Saturday, 21 February 2004

When you hear that someone is an oceanographer, what comes to mind? Often I hear people say to my husband, J.P., upon hearing that he is in the field of oceanography, "That's so cool! Do you work with dolphins?" While being an oceanographer is certainly cool, and while there are many marine biologists who do in fact work with dolphins, the excitement doesn't end with that! There is an amazing variety of fields within the oceanography and so many undiscovered aspects of our oceans just waiting to be explored not a thousand light years away, but right here in the waters that make up 70% of our earth. We know more about the surface of Mars than we do about the bottom of the ocean.

In order to obtain the data used to study and understand our ocean environment, scientists use a variety of skills. For example, as I write, there are scientists working on solving technical problems with one of the instruments that collects seismic data deep into the sea bed; there are researchers getting muddy taking gravity cores. There in the dark of night, working under the lights as the ship travels to the next way station wearing work boots and vests, is an array of researchers lifting PVC core liner onto stanchions, labeling it with permanent markers, cleaning the mud from tools used during the last core collection and making them ready for the next station. There's a couple of people fixing one of the refrigerated work vans used to store the sediment samples to keep them from drying out. The technicians are preparing the jumbo piston core and the Melville crew is making sure we are on a steady course. There's a huge effort using the knowledge and hard work of many in the process of understanding our oceans. If you are interested in a career that exercises your mind, your resourcefulness and your ability to work, combined with the benefit of travel, than oceanography may be for you!

Well, looks like I'm out of time today. I had promised to tell you what happens to all that mud that we take from the seafloor. I have an answer, but I've got to get outside to help with the core now. Stop by tomorrow and I'll give you the dirt (so to speak) on jumbo piston core samples. Talk with you then!

Today's weather and location at 1300 (thirteen hundred hours, military time for 1:00 pm)

Air Temperature: 26°C (79°F)
Water Temperature: 29°C (84°F)
Salinity: 29.99 PSU
Barometric Pressure: 1009.3 mb
Precipitation: 10.6 mm
Relative Humidity: 86%

Longitude: 8.28133° S
Latitude: 144.69952° E