The following is in regards to two recently published NASA Interim Directives. I recognize the large amount of work that is necessary to assemble policy directives, and I have nothing but the utmost respect for those involved in the creation of these documents. My critiques here are a reflective of my own understanding of planetary protection field and the associated nuances of coupling human exploration with scientific goals. This post does not reflect the opinions of any of the institutions with which I am affiliated. NID 8715.129 explicitly mentions that “the greater capability that human explorers can contribute to the astrobiological exploration of Mars is only valid if human-associated contamination is controlled and understood," (1.2.2b) which, upon initial reading, seems to align with the feelings of most astrobiologists and researchers. That is, that we should postpone manned exploration missions of Mars until such a point where there are reasonable harm reduction methods in place for human contamination, we have a sufficiently developed understanding of the potential habitable (not inhabited) niches of the Martian surface and have completed reproducible mixed-community experiments assessing microbiology survival and reproduction at each stage of a Mars mission. Note that this is not associated with any particular timeline, as it will be primarily bound by funding available. However, further in the NID, 'human space exploration' and science are listed as separate items (1.3.1). This seems to reflect the view of the current administration in that proving the ability of the US to simply 'go further' is an inherently honourable goal: it subtly underscores the fact that the current government views science and preserving the space environment for future study as - at best - secondary objectives. President Trump's April 6th Executive Order on Encouraging International Support for the Recovery and Use of Space Resources gives the distinct impression that commercial development of space resources by US commercial entities may well precede scientific discovery in the order of American priorities, particularly as implied by the line "Americans should have the right to engage in commercial exploration, recovery, and use of resources in outer space, consistent with applicable law" (Section 1 of said order). While this executive order is initially presented as necessary to allow the use of space resources to further the construction of lunar infrastructure for an international benefit, that's contrasted by the above-cited line paired with the unfortunate decision to use a quote from Mr Trump touting the glories of colonialism on the associated fact sheet (https://bit.ly/2ZByaAp). It is thus pretty clear that this is a politically motivated move to gain further commercial backing and is an arguably myopic decision. Overall, nothing stated in NID 8715.129 is particularly ground-breaking, nor falls outside the realm of common sense. The activities outlined in the directive are all things that I would consider as a basic necessity before conducting missions of this scope. However, particularly in section 1.3.3, the NID fails to qualify what NASA deems as minimum necessary research to fill some of the mentioned knowledge gaps. This provides the opportunity for the US government to force a contraction of what is sufficient to address these gaps in order to adhere to the tight timeline demanded by President Trump. Cut corners will likely disproportionately impact scientific activities, as many aspects of space science (particularly in paleoenvironment studies) can be (and historically has been) framed as an unnecessary partisan activity whereas other mission components - as an obvious example, well-tested crew life support - are inherently bipartisan. Concerning NID 8715.128, I do appreciate the direct acknowledgement of the need to provide publicly available inventories of bioburden on Category II-L mission materials. However, I am concerned about the precedent set by reassigning the bulk of Moon missions to Category I. While I do not directly object to the reassignment, it is unclear how much of this decision was made in conjunction with COSPAR and other international agencies. The COSPAR Planetary Protection recommendations are already not legally binding, nor is there any executable internationally-mediated consequence for flaunting them. If, as it appears, the US was acting essentially autonomously in the decision to re-categorize these missions, this sets the stage for future reassignment of more sensitive missions in order expedite American exploration and/or lower costs for private contractors and commercial entities. This could have potentially irreparable consequences for sciences as well as for international cooperation in space. In essence, the NIDs appear to fall much along the same lines as the recently published principles of the Artemis Accords. That is, they are subtle and unnecessary reframings of the existing ideas of the Outer Space Treaty, COPUOS, and COSPAR PPP among other international bodies in order to prioritize the role of the USA, and in particular, prioritize the ideologies of the current administration.
