Liquid Nitrogen

I decided beforehand that this would be my day off. And oh what a day off it became. High-life at sea. I could just leave it at that, I'm feeling happy and relaxed enough about it, but that wouldn't make much of a blog post worth reading now would it?

So for the sake of you guys, I'll go through some of the simplicities that make up a good day at sea.
First of all, I didn't sleep in. Technically I didn't. I had breakfast (choco-pops) and then went back to bed. Huge difference but no less satisfying.
Since lunch is at the relatively early time of 11.00 I could literally, once more, go straight from bed to another meal.
The reason why I decided for this to be a lazy day is that we are preparing for the next long duration station (LD), which in practice means that there's only time and space for the measurements of physical parameters. In addition, hosting the ship games the other day was rather exhausting for me, so I'm recharging my batteries to go all in next LD (03.00 sampling, hell yeah!).
Even though it might sound like I had nothing to do, there's always something to do, which is a good thing because it keeps me occupied. The best part of it though is that any work needed to be done was for me to do whenever I felt like it. No scheduled times for sampling and no results that needed to be reported at a set time. Just calmness.

So writing, reading, cleaning up the lab after yesterday and helping Kyle and Andy refill their liquid nitrogen dewars just turned into a nice pass of time. It is also always extremely cool to be working with liquid nitrogen. Funny, eh?
After digesting my lunch while listening to some music, sleeping another hour and watching the gentle swell roll by, as if the ocean was a living, moving organism, I hit the gym. Somewhat reluctantly after just waking up.
It turned out to be a good session though, and in the end I'm happy I forced myself to go.
Apparently I wasn't the only one having a laugh today. Some people in the crew told some scientists in the labs that they had spotted dolphins. As predicted when conveying such news everyone ran to the railing by the CTD to catch a glimpse of the dolphins. Little did they know that it was all just a ruse and another crewman poured a large volume of water on their heads from up above.

I also made a phone call back home after finally receiving my phone card. It was supposed to be a bit of a surprise for my fiancée, and I think it was. Just hearing her voice and the kids was great and even though it felt like we didn't talk about anything in particular, 15 minutes quickly passed. In the end I felt a bit emotional about it, and made me miss her more, but again, just hearing her voice made it worth it.

In the evening I had a beer out on front deck together with Kyle and Andy. It's absolutely pitch black outside without the moon, and barely any stars could penetrate the clouds. However, it was of no concern as soon as our eyes had adjusted, and by pure chance Andy glimpsed over the railing and down at the swell cause by the moving ship. With every swell the water exploded with green light, like golf ball size orbs of bioluminescence littering the disturbed water. It was almost like watching a show of fireworks exploding, some smaller and some larger than the others. This phenomenon is caused by small plankton called dinoflagellates, but there must have been dense aggregates of them to emit that much light!

The only thing missing was for today to be croissant day, but hey, that's tomorrow!