Happy 4th of July!

Finally we're in the Sea of Cortez and have a small swell. 5-7 ft swells never felt so good even broad side after incurring the full wrath of Douglas. After piecing together what was left of the scientific equipment on deck we're limping back getting what we can out of what's here. We've found some interesting features in the water column here and are giving them a closer look. We aren't allowed to have fireworks out here and if we shot off the flares I think we might have sent the wrong message so we celebrated tonight with this....

With clouds like this who needs fireworks?

We also received some 4th of July gifts we opened a little too late, that will be deployed during tonight's CTD so stand by for photos.


Back onto some cruise stuff...

Jeff and I are investigating oxidative stresses incurred by the communities in the upper euphotic zone. Jeff is handling the physical measurements of the reactive particles we're interested in which involves some complex chemistry. He also has set up some incubations in our only remaining deck incubator (built strong in TN) and we're seeing some interesting physical data out of those as well, so we'll be excited to get back in the lab and tease apart this story. I'm spending the bulk of my time taking water samples and using special stains, fixatives, and cryo preservatives to bring back the communities to the lab. This gives us a close to real time snapshot of what is going on in the community and later on we'll be able to determine "who's there" with the various stains used and also employ molecular approaches to look genotypically for community players, particularly heterotrophs of interest, which can withstand elevated oxidative stress.

For vanity sake- Me in my hood laying down some LDS staining smack on microbes. All fixatives and preservatives (most are very aromatic) we use must be in a well ventilated hood venting to the air outside, so I don't "preserve myself" and live to be a thousand.
Annie is a school teacher from SC who bit off a big chunk to chew for a first cruise. Accompanying as an outreach staffer, she has since gotten her sea legs and has been busily helping Liz Mann with her low oxygen isolations. She's also been helping me occasionally with freezing down samples to mail home. We treat frozen samples for recovery in the lab with a chemical that stabilizes membranes and reduces formation of ice crystals there which can lead to untimely microbial death. Samples are flash frozen (quickly) in liquid nitrogen to minimize freezing damage. Here Annie uses special thermal gloves and steady oceanographer's hands to freeze and handle the samples.