First Alvin dive

Hi Everyone,
I get to dive tomorrow!!! So excited and really tired from a long day. I'll give a full report tomorrow night.

Today Bekki Helton went for her first time as well. We had a great time coming up with ideas for what to do when she finished. It's tradition to mess their shoes and throw ice cold water on them when the come out. We have some great pictures that I will upload tomorrow. :)

As far as our sample, it looked great! A success. We recovered the sampler, 'Thing 1" at 5:30am and deployed the other, "Thing 2" at about 6:45 am. Our filters were full, inductions completed, and even a small DNA sample was taken and showed that we had DNA!! Always a plus when doing metagenomics. Also there is a lot of excitement on board due to Karla Heidelberg bringing out an SEM (scanning electron microscope--http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Scanning_electron_microscope&oldid=251441115 hope this link works), oh yes, an SEM. Who would have ever thought, it's really tiny too. We tried putting the 0.2um filter on to see bacteria, however, the resolution is not great for viewing these little guys, but you can kinda see them. Hopefully on a calm day we will get lucky. We are also going to try to look at the larger fractions for the beautiful diatoms and dinoflagellates.

I'm off for now.

~Lisa