A Pinch Of Salt @salt-oceans-blog - Tumblr Blog

Our favourite memories...

So nearly a week on from the manic and exhausting but inspiring Summer Science event we've been thinking about some of our favourite moments on the stall! What were your favourite things?

The look on people's faces after trying saltwater sample number 2

Small children having fun with pencils, water and plasticine - especially the young girl refusing to go home with Mummy and Daddy "just one more go"!

The teenager who was chuffed to bits when his name went top of the game leaderboard, tweeting a picture of it to his mates

The students who told me they'd wished they'd gone to UEA!

Distinguished Fellows of the Royal Society getting just as excited ballasting pencils as the teenagers

The people who came back next day to have another go!

People who made connections with the exhibit about the glaciers melting and the effect on the oceans on our exhibit

Adult visitors thinking the pencil ballasting would be easy, and soon discovering it's actually quite a challenge!

The young boy who was so enchanted by the Seaglider he wanted to get inside one

In depth discussions with an engineer about how the Seaglider works

The moment a 3 year old aspiring researcher chucked all the carefully shaped plasticine cubes into the freshwater basin to test whether they would float, closely followed by the bowl that contained them!

A teenager came, had fun with our activities, asked lots of questions about the demo glider, and left to another exhibit. Then less than one hour after, he came back with a friend of his, describing us in these terms: "it's really cool! they use this robot to measure the ocean", and explained it to friends.

My favourite moment of the exhibition was when, after explaining to a 5 year old the concept of neutral buoyancy in a way that he could understand and playing with salty and fresh water, he turned around to his mum and said, "I like this lady". It made my day!

An aspiring oceanographer!

A massive thank you to everyone who came to see us at the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition! We had a great time and it was fantastic to see so many enthusiastic faces of all ages. We hope you learned some interesting things about the ocean, and most importantly, had fun!

Here are just a few of our favourite photos - scroll through to see them all.

A Day in the Life of a Technician!

Written by Gareth Lee, who can be spotted in this video!

06:05 Awoken by vague murmurings of my 3 year old daughter waking in her bedroom. Two minutes later there is the pitter patter of tiny footsteps as she and teddy sleepily walks into the room to snuggle into mummy and daddy’s bed for the final hour of sleep

07:45 A quick check of overnight emails to see if there are any replies from iRobot. Yes! They have sent out the quotes for the spare parts we asked for… Excellent! More Seaglider work coming up. Now bundle the little one into the car and off to nursery. Drop off at nursery goes smoothly today and now to work.

08:10 Arrive at work start thinking about the day’s tasks. I’m lucky if I complete half due to the (almost) constant stream of people walking into the office requiring advice, assistance or problem solving. These guys are affectionately known as the walk-ins and are really what make the job interesting. The variation in tasks is far reaching and means we have to apply logic and experience to most of the advice we offer. I wonder what today’s walk-ins might bring?

08:15 Arrive at work. Wander up to LGMAC coffee room with cup in hand to make the first cup of tea of the day. I am gasping for a cup of tea by now. Back at the desk it is time to read the emails in more detail. Woah… That Seaglider part is really expensive! It always amazes me how expensive Seaglider parts are; it seems you can add an extra zero to the end of anything to do with oceanography. I will need to talk this through with the Principal investigator and make sure the budget can handle it. Another email from a colleague at the National Oceanography Centre (NOC); it seems the equipment sent on a recent Ocean Acidification cruise in Antarctica is about to return to NOC. Now, when is the next time I’m down there and able to pick it up? Or should I send a courier? The daily bulletin comes through. It must be 09:15… Where did that hour go? Actually, I’ll just sneak a quick look at the internet to see if Norwich City has signed any new players? Maybe another dutch international! I miss football at this time of year…..

09:15 The first regular walk in. A colleague comes in for a quick chat about a future proposal including sea time! They require a costing to send a technician on a research cruise. I always enjoy doing this as it means maybe one of us is off to sea to do some research. I wonder where it might be this time? I hope it gets funded….

