Li Ling – Jan 12:
Wednesday the 12th was a full scheduled day for especially the people working with CTDs. CTD stands for Conductivity, Temperature and Depth and is a classic oceanography instruments measuring the conductivity, temperature and pressure of seawater. These measurements allow oceanographers to derive the salinity of the water, and (to me) magically identifying the separate water sources included in the sea water sample!
On this cruise there are two CTDs, a conventional one (it is HUGE!) and a smaller one that ARTEMIS group brought with them. The ARTEMIS CTD is free from any metal, since they want to measure trace metal in the water column. On the ship CTD, there are also some other sensors attached, like L-ADCP, pH sensors, etc. all for oceanography measurements.
The ship CTD being lifted out from the water seen from the starboard A-frame (The grey bottles can collect water samples that the chemists onboard will be interested in):
For scale, this is Matt (MT – marine technician from ASC) carrying a water sampling bottles on the ship CTD, Daisy (TARSAN) is opening the door:
For the RAN side, Anders, Mark and Anna has been busy today testing the upward-looking ADCP sensor that will be mounted on RAN. ADCP stands for “acoustic Doppler current profiler”. It is similar to sonar and uses Doppler effect to measure the velocity of water currents. Everything seemed to be working fine, so the ADCP will be mounted on RAN in the next few days!
Anders with the ADCP (the blue thing in the bucket)
