Category Archives: News

Malaspina expedition: Catching our breath

S 30° 03’ 13″ E 61° 28’ 50″ – On Sunday the researchers aboard the Hespérides woke to frothing waves rushing past their portholes. The ship had rocked and rolled through the night, but it had not stopped for its normal pre-dawn observations because the sea was too rough. Sunday would be the first of four days when the scientific staff took a forced partial break.

It is too risky to lower the sampling rosetta or other bottles and nets when at one moment the guardrail appears to tower over the foaming breakers below and at the next the cerulean water rushes onto the deck. A sudden pitch has been known to snap cables holding sampling instruments or to send a careless journalist sprawling on a gritty deck. Continue reading Malaspina expedition: Catching our breath

Malaspina expedition: Data deluge

S 32° 27’ 41″ E 50° 55’ 53″ – It’s pushing midnight in the computer room and the zooplankton team, some of them awake since the 4:30am Neuston net tow, are starting to get cranky.

barcodeFederico Maldonado Uribe, a marine physiology graduate student at the University of Las Palmas in Gran Canaria, curses the programmer who wrote their awkward data entry system. The sleep-deprived researchers sway from side to side as their floating laboratory bobs up and down on 3-metre waves.

His colleague Ángel Lamas clicks on yet another drop-down menu on the screen in front of him. Maldonado reads him a figure. Lamas taps the keyboard a couple of times. All told, they will label around 100 samples today, which is just one of 28 planned sampling days on this leg of the cruise. They may spend more than 120 hours between them on this leg clicking drop-down menus and repeating numbers in a late-night monotone drone. Continue reading Malaspina expedition: Data deluge

Malaspina expedition: Water, water everywhere and not a drop to sample

S 34° 33’ 51″ E 31° 01’ 48″ – Every day around dawn the Hespérides pauses in its 5,000 nautical mile journey. It does not begin again until mid-afternoon, when its researchers have slaked their thirst for samples with a bewildering variety of bottles and nets. Yet every day scientists ask one another a mysterious question: “Can I have some of your water, please?”
Continue reading Malaspina expedition: Water, water everywhere and not a drop to sample

Malaspina expedition: Starting with a splash

S 34° 50’ 20.6″ E 27° 32’ 18.8″ – The first working day of this leg of the Malaspina expedition began with the splash of a Neuston net into the black water on the starboard side of the Hespérides before dawn on Sunday. The bosun, another operations officer, and a handful of technicians and scientists wearing life vests and helmets stood watch with arms folded under the warm yellow running lights of the ship. They were waiting in the rich wet air for a fine mesh net, hanging behind the two metal pontoons of the skate, to fill with creatures of the night. Continue reading Malaspina expedition: Starting with a splash