09:30 I should really make a start on that jobs list I thought about whilst walking from the car. The first job was to do a stock check on the Apiezon grease and certified reference materials (CRM) used for our Alkalinity and Dissolved Inorganic Carbon in seawater measurements. We need to send some down to Rothera Research Station in Antarctica and I need to check whether we need to order any. Yes, as I thought, we need more stocks. A quick check on the internet confirms our regular supplier has some in stock at a reasonable price. Write out the order and get it signed. A quick walk down to finance to submit the purchase requisition and that’s the first job ticked off.

10:00 Another walk in, although this time it’s a chance encounter in the corridor. “Hi, I need to calibrate those gas standards I recently used; can you give me a quick reminder on how to do it?” A PhD student needs some advice on a post cruise gas calibration. We go to the instrument and talk through what he needs to do.

10:30 Coffee time and the only real break of the day. It is an office tradition that we all walk over to the campus coffee shop and get some good coffee and a sit outside. It’s good to get out of the building and have all of us together to discuss our current work schedules. We bounce around some work ideas and then it’s back to the building

11:00 A quick check of the emails and nothing new yet (we still haven’t signed anyone either). Pop up to see the Principle Investigator about the cost of the Seaglider spares. We agree that we need the parts and so we place the order.

11:10 Down to the Seaglider lab to clean and check a recently returned Seaglider. No cracks on the farings, unscrew the faring to look at any corrosion on the inside and a thorough freshwater rinse. Check all the sensors are intact and no signs of other damage. She can now go back in her box. With some power left in the batteries, she’s probably good for another short mission.

12:45 Sandwiches and a quick read (and write) of emails. Nothing new in, but I do have to respond to the colleague from NOC and arrange the return of a Seaglider box to the ship in Glasgow. Write a quick email to make the request to the logistics company to arrange the shipment and that’s another job ticked off the list. We’re doing well today.

13:15 Spend some of the afternoon tidying the Seaglider lab in anticipation of visitors and putting more equipment away. Everything needs a good clean and put back in its correct place. Part of being a technician involves the organisation of equipment and areas and having a good tidy up certainly helps. That’s job number three ticked off.

15:30 The container has arrived. Time to rally the troops and clear the garage store in anticipation of building works. Lots of heavy boxes to move, but many hands make light work. Should get it done by the end of the day after a bit of effort

17:00 Short day today as I need to pick up the little one from nursery. Once home it’s time to cook some tea and get her ready for bed.

19:30 Little one (and Teddy) tucked up in bed and sound asleep. Now for an hour or two in the garden and a couple of beers; a great way to release the stress of a days work!

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These two PhD students, Umberto and Tahmeena, tell us about their exhibit A Pinch of Salt - tasting salty oceans, sea gliders, oceanic cruises and ugly, smelly creatures from the ocean!

Find out more about this exhibit here: http://sse.royalsociety.org/2013/exhibits/salty-ocean

Bobbing pencils and icebergs melting!

In the final of our summaries of what goes on at the Pinch of Salt stand, Tahmeena Aslam and Louise Biddle talk about two of our exciting activities!

Pencil Buoyancy

The Dead Sea is famous because it is so easy to float on – but why? Our pencil buoyancy experiment at the exhibit will help you to understand why!

Our experiment gets you to try making a pencil “neutrally buoyant” in both fresh and salty water. When an object is neutrally buoyant, it will neither sink nor float. This occurs when the density of the object is equal to the fluid around it. We can compare the differences in behaviour between the fresh and the salty water too!

It’s quite a challenge, so there’s a prize if you can make a pencil neither sink to the bottom or float to the top!

"Is this one going to work...?"

Iceberg Melting Events

About every half hour, we gather up the visitors and create an iceberg melting event! Don't worry - we're not really melting icebergs, but our red icecubes, which have added food dye in so we can track the meltwater.

As it melts, we watch how the process differs between the fresh water and the salty water - can you guess what might be causing these changes?

We always have an interesting crowd for this - so keep an eye on our clock to see when the next event will be!

The demonstration is relayed onto one of our big TV screens so everyone can see!

