January 9, 2006 - A lab day

 Today I spent all day running the gas chromatograph instrument.  I needed to run some calibrations and check out the machine.  It is working well, but we needed to make an adjustment in how we do our calibrations.  The response seems to be more curved than linear.  After sorting that out I ran a bunch of samples that I had collected the previous days.  I found out that the dissolved DMSP increases in the seawater once that seawater is placed in a bottle. This is something that we have seen before in other places so it is no surprise.  What seems to happen is that some plankton burst or release DMSP from their cells due to the handling of the water. They just don’t like to be handled!  This is an important piece of information for us, and we will need to adjust some sampling strategies.
 
Maria, George and Kerry went out in the Zodiac to collect samples from both stations.  This took them about three hours, and when they returned I ran the DMS samples as fast as I could.  The data look very good.  Everyone was busy doing different things because we are measuring a lot.  Ray helped out another group (the LTER bacterial group) do their sampling in the morning and then he helped with filtering our samples.  Ray and I worked late into the night (after midnight) and after we were done we went up to the galley and played guitar for about an hour. It was really fun.  They have two decent guitars here for general use. A lot of people will pick these up and play at different times.  No one else was around when Ray and I played, but we enjoyed it. It was a nice way to relax after a long day of work.
 
Late the previous evening, I got a good photo of our little elephant seal group, together with an Adelie penguin and a cormorant.  The penguin and cormorant had come out of the water and were hanging out for a while. It is fun to watch penguins hop from rock to rock.  They are surprisingly good at it! The penguin and cormorant have similar coloration, and it difficult to tell them apart at a quick glance. But the cormorant has fully developed wings and can fly. The penguins wings are more narrow and made for underwater “flying”.  It is really neat to see the penguins swimming. They are incredibly fast under water.
 
I am also attaching a photo of me that Maria took on the day we had our boat training. I am driving the Zodiac.  You ca see how warmly we are dressed. That is a Mustang Float Coat that I am wearing, a required piece of clothing.  It will keep you afloat if you should happen to fall in.  Lets hope that doesn’t happen!