The Final Countdown

So, our amazing expedition on board of the even more amazing R/V DANA is approaching its end, and I though that the all time classic Europe's "The Final Countdown" would be a great tune for our victorious arrival to the viking lands. Of course, the lyrics have been slightly changed to fit the cruise :)

We're sampling together
But still it's farewell
And maybe we'll come back
To DANA, who can tell?
I guess it is the chief scientist to blame
We're leaving ground
Will things ever be the same again?

It's the final countdown
The final countdown

Ohh

We're heading for Hirtshals and still we stand tall
'Cause maybe they've seen us and welcome us all, yeah
With so many sediment samples to go and cores to be frozen
(To be frozen)
I'm sure that we'll all miss the DANA so

It's the final countdown

It's the final countdown
We're sampling together
The final countdown
We'll all miss DANA so
It's the final countdown
(The final countdown)
Ohh, it's the final countdown
Yeah

Wanted- Dead or Alive, but preferably alive.

Now I want you guys to get excited about eels, especially the European Eel. They are strange creatures that swim all the way from the Sargasso Sea, where they are “born”, to Europe, from where their “parents” came from. And that without any guidance of directions or Google maps and yet they arrive in Europe.

So in the vast oceans between The Sargasso Sea and Denmark scientists have been looking for their favorite little animal and also in hope of finding a “pregnant eel mother” (fish with eggs), as these have never been found. Using a net (picture of enormous net below) and fishing by night (picture of bucket of unidentified slimy stuff) we have tried to catch it.

And this is where the students of this course have found themselves, in the middle of this search, from the Azores to Denmark. All have been excited to contribute in this search, even though it meant working at weird hours (just after sunset and just before sunrise). Just to see the fish-scientists lighting up in the sight of the small eel larvae (if you never seen a scientist excited, they look like kids on Christmas eve/morning getting just the present they were hoping for). Even an environmental engineer and a marine archaeologist can get excited about eels (picture below). 

On our search for The eel, we also found other funny animals. Below is a picture of a good friend of mine, one almost transparent and the other (looking very much the same), in a “house” covered by something that could be purple eggs.

Now I show no pictures of any of the eels, to see them you can visit the Eel expeditions Facebook page, as mentioned in the previous blog post. 

The Danish Eel Expedition

We are sharing our research time on R/V Dana with Mads Christoffersen and Suzanne Hansen who are the remaining members of the major Danish eel expedition across the North Atlantic. Follow their fascinating research on their Facebook page.

Mads and Suzanne looking for eels in plankton samples.

Destination Denmark

After being out in the open North Atlantic all week, we found our way to the shallow waters on the continental shelf and in to the English Channel. We have now completed our very successful sampling campaign and are heading straight for home! Follow us in the tab "Where is Dana now?"

Our route from the Azores, showing all sampling stations. 

Dolphins!!

… and “ohhhh”, “ahhh”, “there”, “look”, “fantastic”, … were the most common words yesterday evening. While we were waiting for the recovery of the box core a group of five common dolphins was swimming around the DANA. They were diving and jumping out of the water – just as you might know from TV documentaries.

 The common dolphin is easily identifiable by its light grey, yellow, or gold colored sides.

Later we saw even more of them further out together with a flock of birds. The experienced crew knows that birds and dolphins often appear together, indicating a rich food site. 

We suppose that our “meeting” in the vast expanses of the Atlantic ocean was a welcome change not only for us!

Written by Anna-Marie

DANA research vessel review

Considering a research vessel? Read first our review about the DANA.

With a crew of 12-18 members and a capacity for up to 26 scientific personal on board, the DANA is the biggest Danish research vessel, with worldwide operation capability. The two B&W Alpha Diesel Type 16V23LU, with a total of 4640 horsepower,  this marine almost beast can achieve a maximum velocity of 15 knots (28 kilometers per hour), which will take your science rocketing around the world.

Detail of the control panel in the motor room

The heart of the beast: the two B&W Alpha Disel Type 16V23LU

The scientific paraphernalia that you’ll encounter on DANA will fulfill all your scientific dreams, from Artic to Geological research, without forgetting about Fishery, Climate and Biological research. The deck is ready for both sampling of sediment by gravity cores and fishing. But nothing is compared to the little terror founded on deck: the Brutallis, a box corer named after its capacity for destruction during high waves! Also, the DANA is equipped with several labs, CTDs, eco-sounders and other high-tech gadgets to support your research. 