Come and join us at the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition for this and other experiments!

Salt Tasting! (not as yukky as it sounds...)

Tasting Salt at the Science in Norwich Day. Photo by Honza Chylík.

If you’ve already been swimming in the sea, then you know what sea water tastes like: salty! But do you know that not all seas in the world taste the same? Would you guess which sea is the saltiest and which one has nearly no salt in? Do you think your tongue would be able to sense the difference in saltiness between them?

With our salt tasting activity, you will embark on a journey from the ice-covered Arctic to the baking Dead Sea, taking a sip of each sea water you encounter. At the end of your tour, you will be asked to rank the waters you tasted based on how salty they were, with prizes to win if you can identify which sea they came from!

Our sea water contains drinking water, table salt, and nothing else, but some are very salty... Will you be brave enough to give it a try? If so, join us at the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition on our exhibit: A Pinch of Salt!

Cartesian Divers and Immiscible Liquids!

Throughout this week, we'll be introducing you to some of the activities on our stand at the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition - come along to give them a go!

Today, Jan Kaiser talks about the cartesian divers and immiscible liquid bottles we have.

Cartesian divers

The diver near the top of the bottle simulates a glider at the surface. Can you make it dive? What happens when it dives and why does this make it dive? Very good observation skills are required – watch the diver closely! If you have figured out how to make the diver go down, you probably noticed that it spins – that's another clue for the explanation how the diver works.

Photo from Jan Chylik, UEA.

Immiscible liquids

These small bottles with three liquids (oil, alcohol and salt water) of different density illustrate how the interior of the ocean is layered according to density. Salty water is denser and sinks to the bottom; fresh water is less dense and stays on top. A pycnocline (density gradient) separates layers of different density. There are two very thin pycnoclines visible in the ocean-in-the bottle model because the liquids are immiscible and have different light refraction indices.

In a storm, the ocean gets mixed – you can simulate this by shaking the bottle! Once the storm subsides, layering sets in again.

Waves can also occur in the interior of the ocean and are caused when the balance between gravity and buoyancy is disturbed, e.g. by a storm, tides or currents. Their frequency depends on the density difference of the liquids between which they propagate. Large differences result in high wave frequencies; small differences in low frequencies. You can see this by gently moving the bottle: The bottom interface (large density difference between alcohol and salt water) moves a lot more than the top interface (small density difference between alcohol and oil).

Five Ways to Lose your Seaglider!

Losing a Seaglider is a traumatic experience. Well actually, the most traumatic bit is telling your Head of Department that you’ve just lost £150k worth of kit that the University kindly bought you last year. The guys at the Seaglider Fabrication Center in Seattle told us, don’t give your Seagliders names! Don’t get attached to them! So we called them Minke, Narwhal, Orca and Fin (spot the link?!)…. Here are 5 ways to lose your Seaglider….

1. Run them over with a ship

Hardly ever happens, they said. Seagliders spend so little time at the surface, and most of their time deep down in the ocean where it’s safe. And anyway, they said, if a ship does come, the ship’s bow wave pushes the glider out of the way. So we went with the gliders to Scotland for trials, and Narwhal was hit by a quarry ship and never seen again. RIP Narwhal, and welcome Beluga.

2. Deploy them in the sea ice

Gliders don’t go very fast. And sea ice can advance very fast. Faster than we thought. Beluga didn’t like the sea ice because she couldn’t get to the surface to talk to us. RIP Beluga, and welcome Humpback.

3. Jaws

Seagliders are about the size and shape of a dolphin, except they’re yellow. Sharks think they look like dinner. Our Australian and Hawaiian colleagues have recovered gliders with a large bite taken out of them, even one with a shark’s tooth embedded in it! Other gliders were never seen again…

4. A fur coat

Gliders end up furry. After a few months patrolling in a very productive upwelling region, Orca was covered in a brown coat of algae. This isn’t at all aerodynamic, and so made her very difficult to fly. We were able to safely get her back, thankfully.

