Hi everyone!
I'm so sorry to be this delayed. We hit some weather over the last couple of days and had two dives canceled. Our last dive planned for the East Pacific Rise was today and they did launch! Unfortunately, we will not be deploying the sampler until we hit Guaymas, our next destination. Yesterday we did finish up a CTD deployment. We looked at the entire water column (which actually started the night before). We took samples at discrete depths and filtered them for bacteria and viruses. Needless to say we were all exhausted. As the last of the experiment was being finished, all of our team onboard started dropping off...hitting our bunks for some much needed R & R.
Today we are redesigning the prefiltration carboy that we use on the sampler, because our next site has a lot of large particulate matter around the area we will be placing the wand that sucks up all the water. We should have more than enough time on the 3 day transit to finish this up.
The internet is a bit slow right now, so I will update with some recent photos. I was trying to get some of the pilot whales that have been playing alongside the boat all day today.
On a side note, we had what is called the 'call to the deep' today. It is apart of the educational Extreme 2008. If you are interested, please visit the link posted earlier. It's quite cute. The kids get to ask all the questions.