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Welcome to the SEALS cruise blog. Please keep an eye out on this space, as we will be writing, posting videos, and sharing photos of our adventure for the next month or so. As we are almost ready to board the research vessel, I feel very excited to talk a bit about how we got here and what we had been doing leading up to this point. We oceanographers often refer to this kind of ‘research expedition’ as a ‘cruise’, but it is different in every respect from a vacation cruise that many are familiar with. The preparation for this expedition started with a few of us (Principal Investigators) writing to the US National Science Foundation (NSF), expressing our interest in sampling areas in the North Atlantic to study how marine sediments interact with the seawater. After an intense and thorough evaluation by a group of scientists who are not related to this project, our project was deemed suitable and was recommended for funding by the NSF. Then we had to wait in line for this expedition to be scheduled. Between when we applied to the NSF and when the expedition was scheduled, it has been a little over two years already. Now we know that we are sailing in the summer of 2025 (why summer? — that will be a different blog post), and the real work begins. These expeditions are intense, where the ship never sleeps. That means a group of scientists onboard the research vessel is always at work. We typically divide the science party into two groups, each working 12-hour shifts. To ensure that we can get all our science done during the expedition, we have to make sure that we have all the labs built and all the supplies adequately stocked, as there is no one-day delivery in the middle of the ocean. So, we have been hard at work making sure we have bought and packed everything that we could possibly need in our regular laboratory setup. This is not a simple endeavor. Many of us have thought and rethought and then thought again to make sure we have not missed anything. Believe it or not, we have had nightmares about things going wrong and so prepared Plan B, C, and D in the event something does go wrong. Since this is an expedition which involves measuring elements that are found in very small quantities in the seawater, we had to make sure everything we are going to use during the expedition is super clean. This cleaning has consumed numerous hours of our lives over the last few months. But finally, we are here. All our laboratory supplies and equipment are ready to be loaded onto the ship, and we are as ready as ever to start building our temporary labs, which will be our workplace for the next month. As we set sail, wish us fair winds and samples galore. Signing out for now — we will keep reporting our adventures as we move along. May the force be with us!!! AuthorChandranath Basak Comments are closed.
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