5. Pirates!

We sent Fin to the Indian Ocean, an area infested with pirates. Gliders have been known to be captured and held to ransom… Fin managed to evade them all and return home with her treasure – scientific data.

Image from Wikimedia Commons, attributed to J.J.

A day in the life of a university professor

In the latest instalment of the 'day in the life of' series, exhibit team leader Karen Heywood describes her schedule as a university professor.

6.53 Alarm goes off. I’m one of those irritating people who are awake straight away so I push the sleepy cats out of the way and head off for breakfast. DH (Dear Husband) is a mediator and already set off on the early train to London so house is quiet.

7.30 Shout goodbye to teenage son who just finished A levels and is enjoying a lie in – am pleased to get a coherent grunt in reply. Drive to work. So lucky to live in beautiful Norfolk countryside; manage to avoid running over kamikaze rabbits and pheasants.

8.00 Arrive at work, get a parking space (one reason to head in early; parking at UEA has not kept pace with expansion of the university). Second cup of tea of the day and I begin to feel more dynamic. Go online and check how our Seagliders in the North Atlantic are doing. Always a thrill to see new data coming in, not knowing what they’re going to show. One of the gliders is being carried downstream by a sudden burst of strong currents so I send an email to today’s pilot to suggest speeding the glider up a bit. Start reading a PhD student’s draft thesis chapter on dissolved oxygen in the ocean.

9.00 Where has the time gone? Meeting with colleague to plan a grant proposal to take the Seagliders to the Indian Ocean. Would be so exciting! Every grant proposal I vow not to get emotionally involved so I won’t be heart-broken when it’s not funded, but fail every time. Really hope this one comes to fruition - great collaboration with colleagues in India, and science that would make a difference to people’s lives by improving prediction of monsoon rainfall.

10.00 Meeting with PhD student and co-supervisor the Head of the School of Maths. We’re looking at processes of convection, sea ice and water mass formation in coupled climate models in a joint project with the UK Met Office. Student explains to supervisors the importance of her results; always a good sign when the student knows more than the supervisors – success! Training students is what we’re here for after all, and one of the most rewarding parts of the job.

10.45 It’s Tuesday so it’s Oceanography Coffee – with biscuits! All the WetnWindies (aka meteorologists and oceanographers) gather in the coffee room for chat. More tea.

11.00 Glider technician pops in to get me to sign some orders for replacement parts for Seaglider Minke who recently came back with a small crack in the end cap. We talk through plans for the gliders for the next few months, sorting out the logistics of our gliders that need to be trialled in Scotland before we ship them to the Antarctic in September. The fieldwork isn’t until January, but Antarctica is a long way away….

12.00 Lunch. Gather up a few colleagues, buy sandwiches and since it’s a nice day, we all go to sit on the grass by the University Broad (aka lake) to enjoy the fresh air and sunshine.

12.45 Cup of tea back in the office. Check to see if Norwich City have bought any good players but disappointed as usual. Not even any gossip. Read and comment on a bit more of the thesis chapter.

13.00 Meeting with colleagues to plan our teaching for the autumn semester; I’m teaching part of an introductory physics course so we get the lectures and practical classes into everyone’s diaries, discuss the coursework and format of the exam.

14.00 Meeting with postdoc to go over draft paper. We’re looking at the temperature and salinity of the waters on the continental shelf of Antarctica. The results look fascinating and we’re both excited about finishing the paper, but we keep thinking of extra things that would be fun to investigate! Really must just finish it!

15.00 As an editor of the Journal of Physical Oceanography, spend an hour dealing with new papers that have arrived in the inbox, looking to see what area of research they’re in, and deciding on two people I can ask to provide a good review of each paper. I try to choose people who I know will be keen and interested to read the paper but who aren’t going to be biased either way. Read the reviews of papers that have come in; one needs a major rewrite while the other needs only minor clarifications to be accepted for publication. I’m always pleased when we can accept a paper because I can picture the joy at the other end of the email! Quick cup of tea.

