This morning, 19 April, we again have relatively calm seas and winds. Povl and his team completed two mooring redeployments yesterday (the big moorings), and hope to do four of the smaller moorings today. Boaty remains on duty for his third mission into the abyss (I still plan to write about the second mission...soon).
For this post, I welcome my first guest writer. Sonya Legg of Princeton University is in charge of the night watch, from midnight to 8am. She here reflects on what it is like to be part of the rarefied night owl group.
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| Sunrise over the back deck of the JC Ross over the Orkney Passage. Down here, these sorts of sunrises are countable on one hand. Hence, they are warmly welcomed, especially by the night watch. |
Night watch reflections
by Sonya Legg
The night watch, which for scientists is
from midnight to 8am, is quite different from the other watches. Whereas on
daytime watches, the lab is often full of people wandering in and out, on the
night watch we have the lab (and much of the ship) all to ourselves at least
until about 6am. The scientists’ watch does not exactly coincide with those of
the crew (who work 6pm to 6am), the bridge (who work 4 hours on, 8 hours off)
or the technical specialists from NMF (who work midnight to noon), but there is
a core group of people at work during the night hours who end up spending
substantial amount of time together. This group doesn’t change much over the
course of the cruise, because the time it takes to adjust to a new sleep
schedule doesn’t allow us to switch shifts when the work has to continue
without a break. Doing the night watch is like trying to adjust to a new time
zone (about 8 hours jet lag), but without the change in daylight hours to help
you.
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| Kurt Polzin of WHOI, working during the night shift. Is he, perhaps, planning another late night rogue station? That is the swath readout next to him, which maps the ocean bottom using acoustic signals. |
During the night watch, CTD and VMP
measurements continue as in the day, but no mooring work is done. We probably
also spend more time in transit during the night, and weather can be more
problematic during the night (because it is harder to see, for example when
waves make instrument recovery difficult). For all those reasons, the night
watch probably has a bit more downtime that the other shifts, which can be used
for processing of past observations or just for reading papers. Or when the
weather is particularly bad, we might just sit in the windows of the CTD room
on the UIC (the warmest place in the lab) and watch the waves crashing over the back deck.
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Night watch deck crew and
technicians (Kevin, Jez, Dougal and Alfie) ready to recover the VMP (microstructure
profiler).
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When we arrive on shift, the instructions
for the night are communicated to us by the previous watch, as determined by
Alberto (the Principal scientific officer) before he went to sleep. However,
during the course of the night, conditions might change, requiring modification
of those plans. Since Alberto and other senior scientific personnel are all
asleep, we have to take the initiative and make decisions without consulting
the rest of the science team. We have sometimes used the time when we’re unable
to make oceanographic measurements due to weather, to better map the bottom
topography (since topography strongly influences the bottom mixing we are
interested in). Kurt in particular likes to suggest possible navigation routes
which allow us to fill in gaps in the available high resolution topographic
maps– sometimes involving numerous turns during a storm with accompanying
rolling (but we’re not trying to sleep, so no problem!) On one occasion our new
topography data led us to move a planned CTD station into a more interesting
location, and at this “rogue station” at the deepest point of a ridge, we found
strong flows and very cold bottom water.
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Tiago (on left, with back to camera), Alex and Nikki, working
hard in the UIC lab during night shift.
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Because the night watch often consists of
long hours with relatively little in the way of entertainment, small diversions
become especially memorable. A couple of nights ago Carlos the motorman caught
two stunned birds in one night – one a large albatross, one a much smaller
petrel, both of which spent time in his cabin until they were ready to fly
away. Last night, a southern right whale came very close to the ship while the
CTD was in the water (Craig the winch operator had to move the CTD wire out of
its way), and we were able see its entire rotund body underwater in the ship’s
lights, callosities and all. The night we spent riding out a big storm was like
a show of waves and foam across the back deck laid on for our entertainment.
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| Second officer Georgina and winch operator Craig in the CTD portion of the UIC. |
Being on the night watch doesn’t just
determine what we do during our work hours; it also sets the pattern for our
off hours. Most of us sleep from the afternoon until midnight, thereby missing
dinner. Instead we eat our microwaved “dinner” in the early hours of the morning
in the duty mess. My favorite time of the night watch is dawn, which is now
after 7am. Finally, 7 hours after staggering out of bed, I feel like I am
awake! Breakfast, which occurs during our watch, marks the beginning of the day,
when we see other people; some members of the night watch spend several hours
anticipating the breakfast bacon. At 8am we hand over to the next watch, and
have a chance to relax, exercise and go outside (especially important to get
some daylight when we see so little of it). Our main meal is then at lunch, and
after lunch many of the night watch members are found in the bar socializing
over beer and crosswords. Then it’s time for bed in mid-afternoon, aided by
black window blinds; waking up in the dark is a lot harder, for me at least! At
this stage in the cruise, we are as well-adjusted to night watch as we will
ever be, and happy to be contributing to the round-the-clock data collection,
but I for one am dreaming of staying in bed until sunrise!
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| Sonya in the lounge during her 50th birthday on 13 April (well after her night shift was complete). | . |
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