In a hurry towards Fiji

We have now entered a new phase in the cruise. We have left New Caledonia far behind and somewhat entered a  new water mass (at least from a biological perspective). Work-wise it will be the same story though. A "rinse-and-repeat" lab work that we did every day before the first long duration station (LD). The difference now though is that we have a change of schedule. Apparently we are running short on time and consequently are falling behind in the planning, so these coming four days of work, where we would have been contributing with our important data on the UCYN targets abundance in the water column, will instead mean nothing in terms of our qPCR data. The reason for that is that we a rushing over to Fiji waters anyway and we will not stop long enough to consider another LD along that route even though we might hit a bloom of the UCYN.

Sampling will also be done late at night, which is not optimal, and even useless for some of the scientists on board.

The cruise organisers even told us late yesterday evening after we presented our data, that we don't even have to run the qPCR until we get to Fiji unless we really want to. This made me more than a little bit annoyed. How could we be this much behind schedule that they don't even have the time to consider our data. I get the feeling that they have already decided on the spots anyway. This qPCR data is our only real contribution to the cruise and now it's not necessary. I'm more than a little bit curious as to what will happen if we arrive at this intended area, chosen based on satellite surface water imagery, and there are little to no UCYN present.

At least our qPCR run went well. Our data looked good and we had hits on all UCYN targets, the most abundant ones at a magnitude of 10^3. Our initial microscopy sampling also showed decreased abundance of Trichodesmium and finally an increase in the number of DDAs (specifically Rhizosolenia-Richelia). This is good news for me and my colleague. Fingers crossed it will just keep getting better the closer to Fiji we get.

We will probably keep running the qPCR every night for these four days. In the end the data might prove useful and we will at least keep our skills sharp.