16.00 Skype conference with colleagues in Southampton and the US to discuss the Seaglider work in the North Atlantic. Postdoc runs through her recent research cruise during which she recovered and deployed the gliders. We discuss the calibration procedures to ensure that the dataset is as good as possible. PhD students at each institution update us on their progress. Can’t wait to see some of the plots of the final data.

17.00 Catch up on emails; scribble on another section of the thesis chapter; head home

18.30 Quick bike ride with DH to make the most of the good weather, rare this year!

19.00 Supper, more tea.

20.00 Plan trip to a conference in the US in September; register for meeting, book motel, and weigh up all the flight options. Looking forward to that; it’s to discuss how the ocean interacts with ice shelves in the Antarctic, so very relevant to our Ocean2ice project and fieldwork next year – it’ll be a good opportunity to share ideas with international colleagues. Plus it’s being organised by a former postdoc of mine now at Caltech, so it’ll be good to see him and his family.

21.00 Can’t resist the temptation to check emails (email junkie, me?!) and see how the gliders are doing, before DH calls me to watch last week’s recorded episode of The Apprentice so we don’t get too far behind before tomorrow’s episode…..

22.30 Off to bed. Exhausted and head spinning, but even after nearly 25 years at UEA I still think I’m incredibly lucky to do what I do! Academic careers have their downsides, but I wouldn’t want to do anything else.

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Explore the ocean as a seaglider robot in our brand new science-based game! It’s a 3d web-based game from our exhibit ‘A Pinch of Salt’

Seaglider game released today!!

We are very excited to announce that our Seaglider game has been released today on the Royal Society website. In it, you take command of a Seaglider, an underwater robot used to explore the oceans. Your mission is to find the salt concentrations in a dreamlike underwater world filled with whales, jellyfish and seaweed, before your time runs out. Just watch you don't crash into the rocks!

Don't forget to vote for your favourite game (Ours, of course)!

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We’ve just released four awesome video games inspired by the cutting-edge science of our exhibits! Have a play of them on our website and then vote for your favourite!

A Pinch of Salt goes back to school!

Written by Niki Kaiser at Notre Dame High School, Norwich.

Year 12 pupils at Notre Dame High School in Norwich were very lucky to have a preview of the Royal Society exhibit from A Pinch of Salt. Jan Kaiser and Umberto Binetti talked to pupils about their research, showed them their Seaglider, and gave them a chance to try out some of the “hands on” exhibits that they’ll take to London next week.

First, Jan talked about the inter-disciplinary nature of oceanography, as pupils in the audience were studying a range of sciences at A-level. He explained how the physics and chemistry of the oceans and atmosphere help us to understand the influence of biology on large ocean processes (and vice-versa). He also outlined some of the wider areas of research he is interested in, using scientific ideas and methods that pupils were comfortable with (photosynthesis, respiration, isotopes, mass spectrometry, ozone chemistry). Pupils particularly liked the photos of “life at sea” (featuring a rather slime-laden line-crossing ceremony), and the video clip of the Seaglider deployment that had been made for the exhibition.

Umberto then spoke about why it’s important to have instruments like the Seaglider to help with marine research. His dry sense of humour went down really well with pupils: I really loved the slides where he pointed out that the oceans aren’t getting any smaller, or any less complex, so we have to improve our ways of analysing them instead. He also explained some of the science about salinity and ocean circulation in more detail. I later found a group of pupils studying his poster, and discussing the amount of oxygen found at the ocean surface, and what they could understand from his graphs, so they were obviously listening!

Umberto explaining the development of oceanographic instrumentation with NDHS Teacher Niki Kaiser and Fin the Seaglider in the background.

Following the talks, pupils were given the chance to look at the Seaglider itself, as well a transparent demo model, where you could look inside and see how it works. They also tried out some Cartesian divers (and were encouraged to explain the science behind them), some immiscible liquids that showed how internal waves can form, and answered some questions about salinity in different water bodies around the world.

Umberto explaining our demonstration Seaglider to Year 12 students.

