Somewhere between Tasmania and Antarctica by Chanelle

It is a relief to be officially underway. We pulled out of Hobart in the late afternoon of the 9^th, and we all stayed out on the deck for a while savoring the view of land. It got dark before land disappeared, so it wasn’t until the next morning that I woke up to being completely surrounded by an expanse of blue.

            The few days leading up to departure were hectic as everything was being prepared for the cruise. My boss from the Argo lab, Rick, flew from Seattle to prep our floats for deployment. However, shipping 6 SOCCOM floats from Seattle to Hobart is no small feat especially because the floats contain lithium batteries so are considered dangerous goods. We had to wait anxiously as our floats were tracked down, and for several hours the only information we had was that our floats were “somewhere in Tasmania”.  It was a fairly stressful event and if Rick had any hair, I’m sure some of them would have turned gray.

Rick is very excited to see the floats arrive.

Finally, the floats turned up, and we were able to commence our work in making sure they were in ship shape for deployment. We took all the floats out of their crates, and all the final checks were run on them to ensure that everything was working properly. We then had an orientation with all the students and marine technicians to outline the different deployment procedures for all the different floats on board. We have a total of 18 floats on board coming from four different institutions. There will be 6 SOCCOM floats from our lab, 2 EM (Electromagnetic) Apex floats from the UW Applied Physics Lab, 5 normal Apex floats from CSIRO, and 5 SOLO floats from FSU. Once the orientation was complete, we secured all the floats to ensure that they will be firmly in place once underway.

  

Rick checking to make sure that the floats work properly and pass their final self-test.

           

Now, we are just getting used to being on the ship and preparing for our work ahead. We have several days of steaming before we hit our first station so we are using this time to make sure we are ready. Today, we had our orientation regarding sampling the CTD, so we learned about how to take DIC, Alkalinity, and C14 samples. We will have our first test station on Tuesday where we will get to practice taking these samples and get a taste of what our life will be like for the next several months.

Last views of Hobart as we begin our journey South.