Weather Report
Time : 10:30 AM Pacific Daylight Time
Air Temperature : 7.2 Degrees Celsius
Sea Temperature 10.44 Degrees Celsius
Wind Speed : 1.6 Knots
Water Depth : 382 Meters
Latitude : N 51.48
Longitude : W 130.38
Ship's Speed 8.7 Knots
This morning with a light breeze a whale and puffins were sighted off the starboard rail. That's my morning cup of tea/sightseeing duty.
The ship is presently steaming across the Hecate Straight between the Queen Charlotte Islands and British Columbia. The crossing takes aproximately four hours at nine knots. Once across, sampling will resume as the vessel heads toward Ketchikan, Alaska. Ketchikan is a city in southeastern Alaska, on Revillagigedo Island, in the Alexander Archipelago; pop. 7,922. Estimated arrival time is 9AM on May 18, 2007.
We are headed to Ketchikan to pick up Ron Lisnet, the Production Coordinator in University Relations for the University of Maine, Orono. Ron is responsible for all aspects of video, audio, and multimedia production on the Orono campus.
This experience really is quite a learning opportunity. I am impressed with the repetitiveness and attention to detail. Last evening, Dane, the photographer, and I emptied a set of 48 bottles, removed the 48 labels, rinsed each bottle with distilled water 4 times, added 10 milliliters of a10% HCL solution, capped the bottle, shook the bottle, uncapped the bottle, poured a capful of the HCL to rinse the rings around the neck twice, and finally capped the bottle as ready, almost. The scientist will perform the same procedure at least another five times before filling with a fresh sample. This is the procedure for cleaning one set of bottles for one trial. There are seven different properties of the water column being tested at least twice a day.
Send comments and questions to Mr. Caddigan
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