This is my second AMT, having participated on AMT-18 last year, doing essentially the same analysis with a colleague from PML but with a greater number of analysers. As I sit here, two/three weeks out of Falmouth waiting for the mid-day Conductivity, Temperature and Depth (CTD) sample, I take the opportunity to look though the port-hole of the Chemistry Laboratory at the sea with the sun reflecting off giving it a silver grey colour, PML and home seem like a different world.
Carolyn doing an early morning pre-run check on the nutrient analyser.
I’m running and maintaining a 5 channel Bran & Luebbe Auto-analyser, which measures the concentrations of nitrate, nitrite, phosphate, silicate and ammonia in sea-water down to less than 1 micro-molar using a colorimetric technique.
This is quite a departure for me because for many years I worked primarily on sediment transport and characteristics in estuaries. Nutrient chemistry is a field which I have relatively recently been involved with and the data that is collected provides information for colleagues on board who are planning experiments and need to characterise the water column, both chemically and physically (using sensors on the CTD). The data also supplements the AMT data base for temporal and spatial nutrient concentrations along the transect.
Like most analytical equipment the analyser can be temperamental and will decide that it’s going to leak or not co-operate in one of a dozen ways, just as you’re about to run samples or worse, in mid-run. It can be quite a challenge sorting out one of these faults as the ship rolls from side-to-side every six seconds (10 times a minute – yes I counted) but that’s science at sea.
It has been pleasant getting to know the international contingent of the scientific party and learning about their science and lives. This is the first time, on a cruise that I’ve participated on, that the women scientists out-number the men!!