Greetings landlubbers,
The 2022 SUNRISE cruise is now over and we have made it back to LUMCON in Cocodrie, Louisiana. After a day’s worth of packing and cleaning we are now ready to head home with a ton of great data, cameras full of sunrise and sunset pictures, our bags full of dirty laundry and lots of good memories.
The last week of the cruise started out a bit rocky with plenty of rain and waves. We deployed two Wirewalkers and spent a few days doing transects of various shapes around them gathering a dataset with multiple spatial and temporal scales that we are all very excited about. But it’s also been hard work, between the two ships we’ve done a total of almost 24 900 VMP and CTD profiles, often profiling 24/7.
Profiling with a CTD and a VMP (to the left) from the back deck.
In addition to getting good data we’ve done many other important things such as celebrating Canada Day properly, eating lots of delicious baked goods our eminent chief scientists have made, and taking turns reading the Declaration of Independence out loud on the 4th of July.
One of the many fabulous creations our chief-scientists whipped up in the kitchen.
4th of July reading the Declaration of Independence on the back deck.
Canada day!
The last two days of sampling were dedicated to the students who got to try their hand at being chief scientists. There was a lot of planning happening over slack between the two ships, and some nervousness too. The night crew was handed the reins mid-shift and tasked with finding a good front to sample, which they did brilliantly, and when the day crew took over at 3am there was a nice and sharp front feature to map out. The agreed upon sampling plan involved getting all 4 vessels (2 big ships and 2 small boats) lined up on parallel transects which took quite a bit of coordination.
Chief scientist in training on the Pt Sur bridge.
Profiling come rain or shine.
Students doing a CTD cast aboard the Pelican.
Aboard the Pt Sur and the Pelican we were continuously sampling with our VMPs and CTD, and both the Pelican and the small boats were equipped with very high resolution thermistor chains (a bunch of temperature sensors taped or clamped onto a wire or rope as close as 30 cm apart) to be able to look at the small scale temperature variation in the upper ocean.
One of the small boats and the Pelican in the background.
We kept sampling the same 4 lines for a full inertial period (24h) and managed to capture some interesting variations and changes in both time and space between our 4 boats. In addition we did some larger scale sampling in various patterns and formations to provide more context. The students agreed that it was a great experience and we all learned a lot about everything from leadership to communication, and gained new respect for the intricate process that is collecting good data to do good science.
After the students handed back the responsibility to the actual chief scientists it was time to recover our assets (the two Wirewalkers and the two small boats) and start packing up the lab. After a dramatic last sunset and sunrise, and timing it with the tide, we slowly sailed through the Louisiana wetlands and made port back at LUMCON.
SUNRISE sunrise.
Arrived back in port.
Back at the dock, watching one last sunset, we toasted to what we all agreed was a very successful cruise.
The R/V Pt Sur and R/V Pelican science crews back at the dock after a successful 19 days at sea.
A massive thank you goes out to the phenomenal crews aboard the R/V Pelican and the R/V Pt Sur without whose help we would have had such a good time. Equally, a big thank you to everyone who’s supported the cruise from land and to LUMCON for all their great work.
Over and out from SUNRISE with one last sunrise photo.
Text and photos by Kerstin Bergentz