The computer game, made for the “game jam” at the Royal Society was a real hit! Pupils became very competitive, and any ideas about team-spirit and working together quickly disappeared, as they fought to become the highest scorer in the search for salt within the oceans. Have a play - and don't forget to vote!

Our year 12 pupils are currently making important decisions about the direction they want to follow after leaving school, and it was encouraging to hear that pupils were now considering areas of science that they hadn’t necessarily thought of before. It’s really important to me, as a teacher, that they understand that science is a really wide, varied and exciting subject. A large amount of important science does, of course, take place in labs, and is carried out by people wearing white coats. This is often the main image pupils have when they think about science and scientists. But I wanted them to realise that there is so much more to this wonderful subject than the “conventional” side, and it is out there, ready to be discovered and grasped if they want to.

We’re really grateful to Jan and Umberto for taking the time to come and visit us. We hope to see them again next year!

Meet (more of) the team...

Our core team combines people at all different career stages, from multiple countries and a variety of (oceanographic) disciplines. Our meet the team page now has links to profile videos for almost everyone. We thought we'd introduce you to a few of the new ones (click on the links for their videos):

Dr Jan Kaiser is a reader in the School of Environmental Sciences, and is particularly interested in ocean chemistry and biology. He's also a keen runner, often taking a pushchair along on his runs for extra resistance training!

Dr Adrian Matthews began his career as a meteorologist but is now also a fully fledged oceanographer. One of the projects he is currently involved in involved a Seaglider deployment in the Indian Ocean to determine how changes in the ocean affect the rainfall and the monsoon in the region. He also just returned from a cycling trip in the French Alps, where he climbed many of the passes the Tour de France will be tackling later this summer.

Bastien Queste studies how oxygen levels vary in summertime in both the North Sea, and the Ross Sea in the Antarctic, using Seagliders and ship-based observations. He is currently distracting himself from finishing his PhD by building a poison dart-frog vivarium.

Tahmeena Aslam is studying for a PhD on internal waves; these are just like surface waves but travel within the ocean itself. Check out her recent description of a day in the life of a PhD student here.

A Day in the Life of a Postdoctoral Researcher

Written by Ben Webber.

6.30 am. Alarm goes off on DW's side of the bed. I stubbornly ignore this and endeavour to remain asleep. Radio four gets switched on to listen to the news. Yes, despite being a twenty-something, I listen to radio four every morning. And I’m going bald. I blame both of these facts on DW.

8.00 am. Finally roll out of bed, having heard the same news stories several times. Realise that there’s not quite enough time to do all the things that seem to need doing on a weekday morning, so panic ensues.

9.15 am. Arrive at work, 15 minutes later than intended. Those 15 minutes are eclipsed by the following hour of procrastination – old habits die hard, and I was a PhD student until last year…

10.15 am. Realise I have a meeting this afternoon, which I really need to do some work for. And I'm meant to post something on the Royal Society blog. Suddenly become extremely productive. I'm currently trying to finish a paper from my previous contract on the Indian Ocean while starting research on ice-ocean interaction in the Antarctic.

11.30 am. Eat lunch. I have no restraint when it comes to sandwiches. I will regret this later.

11.40 am. Get distracted by looking for a house online. We sold our current house yesterday...

1.00 pm. I really need to get back to work… Time to post that blog!

2.45 pm. I'm hungry again. The vending machine beckons. Will have to go climbing tomorrow to counteract the chocolate.

3.00 pm. Meeting. Remarkably productive – discuss plans for modelling experiments to trace the pathways of warm water responsible for melting glaciers in the Antarctic. Suddenly the project seems full of possibilities.

4.00 pm. Manage two hours of really productive work, reading papers, running code, maybe even finding out some really exciting new results.

6.00 pm always rolls round far too soon – time to head home.

7.30 pm. Having spent the last 11 months planning a wedding (now over, hence the existence of a DW), I can't remember what a typical evening involves. Tonight involves heading out for a friend's birthday & post-viva dinner at a nearby pub. Good times.

11.30 pm. Eventually leave said pub, rather tipsier than intended. Stumble home and fall into bed.

