Everyone here is excited (and busy) with the 2nd MAG-Mix cruise coming up next week. We just found out 2 weeks ago that all of the sampling equipment we stored at LUMCON got washed away during the flooding from Hurricane Ike. DOH!
Among the lost items were our pickle barrels that we use for collecting large-volume water samples (200 liters, or about 50 gallons). Inside the barrels, we had stored our PVC suction hose (300 ft of 1.25" ID), and the discharge hose that runs from our pump to the barrels (~40 ft of 1.25" ID). All gone! Also, we had left the two large tanks (~250 gallons) that we use for collecting really big water samples from offshore, and these have not turned up either. Well, so much for saving money by not shipping the supplies back and forth.
Needless to say, we have been incredibly busy trying to track down new supplies. The pickle barrels have become popular as back yard rain barrels, so not only are they in short supply, but the cost has gone up from $4/each to $15/each. Leslie and I finally found some last week, and we picked them up from Mr. King's donkey pasture in Odessa, FL on Monday (I wish we had taken the camera - there really was a donkey in among all the pickle barrels).
The hoses have been ordered, and they should be assembled and on the way to our lab by now. In addition, we are purchasing a new high-volume pump as a back-up so that we don't have a repeat of our experience from the 1st MAG-Mix cruise. We are also re-doing our small pumps which we use for processing the water from the pickle barrels. The old ones were just too slow! They often took 10 or twelve hours to pump a barrel of water through our Mn-Fiber, and our goal is about 3 hours. Our new pumps should do a better job, but it will be quite a bit of work over the weekend getting everything ready.
In between all this, everyone is really busy with school work. Alanna has decided to not come on this cruise because of her heavy course load (Calculus II, in particular), so Iuri Herzfeld will be joining us, instead. Iuri is a graduate student at the University of Hawaii, but he's been helping out with my lab for about a year. Leslie and Erik are both coming, again, so they are making sure they are ahead in all their course work. And, I'm teaching 3 courses this semester, so I am busy lining up guest lecturers and exams for when I am on the research cruise.
I hope everyone enjoys the blog. I'll try to post to it once more before we hit the road on Wednesday, and then we should be able to keep it updated daily while we are at sea. Feel free to post comments and email us with questions.
Wish us luck!
-Dr. Krest
USF St. Petersburg
3 comments:
Hi Jim, it's good to see an update on the blog. We, too, are getting ready for MagMix2, though thankfully that hasn't involved any donkeys. Alan, Kjell, Kevin, DongJoo, Ashley, Pete, and I will all be on board again. We'll also be bringing Xuri Wang, a grad student under Laodong Guo here at USM.
See you in a couple days,
Jade
Oops...at least the supplies were hit by the hurricane and not YOU!
Good luck and stay safe! We're keeping the classroom busy.
I haven't tried being at sea when there is a storm, it is kinda scary or something. i have watched that show in discovery about those fishing, I think it is entitled deadliest catch, and it seems very scary
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