Daily Journal

January 30, 2005:
The More the Merrier in Mexico

This morning—while most of us were sleeping off a hard night of seawater sampling (we know how to get down), the New Horizon dropped anchor in the port of Guaymas (can you find it on a map?) and boarded two Mexican scientists, Eduardo and Ramses, and their luggage. We’re happy to have Eduardo back—he went out with us last July, is always upbeat, and brings Mexican candy to treat us with.

It’s actually fairly windy out here in the Gulf, unlike last July, and those of us with rooms near the bow get to live out our childhood fantasies of becoming an astronaut or acrobat—for a few seconds at a time at least. We’re very happy it’s Sunday, for that’s a special day on the New Horizon: a special dinner with a small glass of wine, for those off-duty.

The ability to travel into Mexican waters and take samples requires a special clearance from the Mexican government. The chief scientist had to submit his request many months ago, stating what samples he would be taking and how it might impact local fisheries. This was translated to Spanish (with a lot of help from colleagues) and sent off to Scripps, who then processed the request.

Q: The CTD has 24 different compartments for holding water. These compartments hold 12 liters of water each. (How many liters is that total?) Each compartment can be closed at a specific depth, so that at most 24 different water depths can be sampled. Assuming you have one analysis that requires 30 liters of water, how many water depths can you sample from in one CTD cast? If you wanted to run this analysis on water taken from 17 different water depths, how many times would you have to send (deploy) the CTD down to collect water?