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Aboard the CCGS John P. Tully
26-Aug-2017 49˚ 34.030’ N 138˚ 40.010’ W 1615 hours: I fell asleep yesterday to the scent of roasting coffee beans emanating from the aft deck. It was 11 am, and I had been awake for just over 24 hours. We had just finished sampling at the famed Station Papa (P26 on Line P, 50˚ 0.000’ N 149˚ 0.000 W). The sampling that Brent, a PhD candidate from the University of Southern Florida, and I were performing required at least two hours of filtering between casts, and by the time we finished filtering one cast, it was on to the next. Needless to say, even the promising odour of freshly roasted coffee couldn’t keep me awake at that point. More on the origins of the ‘Aft Deck Roasters’ (soon coming to a CCGS ship near you!) later. Line P is a time series of locations in the Pacific Ocean, beginning on the west side of Vancouver Island and extending out to Station Papa. This line is sampled three times each year and provides a valuable way of monitoring changes as years pass, as the data can easily be compared for each set of coordinates, or ‘stations’. On this cruise, Brent and I have been sampling for trace metals using Go-Flo bottles on a Kevlar line. In the Cullen Lab at the University of Victoria (UVic), we’ll take the seawater samples we collected and analyze them for iron concentrations. Iron is a limiting factor in the ocean, so even in places that seem ideal for growth of primary producers (e.g. phytoplankton), if the minute amount of iron required for growth is not available, these regions will see little to no production. Brent, on the other hand, will return home with 300 L of filtered seawater to look for cadmium, iron and lead isotopes. All of our samples are pretty easily contaminated, given the minuscule concentrations of these elements in the ocean, and the relatively immense amount everywhere else — especially on us! Everyone in the operation has to wear gloves while handling the Go-Flo bottles, the samples, and the Kevlar line. We also do all our filtering in a mobile clean room: it’s a shipping container on the aft deck with HEPA filters mounted to the ceiling to remove contaminants from the air, and in which we have to remove our shoes and wear haute couture clean-room Crocs. We brought those Crocs from the UVic lab, so it’s like a little piece of home I can wear. Brent and I pass the time while filtering by naming the most controversial topics we can think of and trying to debate them — trouble is, we seem to agree on most all of them. All in all, that’s probably a good thing given that it might get a little heated in there otherwise! It gets toasty enough in there already, and that’s just with the sun streaming in. 27-Aug-2017 The CTD (Conductivity Temperature and Depth) rosette which is the workhorse of oceanographic sampling is humming with activity after coming back on deck.0540 hours: On our way out to Station Papa, we ran across some fairly menacing seas for this time of year. While standing on a small platform hanging over the Pacific Ocean tying Go-Flo bottles to a line (pictured above) in 4.5 m swells sounds like a hoot and a holler, in order to protect us and the equipment we opted to do the entire station P20 on our way back into Victoria. P20 is what we term a ‘major station’, so the sampling procedure involves multiple net casts (i.e. bongos, ring net, multiple plankton nets or MOCNESS), 3 casts of 5 Go-Flo bottles, and a CTD rosette cast down to ten metres off the sea floor. The deep CTD cast usually ends up going to around 4000 m and takes about 2.5 hours to make it to the bottom and back. It still boggles my mind to think that the massive piece of equipment we all huddle around to collect our samples was just 4 kilometers below us. I think that sort of wonder, coupled with a healthy dose of adrenaline from hitting a good swell while on deck, drive people to fall in love with oceanography. Brent and I finished up our 3500 m Go-Flo cast for this station at around 0100, and the last sample got capped at 0200. Now, I’m up for my daily watch — this usually entails assisting in bottle prep and performing whatever sampling has to be done at the stations during one’s watch in order to complete the Department of Fisheries and Oceans time-series monitoring. Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) takes regular samples for dissolved oxygen content, dissolved inorganic and organic carbon, nutrients, salinity, pH, alkalinity, chlorophyll, and HPLC (an analysis for phytoplankton pigment concentrations). Depending on which station we hit during my watch, we might also deploy the bongo nets or ring nets. I’m on the 0600 – 1200 rotation. Now, considering it’s almost breakfast and fresh coffee is about to become immediately relevant in my life: the epic tale of the Aft Deck Roasters. Connor, a PhD student from UBC, brought the thriving business of freshly roasting coffee beans on board. He’d been on the previous Line P trip and garnered the interest of Glenn, another scientist. So, for the last week, Connor and Glenn have been pumping out some incredibly high quality coffee with a popcorn popper-turned-coffee roaster — and have also been systematically kicked out of every location they attempt to roast for sending a not-immediately-identifiable smell of smoke throughout the ship. Thus, the exile to the aft deck. In the last couple days, the business has gained traction and employees… I was recruited to create the logo, and Ashley, the other UBC student, is sales. The menu has been spreading around the ship, but we have yet to actually sell a cup of coffee… our overhead costs have been getting pretty high, but Glenn and Connor are trying really hard to remain true to their craft roaster roots. The Aft Deck Roasters have to fit in their business goals between filtering, and Connor and Ashley spend about as much time filtering as Brent and I do. They pump their seawater samples through a filter with tiny pores to select for bacteria and viruses, depending on the filter used. They’ll later do cell counts, among other analyses. In ocean ecosystems, bacteriophages, those that infect bacteria, tend to dominate the array of viruses. The Hallam Lab also focuses on bacteria that reside most commonly below the photic zone (below the depth that light can penetrate) in stratified, or layered, waters. Now, to breakfast — it’s eggs benny Sunday, can’t miss that! 27-Jul-2017
48° 27’ 43.6” N 123° 18’ 32.8” W 1050 hours: A good night’s sleep and several cups of coffee later, I’ve made it back to the office at UVic. I’ve already succeeding in getting sunburned in the half-day I’ve been home and I’m somewhat pleased with that fact. Despite the midnight sun we sailed with for the last couple weeks, it’s been a while since we’ve had any sort of heat. It’s almost like we were in the Arctic or something. Weird. Now that I’ve had a few moments to regroup, caffeinate, and remember how to feed myself now that I no longer have Kara and Trevor’s amazing meals three times a day, I’ll do my best to provide a coherent reflection of the past three and a half weeks, in reverse chronological order, as the memories trickle back. It took three flights, four airports, and twenty-six hours of travel, but we made it home. Imminent weather forced us to helicopter off the CCGS Sir Wilfrid Laurier and make into Barrow, AK a day early, and a cancelled flight kept us in Barrow even longer. I am now able to supply a complete review of almost all the restaurants in Barrow, if you ever happen to end up there. Osaka, the Japanese/Korean/American breakfast place definitely comes number one in my personal Yelp reviews. The increased layover time in our flights led to an important discovery in Seattle: Turkish coffee is essentially nectar of the gods. One of the first missions upon returning home (post-nap) was tracking down where to find it. Our departure from the ship was bittersweet. No more nights on the bridge between samples, bantering with Bryan, Paul, and Tony, then lapsing into exhausted silence and getting lost staring into the waves. I won’t get to hear Christina’s laugh due to some dry comment from Svein, the chief scientist (well, honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if the sound could travel from Maryland), nor trades jokes with leading seaman, Nik, about the Box of Death (also known as the box I used for methane and nitrous oxides sampling that contained mercuric chloride). However, most of the crew lives in Victoria, so we already have plans to meet up for board games when they finish their leg. So it was a “goodbye for now”, to both the crew and the ocean. Two and a half weeks more, and I will be returning to the ocean to sample along Line P. The last week before departure passed in a flash, with CTD rosette sampling, Van Veen grabs [a method of sediment sampling] and bongo drops [a plankton sampling net] occurring every couple hours. Between stations, I continued sampling for the InFORM project. With 37 samples processed before Dutch Harbor, I had four remaining to take in the Bering Sea. I had intended on taking more, but the waters proved so productive that filtering the Bering Sea samples took over 24 hours each. Brief respites at the end of each transect (group of sampling stations