Here's what it was like. One of the guys on the trip came running (or as fast staggering-walking as you can do on a ship moving 40 mph) to me sitting on the back deck of the boat and said, "SHANNON. DOLPHINS. COME NOW." Which is when I sprung from the industrial cooler I had made into a seat and bounded to the bow (front of the boat) and leaned back with my arms up screaming "WOO HAHAHOOHOO HELLOOO DOLPHINS I'M HERE AND I LIKE YOU GUYS A LOT." And everyone else on the boat followed to come see what the commotion was about. And I yelled up to Captain Joe (yes, his name is really Captain Joe) to slow down. And he did, so we got to watch my favorite underwater loves play until they flipped and splashed away. But not away. They then found our wake and started following in it. Which is my favorite thing ever. Seriously. It's great. Like magic. Ok here are some other pictures. Didn't get pics of the dolphins because.. just no. But did you like that? Think this is a pretty good description of how it went down.
My "team" -we were the Grouper Troopers- collecting bottom water samples
Marc pouring the Rhodenine B dye into the water off the back deck.
Dye dispersing. We did this to measure the diffusion rates of the water in the estuary at this station.
You can see the little eddys forming in different areas in the dye.
They happen longitudinally, laterally, and depth-wise.
That's my smart talk for- 3D.
Aka, lots of mixing.
This is what the dye looks like after about 12 minutes.
We stop tracking it once it diffuses completely.
Here is some sediment.
Sticky, Silky, black. Light sulfur smell.
Pretty much no oxygen in this stuff.
Make great face masks for soft skin.
Yes, we really smeared this all over our faces.
And other parts of our bodies.
Like legs.
Here we are lowering the YSI instrument into the water at different depths.
I was holding the end of the cord that has a little computer that measures stuff like
Salinity
temperature
depth
Dissolved Oxygen
chlorophyll
at the different depths.
And then we record. In our Grouper Trooper booklet.
This is what 10 grand looks like.
Behold, the YSI.
Marc likes pointing out the tea-colored water in our wake.
The humic acids make it that color.
And you can't drink water with humic acids in it.
Which makes determining humic acid presence in our water extremely important to knowing just exactly how to treat and how much to disinfect it before it's okay to drink.
Great trip! The parts that weren't so sciency, well, I don't have any pictures.
But if you can imagine what a night before a cruise, group of college kids restless from a long car snatcher-van drive, our own waterfront cottage, 2 cases of beer, a big back porch and a lot of getting to know eachother would look like...
That's what it looked like.
Manteo and Kitty Hawk Thursday. Can't wait.
