saturday, July 22, 2000

Carol's Observations
Working at sea is so different than working on land. I am getting better at adjusting to the motion of the ship. The first thing I do when I wake up on land is check to see if the sun is shinning. The first thing I do at sea is feel how much the ship is pitching and rolling. This morning things are calm. Yesterday went great. It takes teamwork and lots of communication to recover the floats successfully. The ship is set up with pulleys and wenches to pull in the mooring lines. When the instruments finally appeared they were much smaller than I imagined. Last night we finally got close enough to get a good look at those brown birds with the long wings. They have a white ring of feathers around the base of the bill. They are black-footed albatross. The clouds overhead formed a squall line and we had a very fine brief rain. Late in the evening we spotted small jellyfish, but we weren't close enough to identify them.

Mary Beth's Obserevations
Last night was exciting. I was able to sea all kinds of sea creatures in the water while the deck lights were on. At about midnight I saw several dozen small fish and a couple of squid near the boat. All night jellyfish could be seen surfacing, attracted to the light. I am finally adjusted to the motion of the ship. I no longer lose my balance every time the ship pitches or rolls. Sleeping aboard ship is like sleeping on a giant water bed, very comfortable. The sun is shining and the weather is beautiful. Last night I learned how to run the CTD computer and learned even out in the ocean, equipment fails and needs to be repaired. Several hours were spent fixing the CTD cables before the CTD could even be lowered in the water. The ship works around the clock so the scientists are ready to work t all hours of the day and night. CTD casts are not the only scientific work being performed on the Ronald Brown. As Ed Baker mentioned in the science report, we have been busy recovering moorings from the ocean floor. The data collected from the moorings will be taken back to Washington and will be analyzed by several different labs. Stay tuned for more descriptions of the types of the types of instruments recovered from the moorings.