Watch-lady
Normally I’m in the laboratory fractionating chlorophyll, but for today I changed tasks. It was early in the morning, as we started loading the van with all our equipment for today´s sampling. There are numerous small and big cooling boxes, a small armada of integrated water samplers, the Niskin sampler, plankton nets, pumping hoses, the fluoroprobe and the CTD, Andrea's and Kai's baby. It measures vertical profiles of several parameters, such a temperature, salinity, fluorescence, oxygen and pH. Everything is packed onto three boats that go out for sampling and then they are ready to leave harbour. I drove the van up to PLOCAN and since I was in a hurry to get to the voice radio to take my duty as today’s watch-lady, I parked in the first available place on two slots. I can get away with it though because it is Saturday and not many people work here on weekends. Except for us, the crazy KOSMOS crowd, running a huge experiment in the military bay area in front of the airport. But if you want to save the planet you got to set your goals. ;)
Then I headed to the office to take on my duty. It means that I sit in the office and take care of the voice radio system. Every outgoing or incoming calls the watchman - or in my case watch-lady – to report which boat it is, who is on board and what is their mission. This all works out fine and as I am sitting here, watching over the harbour, I start wondering what else to do. Just then I remembered that I could use the opportunity to write a blog entry before this amazing study is over, and this is happening now.
