I'm still alive, barely. Just joking. Although it certainly has been a stressful last week. We had two consecutive LD stations with just a short one day breather to get all our stuff together for a final go at all the incubation experiments and other sampling.
Everyone thought that this deep deep blue patch of watery desert would be ideal for studying physical, optical and chemical parameters since there didn't seem to be any biological interference whatsoever. Oh how wrong they were.
Initial microscopy counts and fluorescence data from the CTD suggested that we had loads of UCYN at 60 m of depth and a deep chlorophyll max at ca 140 m of depth. Chlorophyll is the pigment that help the phytoplankton photosynthesize.
Some scientists onboard was of course super excited about this when we later confirmed a UCYNB bloom at 60 m of depth (us included).
So in the end, when looking closer below the surface, this desert-like water mass harbored more microbial activity (in terms of UCYN) than we had ever encountered before on the cruise. Who would have thought?
The reason why I have been slow on posting any updates on the blog is simple. We are nearing the end of the cruise and there's lot and lots of reports, presentations and protocols that needs to be written or files that needs to be filled out with data and whatnot.
I've been super busy and after a day of trying to piece everything together in front of my computer, the last thing I want to do is write another wall of text. Sorry.
Anyway, today was the 14th (out of 15) SD, which means that my last day of science will be tomorrow. After that there will be a lot of packing and organising to be done, to make sure that everything, our precious samples included, get back to Stockholm in one piece.
Now I have to finish an abstract for a conference in August. Deadline is the 1st of April. I might have a more detailed update for you in a couple of days.
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