Not a typical day! But one of the side benefits - fieldwork in the Antarctic.

“Céline and I are oceanographers – do you know what that means?”

Written and photographed by Céline Heuzé.

On Wednesday (far too early) morning last week, Professor Chris Vincent and myself left Norwich with a car full of fish tanks, salty water, magnetic pencils and toffee and went to Cambridge. Schoolchildren in years 5 and 6 there are doing a project on water, so we have been asked if we could come and talk to them about our work. Plus it was a great occasion for us to do a trial run of our Pinch of Salt exhibition!

Experiment is set up, ready for the students to try it out!

I won’t detail our activities – if you want to know how to have fun with salty water, you will have to come and visit our stand at the Royal Society summer science exhibition in July!

That was also a great occasion to discover what a 10-year old wants to know about the ocean, and caused some intense brainstorming:

as all oceans connect, why is the salinity not the same everywhere?

why does adding salt into the water make it denser?

how do salinity differences affect fish?

how could Nemo survive after he has been put in a fishtank by the dentist?

A lot of splashing, 60 happy kids playing with their rewards, a jar of toffee eaten... that is what I call a good morning!

Gliders are go!

Written by Gillian Damerell, on her recent cruise on the RRS James Cook.

RRS James Cook left Glasgow at 8am on the morning of 31st May, sailing down the Clyde and out into the Atlantic, heading for the PAP site where our gliders are deployed as part of the OSMOSIS project. This isn't an OSMOSIS cruise - it's a marine biology cruise - but it's going to the same place as OSMOSIS, so they've very kindly allowed us to tag a glider turnaround onto the cruise.

This is my second cruise on the James Cook - the first was also my first ever research cruise, heading off into the Southern Ocean for 6 weeks! I was very nervous - no idea what it would be like - but nowadays I love going to sea. We may start out as a group of people thrown together by the science, most of whom have never met before, but by the end of the cruise our insular little community will have forged great friendships - and our own 'in' jokes which can only be understood by the people who were there!

There are several jobs that need doing before the glider (Canopus) can be put in the water; constructing the cradle in which we can carry Canopus, test the sensors and system and attach the wings, rudder and antenna.

Anna constructing the glider cradle.

On our second day out of Glasgow we reach open water and I suddenly feel a pressing need to avoid mealtimes, go below and lie down with my eyes closed. I'm always queasy the first 24 hours at sea, unfortunately, but feel better after that.

Monday 3rd June, and time to deploy Canopus. It's bright and sunny, and there's a bit of a swell but only a couple of metres at most - pretty good deployment conditions. When deploying gliders, you work in two teams - a field team, out with the glider, and a piloting team, sat in front of a computer on land. It is theoretically possible to pilot from the ship, but our internet connection is very slow and tends to drop any time you're doing something crucial, so it's better that the people on land pilot.

Once the piloting team have double checked the test files and given the go-ahead, we remove the communications cable and the sensor caps, and bring the glider over to the winch.

Favourite glider pose - balancing on the palm of your hand!

The winch hoists the glider up and over the side. We cluster round - it would be bad if the glider went swinging at the end of the rope and bashed into stuff! We also have to be careful how we hold it - the obvious handle-like object on the front, for example, is actually the temperature and salinity sensor, and is not load-bearing. Try to pick up a glider by that and it'll just snap off!

Once in the water, the glider initially lies flat - there's air inside the outer hull (the yellow hull) at both front and back. Gradually it fills with water and the nose sinks. We need to be certain that Canopus is ballasted correctly before releasing the rope - if she's too heavy, she'll sink to the bottom and never be seen again - if too light she won't be able to dive and collect data from beneath the surface. And the only way to really judge that is to get her in the water in the region where she'll be deployed - water in different areas might be lighter or heavier, depending on its temperature or salinity. We need Canopus to be the right weight relative to the water here at the Osmosis site.

Finally we release the rope, and off she goes. The piloting team are now in charge, and I can sit back and relax after the efforts of the last four days, and a pretty tense deployment hour.

#gliders #seagliders #oceanography #ships

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