SeaKaiah

Anchored

Testing and prep while we wait to sail

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We've been at anchor for a couple of days now and despite the unplanned extra time, I've been so busy!

For the first couple of days, I spent a lot of time calibrating and testing our eDNA samplers, called Multipuffers. We had difficulty getting the Multipuffers to communicate consistently through the ROV to our control devices, but after two days of work, we've got a system that all seems to work well. It was a long process but it certainly kept me occupied while we're still waiting to start moving and gave me a chance to get very familiar with how to operate our system on the ship and how our sampler is integrated into the ROV. I've really enjoyed talking to the ROV engineers and pilots here who have explained a lot to me about how the ROV works and been very patient and accommodating with my frequent requests for them to power on and supervise our Multipuffer tests.

Today, Annette and I have been prepping our lab for collecting samples with both the Multipuffer and with a more traditional way of sampling where water is trapped inside large bottles, called Niskins, and brought back onto deck to be filtered. Compared to our Multipuffer samples, this method has more potential for contamination, can capture smaller volumes of water (low tens of liters instead of hundreds), and takes more processing time on the ship, but it's currently more reliable and can go deeper into the ocean, which at a site like the Mariana Trench, means a lot!

I wish I had more news to share about our departure time but I'm still very uncertain about what our status is. Things are happening but I can't tell how close they're bringing us to leaving. As I'm writing this, we are moving back to the dock, but I don't know how long we'll stay there and if we'll head out to sea or back to our anchoring poing next. Fingers still crossed!