in a line) gave us time to catch up on sleep. However, one of those days of respite was a little more exciting – in the morning, we had a rendezvous with the US Coast Guard Cutter Sherman. We took the Zodiacs over to visit this 167-man ship, while they sent a couple of people over to tour the Laurier. Those of the crew I met were extremely welcoming, and happy to take us around to their bridge, engine room and gun deck (we definitely do not have the latter on the Laurier). That afternoon, we had the Arctic Crossing ceremony. We had crossed the Arctic Circle several days earlier, at 0310. I was up on the bridge at that time, as I had woken up an hour or so before to check on my samples, then came up to say, “Hi.” Bryan then told me that we’d cross within the hour, so naturally, I had to stay up until we did. There’s no dotted line in the water, in case you hadn’t guessed, but it was still pretty cool (cold, even) to see the GPS turn to 66° 33′ 46.8″ N. As for the details of the ceremony itself, there isn’t much I can say – I’m under an oath of secrecy. All I can tell you is that I survived, and am a tadpole no more! I am officially a shellback and have the certificate to prove it. This trip has left me inspired, motivated, and filled with an immeasurable respect for all those I worked with. Having now learned a wide variety of sampling techniques, I have such a better idea about what is possible insofar as oceanographic research. Ofttimes, after learning a new technique, or having someone explain their research, or simply staring out at the wash of pyrosomes in the North Pacific, an idea would spark and I would wait impatiently until we next had internet to briefly scour databases for papers on a certain topic. Moreover, not only was everyone brilliant and kind, but they were unwaveringly optimistic at 4 am stations, willing to talk me through their sampling techniques at all hours of the night, and happy to discuss anything from their research to Say Yes to the Dress (there were some long nights in Barrow). Alongside respect is pure affection and gratitude for the friendships with both science contingent and crew that I hope will carry forward. There is a certain sort of bond that doesn’t form unless you’re all sleep-deprived, somehow simultaneously over- and under-caffeinated, and entirely isolated from the rest of the world – I promise you, it’s a beautiful thing. One final note: before this trip, I had no concept of the scale of this planet of ours. Now, having sailed a distance approximately equal to the radius of the Earth, I find the thought all the more stunning. 13-Jul-2017
60˚ 18.866’ N 171˚ 15.836’ W 1200 hours: We set steam from Dutch Harbor two days ago, and have been making fast headway towards our first station. Dutch Harbor was absolutely breathtaking, astounding, astonishing – my adjectives are woefully inadequate when attempting to describe it. We lapsed into movie comparisons as we sailed through the sunlight that filtered through mist, wrapped ‘round rolling mountaintops. I think the closest we came in terms of comparisons was walking out of the Shire, the Cliffs of Insanity from the Princess Bride, and the song-bound hills of the Sound of Music. The evening we pulled into port, we came into town and explored a little, then set about with more detailed exploration the next day. At 7:30 am, too few hours after we had gotten home from the town, a couple of us made a hiking expedition up the Ballyhoo. This hill was host to a few signs that had perplexed us at first – later that day, two men in town explained that the US Coast Guard owned the signs, so whenever ships came into that port, they would repaint a sign with their ship’s name. We tried to rally a few artistic souls to leave our mark on the hillside, to no avail. We discovered that these fellows were following a similar route to us, laying fibre optic cables around the coast of Alaska. Apparently these two are self-described seamen for hire, and had just returned from excavating Spanish Galleons from coral reefs. Sile asked them if it was for archaeological purposes. At this, they scoffed amicably and one said, “Nah, treasure hunting.” Apparently they’ll be in Barrow at the same time we will be there; maybe we’ll run into our Indiana Jones-esque friends once again! This rest of the day’s adventure involved only minor amounts of climbing rocks, don’t worry. It’s quite the experience, traveling with a cohort of scientists from disciplines – the walk into town alone took much longer than it rightfully should have, as each of us would get distracted by some different aspect of the landscape and excitedly point it out to the