During the Cruise, Chief Scientist, Dr. Claudia Benitez-Nelson, was in email correspondence with her Freshman Introductory Marine Science 101 Class and 6th and 7th grade students from Hand Middle School.  Students emailed questions and comments throughout the cruise. 

Just click on the date below to see the the Chief's Email.

Claudia and Victor Kuwahara

• Star Date Nov. 7, 2004

  • We've made it out to where we "think" our eddy is and we just started sampling.  Right now we are making transects across the feature and are stopping to conduct stations every hour.  Each station involves putting the CTD over the side and collecting water along with measurements of chlorophyll (plant biomass), temperature and salinity.

     

    

     

    Mike Landry collecting water samples from the CTD

     

     

     

    Once we define the center (using temperature and salinity --it should be significantly colder in the middle), we will make two more transects to really define the size of the eddy.  Needless to say --this is really tiring and everyone is working 12 hour + shifts to help out and keep on top of the sampling.  Hopefully the eddy will be nicely defined.  I wish it was a speed bump that we could just hit and know we are in, :).  The weather is starting to clear up, and the seas are calm. Oahu is still inundated with rain.  The front should pass through by Monday and the winds will pick up again.  That's good for the eddy, but the seas will get rough.  Cross your fingers --no seasickness yet.

• Star Date Nov. 8, 2004
  • So far, the cruise has been going right on schedule.  Our main problem is
    the weather interfering with our ability to get the satellite images!  I
    mean this literally -- the islands have been deluged with rain all week.
    The University of Hawaii was flooded on Monday due to the river jumping its banks.  Hamilton Library was destroyed.  Yesterday, half the buildings still had no power.  Since UH is our source for the GOES Temperature images, we have had to rely on "old pics".  It's also been really cloudy, so our MODIS imagery (chl concentrations) has been really poor.  Needless to say, I was worried that we wouldn't see our eddy.  Last night we completed our first transect through what we think is the "eddy center".  This involved taking depth profiles and collecting water samples every hour.  The pace is grueling.  The great news is that we found our eddy!  The structure is classic eddy, with temperature much colder in the center.  Chlorophyll levels (plant biomass) are pretty high, indicating high nutrients.  It also appears (from color spectrum data) that we have different organisms inside versus outside the eddy.  We just started our next transect to really
    pinpoint the eddy center.
    
    Our life at sea is counted in sea days (time since departure).  It's hard to
    remember that while the rest of the world has the weekends off, we're still
    working. Today was the first day that we had sunshine.  We saw some whales off the bow, but they were too far out for pics.  Hopefully we'll get
    another chance.  Half the science crew has decided to get healthy -- no meat or junk food.  I'm not sure this is a good thing!  A bunch of scientists
    going through caffeine withdrawal?
• Star Date Nov. 9, 2004
  • We're making our way through the third transect across the eddy.  We've
    completed the first two lines in the shape of a "+" that were mostly for
    Temp, Salinity, and Chl (biomass).  We are now doing two more lines in the
    shape of an "X" for bacterial composition, phytoplankton, and zooplankton
    composition. The pace is grueling -- one station every 3 hours, but spirits
    are high since this is such an absolutely beautiful eddy.  It has a radius
    of ~ 35 nm -- almost half the size of the Big Island!.  We managed to hit it
    spot on with our first transect,  Temp, salinity (and hence density) clearly
    arch or dome  towards to the surface in the center and mixed layer depths
    are less than 40 m (versus 100 m outside the eddy).  Chlorophyll is also
    much higher in the center (as we had hypothesized) and the depth of the
    Chlorophyll maximum shallows from 115 to 80 m.  We have even come across some massive Trichodesmium blooms (N2 fixers) in the eddy center.  It basically looks like  brown soap scum and when I first saw it I thought that someone had pumped the ships bilges!!!  Good thing we have biologists onboard who were able to identify the species directly under a microscope. The tricho bloom is unexpected and we think it is due to the shallowness of the mixed layer.

    Life at sea continues.  We have made a Turkey with plastic staws and each
    straw is removed for each day we get closer to Thanksgiving. 

    

     

    E-Flux Turkey

     

     

    So far, half the scientists are still on the "eat healthy" diet although last night's
    cheese cake almost did them in.  The tune's continue to blast out of the
    labs and ranges from Billy Holiday to Steely Dan and Talking Heads.  It's
    MUCH better than listening to them sing!!!  The crew still hasn't caught us
    any fish yet, but there is still hope for some tasty sashimi at some point
    in the cruise.

