Cruise: Exploring Fronts with Multiple Robots
When you build a house, you do not use only a hammer, but a variety of specialized tools in an organized and collaborative manner to construct a complex structure.
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Log Post: The Peanut Butter Layer
It is early in the morning and the day is barely starting for most of those on R/V Falkor – but not for Dr. Amanda Netburn or PhD. Candidate Elan Portner. Immune to the long hours behind them, the duo remains cheerful and lively as they sort the different samples they have collected through the night, including … Continued
Log Post: Can’t Stop Moving
I really can’t stop moving. There are two reasons for this. One is that I am on a ship. The other is that I am on a ship. Yes, these are distinct reasons. First, life as a scientist on a research vessel is busy. I am running (or rather walking briskly; we do not run … Continued
Log Post: My New Colleague Is a Robot
It is an amazing sight to see: water 360 degrees around you and nothing else. However, taking repetitive measurements every day in the middle of the Pacific Ocean for weeks at a time can take its toll, especially when the majority of our sampling consists of pushing water through a filter. A seemingly simple task … Continued
Log Post: Rhythm in the Eddy
It is midnight, and the ship’s lights are dimmed to limit interference with some extremely light-sensitive instruments. Fernanda Henderikx and Mathilde Dugenne lower an optical float into the water with the moon as their main illumination source. It is an unusually beautiful scene to be conducting experiments in. Many microbes have diel rhythms, just like … Continued
Person: Jan Witting
Jan Witting is a biological oceanographer with long-running interests in the Sub Tropical and Equatorial Pacific, where he has served as Chief Scientist on more than 20 research cruises. His work broadly addresses the linkage between climate variation, circulation, and biological production in the tropical and subtropical oceans, where he studies the effects of changing … Continued
Log Post: Characterizing Eddies
From the heart of the cyclonic eddy, we turned the Falkor north and cruised to its edge. We found the counterclockwise spinning cyclonic eddy. Now it is time to characterize the eddy’s physical, chemical, and biological features, which means it is time to get the LRAUVs (#MicrobeEddyBots) into the ocean and put them to work. … Continued
Log Post: Backstage
“The first problem we had is that the vehicle wasn’t communicating with the ship’s USBL system, so we weren’t able to keep track of where the Iver was underwater,” says Nick Goumas. “That made the mission very high risk. So we decided we were confident running a simple compass calibration mission, which is when the … Continued
Person: Anna Romano
Anna is a Research Associate at the University of Hawai‘i, Mānoa, working in the laboratory of Dr. Edward DeLong. She joined the team to spearhead developing high throughput workflows using robotics to prepare marine microbial and marine sediment trap samples for genetic sequencing. In addition to her laboratory role, she joined the UH/MBARI LRAUV collaboration … Continued
Cruise: Eddy Exploration and Ecosystem Dynamics
If you have ever flown over the Pacific and looked down from the window seat, the water seems still. Viewed from this distance, the water appears stagnant with unmoving dashes of waves.
