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9/26/05
Hello!! Just a recap of the day so far. We hit SU10 today
around 2:00am. Total depth was 150 meters with a 20.5 meter
thermocline. At 8:08am, we hit station SU12 which was 232
meters deep with the thermocline coming in at 20 meters. If
you've been looking at the sampling map that I sent out and
are wondering why we are all over the place, it's because
we're trying to get as many stations out of the way before
we have to head to Duluth to avoid that storm.
Well that's all for now. I'll write back later when we hit
some more stations.
-Jackie- :O)
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9/25/05
Not much exciting happened today, except for that I finally
had a cell phone signal and could call home :O) We sat in
Houghton, MI for the entire day to wait out the waves. It's
now 6:00pm and we're getting ready to set sail again. We should
be hitting our next station early tomorrow morning. Talk to
you then. -Jackie-
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9/24/05
Hello girls!! Here it is...the update for today. We hit SU02
around 2:33 this morning. Total depth was 149 meters with
a 15 meter thermocline. It looks like this may be the last
station that we're going to hit for a while as there are some
pretty big waves building and we may have to go closer to
shore to wait them out. -Jackie-
I'm back. It's about 6:40pm and we just finished SU05. As
I said earlier, we hit some pretty big waves and went to hide
out behind an island (it blocked the waves quite well) to
wait them out. SU05 ended up being a whopping 175 meters deep
with the thermocline coming in around 24.5 meters.
We're now headed into a small town in Michigan, called Houghton,
(See photo of Houghton)to
wait out some more weather. I think this may be the worst
survey (weather wise) that I've done so far. We're thinking
that we may have to dock in Duluth from Tuesday until Thursday
because of the Gale force winds that are scheduled to shake
the lake. I'll keep you updated though. -Jackie-
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9/23/05
Alright, we've finally set sail after what seemed like the
longest trip to Sault Ste. Marie, MI ever. Our planes were
delayed due to some severe storms that are spreading over
the entire state of Michigan. It's now 2:00am and we're on
our way. We've just learned that there will be some special
sampling being done by our Duluth lab, so the trip is going
to take a little longer that expected.
Just to give you some background information on what we test
for out here on the R/V Lake Guardian. We're an EPA vessel
that travels around all 5 Great Lakes sampling water. We have
a limnology program (water chemistry), and a biology program
out here. I do the limnology part, collecting water and running
board chemistry on it. I also filter the remaining water and
preserve it for nutrient analysis later. The board chemistry
is quite simple. We test for pH, alkalinity, conductivity,
and turbidity of the water right here on the ship. I'll include
some pictures of those instruments later in the digest.
The biology program monitors for chlorophyll, phytoplankton,
benthic (sediment) sampling, and zooplankton.
The ship runs much slower than one would think. We actually
travel at 12 nautical miles per hour. 1 mile = 0.89 nautical
miles, so think around 12 miles per hour. We should be hitting
our first station around 1:00 this afternoon, so I'll write
back then to give you some updates. -Jackie-
P.S. If you have any questions while I'm out that you'd like
to ask, please feel free to e-mail them to me at: Adams.Jacqueline@epa.gov.
I'll answer them as soon as I can get to them. :O)
9/23/05 (Part 2)
So, I waited until we hit the 2 stations that we were hitting
today so that I could write one more journal entry instead
of 2. We hit station SU01 around 1:00pm today. The station
had a depth of 93.5 meters with the thermocline (point at
which the temperature drops) coming in around 23 meters. This
is one of the shallower stations on Lake Superior as you'll
learn when you begin to see the other station depths later.
SU04 was our next station that came around 9:00 this evening.
It had a total depth of 143 meters with the thermocline at
around 17.5 meters.
Also, just to give you a heads up, we just learned that there
is supposed to be some pretty bad weather (12-14 foot waves)
on Wednesday, so that may delay us up to a day or so as we
can't sample on waves that are bigger than 5 feet. I'll let
you know more as I learn it. That's all for today. -Jackie-
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