• Star Date Nov. 13, 2004
  • We are now in the second of our five process eddy IN stations.  The first
    two stations are situated in the center of the eddy, the third station will
    be between the center and the edge, and the 4th and 5th stations will be
    right at the edge in the "eddy shear zone".  There are alot of hypotheses
    out there as to why eddies are so productive.  Some scientists believe that
    the upwelling of nutrients in the center is the major reason for enhanced
    production.  Others feel that it is actually at the edge of the eddy where
    there is more sheer caused by contrasting currents.  At the shear zone,
    there is much more turbulent mixing, which may bring more nutrients into
    surface waters than at the center.  We should be able to see what's going on
    in more detail with these stations.  So far, we continue to see enhanced
    biomass and production in the center.  The center of the eddy looks like a
    waste land, with debris such as old floats, plastic, etc. in the center.  We
    even came across a plywood board with a rod and flag attached to the center.  It looked like a run away dive buoy--a marker used by divers to signify their position for ships passing by.  We've also been catching tons of fish and squid.  We even saw turtles and dolphins -- so there is definitely more food in the water.  The plankton tows are chalk full of stuff compared to outside the eddy.  The Trichodesmium continue to bloom and are everywhere.  They really do look like brown scum on the water's surface -- almost like an oily patch of water.  The eddy is starting to move west and we are tracking along with it. 

    
     

    Trichodesmium Bloom

     

  • This am it looks like we lost our in situ growth and grazing array -- a drifter that we put out to measure in situ production.  We had a radio transmitter and a light, but both have failed.  Such is life at sea.  We are spending some time looking for it now, and hopefully we'll find it.  It's a bit like looking for a needle in a hay stack -- as all we have to go on are the orange floats at the surface.
• Star Date Nov. 15, 2004
  • "The weather started getting rough.  The tiny ship was tossed.  If not for
    the Capt. and his fearless crew, the KOK would be lost."  Yup, the weather has taken a turn for the worst.  We just finished our first two Eddy Center stations and were in the middle of the third when we had to suspend
    operations.  The winds are blowing 30 mph and gusting at 40 mph.  We can no longer put our CTD.  We tried to collect our sediment trap --but that has been delayed, too.  So now we sit and experience the force of Mother Nature.  Last night was awful for sleeping.  I finally fell asleep with my arms and legs braced on either side of the bunk to keep from slamming side to side.  Half the science crew are in their bunks seasick.  The waves really are beautiful - even though they continue to get bigger and bigger, it's still sunny and warm.  We're not allowed on deck without safety jackets -- this is the major concern right now.  The winds should die down by tomorrow evening and then we can get back to work.  On a good note, the trade winds are great for our eddies. They maintain them throughout the winter.  When the trades cease, so do our eddies.  The price you pay for good science!
• Star Date Nov. 17, 2004

  • The seas have finally calmed down!  Last night we went back on Station to
    finish the last of the water casts.  As we were sitting on station, the
    Capt. calls me to the bridge.  He's hearing this faint radio signal on the
    channel of our long lost growth and grazing array.  Each array that we
    deploy from the ship has a radio beacon that we use to fix position.  As you
    get closer to the drifter, the sound becomes louder.  These beacons are
    typically good for a 4 nautical mile radius around the drifter.  When we lost the growth and grazing array we were essentially in the same spot --and we
    looked for the darn thing for hours by making a crisscross pattern over
    where the drifter should have gone based on the winds and currents.  We
    didn't hear a peep.  So we couldn't believe that we might actually be
    hearing the radio signal from the production drifter.  So we finished the
    last cast and went looking.  One hour later, there she was --our beautiful
    production array as clear as day (or night as it was 22:00).  So what
    happened?  We have several theories:  1)  The array drifted out of range and then circled around during the 1.5 days that we couldn't deploy (this would be expected in an eddy and is exactly what our other two drifters did), 2) The radio beacon on the array malfunctioned. but started working again when it was jostled by the strong waves from the bad weather, or 3)  Space Aliens picked it up and decided it wasn't worth anything so returned it from where it was found.  We think it was probably explanation #1 (although #3 is a close second).
    
    Our Eddy is so strong, and our drifters have maintained their positions so
    well in the center of the eddy that we have decided to deploy our
    bio-optical drifter. 

     

    

     

    Bob Bidigare, Tommy Dickey, and Victor deploying the drifter

     

     

    This drifter will actually be allowed to drift in the eddy center for the next 6 weeks until we come back out in January.  This drifter has a temperature string --so we can monitor how temperature changes while we are gone, fluorescence (for measuring Chl based biomass), and sea surface temperature and barometric pressure.  It will also help us to track the center of the eddy while we are gone as we use a satellite transponder (ARGOS) to track the drifter's positions.  Pretty cool, huh?
    
    We are nearing the end of the cruise and everyone is beginning to get antsy.
    Data is being analyzed in earnest, our Turkey is looking a little moth
    eaten, and the picture taking is through the roof.  Everyone needs a sunset
    picture.  We'll be home soon!

    

   

  Sunset on the last night of our cruise