others. This is why my SD card currently has several shots of step basalt carving its way through the hillside- Sile giddily pointed them out to me. Once in town, we wandered the local haunts and the tourist traps (aka Safeway – Dutch Harbor is not a tourist town). We had Mexican food for lunch…though we were probably as far as we possibly could get from Mexico, it hit the spot nevertheless. Last night, I was further indoctrinated into ship life. A week or so again, much shock and chagrin occurred among the scientists and crew upon learning I’d never seen the Wes Anderson film ‘The Life Aquatic’. Apparently it’s required viewing, as despite the fact that none of us religiously wear red hats or have been assaulted by pirates, it’s an accurate representation of SWL [Sir Wilfred Laurier] life (mostly kidding). Sile and I are the interns in this situation, so we’d have to share a Glock. There are no Glocks on board, so we had to put something else into our leg holsters… That leads me into the next little bit of shenanigans on board. If you’ve read through Saskia’s posts, you might remember she alluded to some sort of ceremony for those who haven’t yet crossed the Arctic Circle – tadpoles, if you will. For those of you out there who will someday cross the Arctic Circle yourselves, I can’t say much more… but I will mention that it involved me on AutoCAD at 22:30, and desperately calling engineering students from home to figure out what file type works in a MakerBot 3D printer… I now have an oddly-shaped object strapped to my leg and am feeling kind of like Laura Croft, Tomb Raider. Unfortunately, the 3D print didn’t work and I had to improvise with plastic bags and a heat gun. We cross the Arctic Circle in four days, and the round-the-clock science stations start tomorrow. I’ll be helping out with everyone’s sampling where I can, and doing the N2O [nitrous oxide] and CH4 [methane] sampling for a lab at UBC [University of British Columbia], along with a few more radiocesium samples. I’ve been promised there’s a whole lot more tadpole-baiting and sleep deprivation to come… I may have already made an enemy of Andrew, the EL [electronics] Tech, in the ruthlessness that is these trials. Stay tuned for the dramatic next installment. 07-Jul-2017
52˚ 56.101’ N 143˚ 27.889’ W 1020 hours: I have noticed that I have begun talking to my filtration rig as if it is a small, disobedient child. I would be more concerned about this turn of events, except it seems to be working – the rig has been behaving particularly well recently, so the occasional reprimands I give it are tinged with fondness. In all seriousness, ship life has begun to settle into a bit more of a routine. I wake up to check on the rig a couple times during the night, and take another sample depending on when my last one was. Around five, I’ll check on it one more time and decide what needs to be done that day. Breakfast is promptly at six. I’ll usually have crawled back into bed for 20 minutes of shut-eye after the 0500 check, so my alarm startles me back to reality with bursts of static. For some reason, I’ve opted to leave it on whatever radio station it was set to when I co-oped it from my older sister’s bedroom, so there is no discernible music whatsoever. Then again, my radio alarm at home has been set to the same station since 2006, despite the fact that I don’t get that station in Victoria, nor do I really listen to that sort of music any more. Maybe I’m comforted by static. I’m not going to try to analyze that particular quirk any further. Breakfast usually involves me trying and failing to avoid whatever decadence is prepared by the wonderful chefs (this morning was chocolate covered croissants) and making up for it by having eggs as well. It’s always an interesting mix of moods at breakfast – many of us stumble in, groggy and grumbling, only to be greeted by those still on shift from midnight to noon like Ryan, who are a little less stunned by sleep and comparatively quite chipper. After that, and a caffeine jolt to the system, we head back up to the lab. I take another sample, maybe start a new column on the rig if one finishes, then have a quick nap to make up for the sleep missed at night. By 0800, the CTD is cast, and is winched back up with its Niskin bottles full by 9 or so. After sampling – I don’t actually work with any of the samples from the Niskins, but Sile and Dr. Varela let me help with their sampling so I can get some experience – it’s back to the lab to process. With Sile and Dr. Varela vacuum filtering for silica and nutrients, and my rig running for radiocesium, it can get pretty loud in here. However, putting a