In search of discovery

This morning I awoke to find that we were in the midst of a protracted station, this time just a bit north of the middle of Eddy Franklin. Station work involves deploying an array of different instruments, some of which can take an hour to send down to the depths and then retrieve. So after a light breakfast, I caught up on paperwork, and started an analysis in which I plotted marine bird distributions on a map of sea surface altimetry. A thunderstorm passed over us, building up the seas for a good roll, and drenching the deck crew manning the gear outside.

There were not many protracted stations planned for today, since we were eager to get north, nearer the spill zone. This means that I had to plan my day carefully, because with the ship traveling so much, I’ll need to spend virtually all day on constant watch recording data. My research here on the Nancy Foster is divided into four tasks: data collection, data processing, data analysis and data interpretation. I am finding it difficult to keep up just with the first two tasks in anything less than an 18-hour day. I’ll have to scrounge time to do any of the other tasks, although of course discovering small stories and patterns is why we’re here.

As we get underway in late morning, I start looking for seabirds, and the seas build. Although certainly windy enough to unfurl our flags, it doesn’t make any sense that the waves would be this high from the wind alone. I find the answer down in the research dry lab, where one of the monitors displays the eddy’s current speed and direction from our ship-mounted acoustic doppler current profiler (ADCP; the length and direction of the lines on this graphic indicate the eddy’s speed).

ADCP monitor results

The 12 mile-per-hour winds are running straight into the current, itself running very strong. This head-on collision is creating our bumpy ride.

It has now been over 24 hours, since yesterday morning actually, and I have not seen a single bird. The center portions of Eddy Franklin are being very stingy with large and conspicuous marine life. But the eddy’s miserly tendency extends to any oil as well. We have seen no conclusive signs of contamination with our instruments, and only one or two “maybes” for a possible surface sheen.

Despite what sounds like good-news yesterday about BP closing off the leaking well, everyone here seems remarkably subdued and cautious. We are too busy for even a brief celebration, I suppose. There is still so much to do — collect information, clean, sort, and process samples. And if there is any free time before falling into an exhausted sleep, see what stories the Gulf of Mexico will tell us.