Today we joined the RV Celtic Explorer in Killybegs, IE. We spent the afternoon unpacking our gear and tying down instruments and boxes so that they don’t go flying when we leave the safety of the harbor and enter the open ocean. Tonight we’ll be slipping out of the harbor towards a spot of calm winds for our first CTD of the cruise, tomorrow morning.
Current wind speeds broadcast to the dry lab along with our current location (red ship) and first station (the red dot off of the blue line connected to the ship).
CTD stands for conductivity, temperature, and depth and is a piece of equipment that gives us a sense of how the ocean’s physical characteristics vary right beneath our feet. We lower the CTD on a long wire that comes off the ship and get real-time data about these properties (and more) as the device descends. The CTD also carries niskin bottles (basically giant Nalgene bottles) that we can snap shut remotely, meaning that we can retrieve samples of water from various ocean depths to study for nutrient concentrations, pH, isotopes and more. The CTD will always be the first piece of equipment we deploy when we come on station as it helps us get a sense of water column conditions and also provides water for the live plankton (forams) we will be bringing aboard. More about that soon!
Below is a picture of Middlebury students deploying a mini CTD aboard the RV Folger during Prof. Jacobel’s Fall 2022 Oceans and Coastlines course.