cellphone in a large plastic speaker amplifies music astonishingly well, and it can break through the background noise. With the lights off in the lab to protect the chlorophyll samples, it’s quite the party. (Wooo, science!) Lunch is an affair that often entails bizarre and fascinating conversations that start rather rationally. For example, yesterday, we were discussing the Trappist-1 system and the meaning of the ‘Goldilocks zone’. By the end, we were switching between fairly graphic descriptions of the bends and other perils of diving, and racking our brains trying to figure out what the newest Alien movie was called. (For the record, it’s Alien Covenant). I usually try to get out on deck for a little bit after lunch, and stand next to the incubator on the helicopter deck while watching the waves. Yesterday, we had an Argo float deployment during that time as well – I’ll send along a couple pictures when I’m back in internet. Argo floats can are all over the world’s oceans, descending and reascending to relay information about the ocean profile where they are situated to satellites, and then to scientists around the world to analyze. Speaking of lunch, it’s about that time. I promise to return with further ramblings later today. 1900 hours: This evening can be summarized best by telling you that it involved Oreo ice cream cake, some emotional trauma regarding Bambi’s mom, and the initial draft of plans to make a cannon for deploying Argo floats. The internet access is getting more and more questionable, so I’m going to send this off before we lose it entirely. Until next time! Update: Lost internet entirely in the five minutes between finishing this and trying to send it off, so this will come to you once we reach Dutch Harbor. 05-Jul-2017
50˚ 23.840’ N 131˚ 12.998’W 0800 hours: At breakfast this morning, I made to introduce myself to the crew member sitting next to me. Rather amusingly, he informed me that we had, in fact, met about 8 hours earlier when I had been blearily starting a new sample in the aft lab and he had been checking in as part of the midnight to noon watch. Given my reindeer pajamas and bemused 1 am expression, I think it was fairly obvious I hadn’t been entirely conscious at the time. I’m reluctant to let my samples run all night without supervision, and every couple hours I have swap to a new 20 L carboy filled with seawater. The result is an alarm set for every 2 hours through the night, and lots of short naps through the day. I also have a secret stash of chocolate covered coffee beans for when times get desperate – I might also use them to make friends with the night watch crew. The first day and a half of the cruise have been as up and down as the larger swells last night. As the onboard electrical technician, Andrew, put it, “The first days are filled with putting out fires all over the place.” As long as they remain metaphorical fires, it’s nothing we can’t handle. The first couple samples I ran got so clogged with biological activity that they could barely process, and kept putting a concerning amount of back-pressure on the mountains of electrical tape that kept the resin columns, used for filtration, tightly sealed. Now that we’ve gotten a little farther into open water, the samples run much more smoothly. On the upside, I’ve gotten through almost 320 L of seawater at this point! Though a small fraction of the 2700 L I will have processed by the end of this cruise, it’s significant progress nonetheless. Other moments of excitement include my first foray into the world of banana splits, and a whale sighting on our first morning. Sadly, I did not get any photos of the whales – Sile and I raced to the boat deck after frantically securing our samples, and managed to catch only the tail end of them (pun intended). 06-Jul-2017 51˚ 55.301’ N 137˚ 36.786’ W 1200 hours: I got distracted from my previous post by as Nina, one of the other scientists in the lab, finished up on the underway loop system and I had a chance to hop on and get my sample. The rest of the day yesterday comprised sitting in the lab, keeping one eye on my samples and the other on the endless expanse of waves and sky through the porthole. I also got to take samples from the Niskin bottles on the CTD rosette for the first time. Sile kindly walked me through the sampling order – oxygen and other dissolved samples first, as the air that rushes in to fill the Niskin bottles as they drain starts to contaminate the top of the water with air. Right now, CTD casts are happening twice a day. After we reach Dutch Harbour, they’ll be every hour. I managed to get down to the onboard gym yesterday as well. I stayed