Merry Christmas Magma Manker!

Isa Rosso

December 25, 2017

We are in the wake of a series of low-pressure systems, which constantly challenge our balance (my leg muscles are sore) and our scientific operations. There are some CTD casts going on now, after which the Lowered Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (LADCP) will be lowered from the back deck, to measure the currents at this location (procedure that is done at every station). Usually, the LADCP is mounted on the CTD rosette, but since this is a small rosette, there was no room to add the LADCP on it.

LADCP

CTD rosette

I have some exciting news :)

On December 23rd, 2017 at 13:19 UTC, 54° 02.1134' S, 68° 02.6330 E, we deployed the float #12734, aka Magma Manker!!

The float is the first one of the 2 adopted by the Gilroy High School. The class chose the name in honor of their teacher Jeff Manker, who will retire at the end of the year (all the best, Jeff!!!!). Jeff taught the class about plate tectonics and seafloor spreading, and apparently picked up the habit of saying "MAGMA" with a weird emphasis that his students seem to like :-) hehe!! Having been on Big Island (Hawaii) few weeks ago, and having experienced the lava flowing in front of my eyes, I do think, as well as Jeff, that this is a really cool name!!

photo credit: Rakesh Rao
Magma Manker on its way. The cardboard box is held together with some dissolvable tape: in few minutes, the box will open up, releasing the float

Magma Manker has already spoken (see the figure with profiles of different water properties)!!! The temperature profile in figure shows a warm surface layer on top of a much colder one, which is what remains of the cold winter water. You can also see the deep chlorophyll maximum. Check this and the future profiles on the SOCCOM website. 

Another exciting news: Sandy (of the Long Beach Island Grade School), has sent its first profile too!! Check it out the website, searching for the float number 0690!!

photo credit: Rakesh Rao  Rounaq and me closing the pH bottle

It’s Christmas today, and it’s a very very busy day for the scientific activities. This didn’t stop us to have a wonderful party yesterday night, though, with delicious Indian food, exchange of presents (we had the “Secret Santa” kind of thing, where everybody made a present for a person whose name was previously randomly extracted), Bingo (I even made a python script to plot random numbers.. and colorful balls), and lots and lots of dancing! 

From all of us, we wish a Merry Christmas to everybody!! 

I better get ready for my next SOCCOM deployment now!

Ciaooo!

photo credit: Rakesh Rao)
Me drinking coffee in the helicopter hangar, our usual place to hang out, play guitar, have a chat