well away from the treadmill, given that I tend to fall off treadmills that are firmly rooted to solid ground – I would hate to see the result of me trying to run on one that moves with the waves. Getting a little bit of exercise on some of the other machines definitely made me feel better, and made me feel especially justified in the delicious strawberry-rhubarb pie we had for dessert today at lunch. In other news, it’s definitely getting colder! Each time I take a sample, I record the coordinates, salinity, conductivity, and temperature at the beginning and end of the sampling time. At the beginning of the cruise, the loop water was about 14.5˚ C. Now, it’s just above 11˚ C, and will only get lower. Other things to note: my sister was absolutely correct in telling me to label my Blundstone’s with my name when I got them for my birthday this year. Not only are they a staple in Victoria, they’re apparently a shipboard staple as well – I’ve already almost worn Sile’s pair several times in the last few days, and pretty much everyone in the lab has the same ones. Also, I’m still not sure who’s acting as DJ in the lab (might be Nina), but their music choices are absolutely stellar. Blondie is definitely good for morale. All the classic rock is clearly getting to me; I keep dreaming that I’m in the movie ‘Pirate Radio’. One snowy, early morning in January of this year, I was sitting in a first-year Earth and Oceans Sciences class, clinging to my coffee cup for dear life. My professor, Dr. John Dower, then began saying something that completely dispelled any need for caffeine: he was describing the opportunities for undergraduates on research cruises. Wow, I thought, this is something I absolutely need to explore. I had never before considered that I might be able to go out to sea during my undergrad, but the possibility was suddenly real.
A couple turns of fate, several final exams and some months later, here I am preparing to embark upon the CCGS Sir Wilfrid Laurier as it traverses the Northeast Pacific from Ogden Point to Dutch Harbour and then onto Barrow, Alaska. As part of the Fukushima InFORM project, I will be collecting 60 L surface seawater samples and processing them using a specialized resin that adheres to radiocesium. These columns will be analyzed for radiocesium content using a gamma ray spectrometer. My sampling will be following the efforts of Saskia, Laura, and Kathryn who performed this sampling in previous summers. This collection of samples will give us a better comprehension of the movement and distribution of radionuclides in the Pacific from the Fukushima Dai-Ichi accident. The first time I saw the CCGS Sir Wilfrid Laurier I was entirely unprepared for the sight. It was several months ago, and I had only recently found out that I would be participating in this cruise. Walking past Ogden Point where the ship was moored, I was entirely floored by the size and majesty of her. As I began my training, my excitement only grew. Over the last two months, training has included familiarization with the operations of the class 100 clean lab at the University of Victoria campus, and extensive work with Sue Reynolds, filtering and processing the samples collected by citizen scientists up the west coast of Canada. These samples are processed in a similar manner to those I will be taking on the ship, and originate from many different communities, including Sandspit, Vancouver, and Victoria. Between muffled airlock battles (or at least, passionate debates) on who gets to wear the flowered Crocs in the clean room, and long hours spent reading papers and deciphering numerical models to the score from the Lord of the Rings, the time has passed rapidly. Tomorrow, I’ll get to take my first steps on board and set up my filtering apparatus in the lab. On July 3rd, we will set out for Dutch Harbour and arrive there in about four days. Upon arrival, we will pick up the rest of the scientific crew. The majority of my sampling will occur in the 4-day stretch between Ogden Point and Dutch Harbour, with a quarter of the samples taken in the Bering Sea as we trundle on to Barrow. I’ve spoken with Saskia to glean some insight on ship life from the perspective of an InFORM student scientist, and her anecdotes have bolstered my excitement even more. From everyone I have spoken to, the common themes in regards to ship life have been:
I have packed a laptop, a notebook, a camera, and an inordinate number of fleeces: I am entirely ready to set off. |
AuthorUncoordinated scientist who isn't sure how she hasn't fallen off a boat yet. Archives
November 2020
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