Have I mentioned the commodities? The DANA is full equipped, having meeting rooms with luxury leather sofas, gaming room with its own Playstation 3, on-board duty free shops, a kitchen with the finets cuisine of the seven seas and its own gym, where to exercise yourself and play darts and ping pong. You’ll love to play during storms!

From this blog, I totally recommend to seal on board of DANA. If you are a hardcore marine scientist or a whale watching wannabe, need a extremely efficient crew and to improve your field work, DANA is for you!

Ship warming visit

Although it is a science blog, it is time to do a tour of our new house since a week now: 

the Research Vessel Dana.

Welcome ! ! !

Ground floor

Most of the common areas are situated at this floor and therefore it is where we spend most of our day-time.Let's start with the most important: the food-related areas: kitchen and dining room :)

We have breakfast at 7.30-8.00, lunch at 11.30-12.00,diner at 17.30-18.00 sharp.

Per, Jan, Anne and Ingegerd make our stay comfortable with tasty Danish meals and desserts. 

In the kitchen, we meet Per the chef, Ingegerd and Anne the stewardesses in discussion with Diego
In the dining room, Hans and Peter are testing the pineapple mousse.

To reach the different lab's, we need to take a single corridor, from the kitchen in direction of the back of the ship.

On the right, you will find, the "radiotracer lab", where we work with radioactive material and store the geochemistry material; the "sub-bottom/ecosounder/CTD lab", where we can observe the different water masses in the water column with the CTD (salinity, temperature, depth) and the sea bottom with the sub-bottom profiler (the specialist is Lars). 

On the top left: the microscope room, on the top right: the CTD/sub bottom profiler room with Lars
On the bottom left: the fish lab and on the bottom right: the wall where all important info are: weather forecast, science daily plan, cast of the different cores/net/CTD.

 On the left, there are the "wet lab" or "fish lab", where we sub sample, open and describe the gravity cores, and sort the eels larva out of the rest of the net catch; the "microscope lab", where we observe the different minerals, small stones, ash fragments and shells found in the sediment layers.

Let's go out in the deck, where we found the secret place of the crew for the coffee break. This is the relax place to be !

On the top left: Sebastian and Tim relaxing, below: Ingegerd and Tim. On the right, we are on the top of the ship, on the bridge with Thomas.

Second floor
Then, we take the stairs to go 2 floors up ! Some exercises are needed to burn all the rich food we ingest everyday !! We meet Thomas, the chief officer, working on the bridge this morning. Up there, you can find many instruments and screens with mysterious functions (maybe a post would be needed). 


First floor
A floor below, we have our meeting room, where each student presented their PhD-project at home. The big screen is very too sensitive: perfect to draw cartoons but a nightmare during presentations... There is also the new favorite place for the guys: play-station and sofa.

On the left, our meeting room. Just below, Anna-Marie and Melanie playing with the screen. In the centre, the two pictures were taken at the same moment (working ladies and leisure moment for the men).
On the right, the living room, our coffee break place.

Before exploring the cabin area, let's take a tea and a piece of cake in the living room (ground floor).... yes, we are spoiled in this ship. 

Lower floor
A floor below, we have all the cabins of the students and most of the crew. To reach the rooms, we walk along some long narrow yellow corridors...Our woody rooms are quite luxurious : bathroom, comfortable bed, a desk with a big monitor, and a radio. Nevertheless, we spend not much time here... except Marta who is the new specialist for testing beds !!!

The woody cosy cabin that all of us have  (except chief scientist). You should all try to have a shower when the ship is moving... it can be quite acrobatic !

What comes next?
What is missing in this visit? ? ?  The machine rooms and numerous workshops that make the ship moving towards Denmark.... Our next reporter Diego will write about it soon :)

Keep drinking!

Here we are, in the middle of nowhere, doing holes in the seafloor and collecting liters of seawater.

Being in the middle of nowhere means that if you realize that something is missing, you can't go out and buy it. But we are scientists, and we've already planned all the work before boarding. Sure, but if there is no way to use a filtration pump, that means no way to empty the bottles from the previous sampling, than you should start thinking about alternatives. You really want to collect more seawater, from all the different stations, since you really believe it could contain the answer for lots of scientific questions.

Right containers to collect seawater

What to do? Improvise.

And that's the moment in which all the crew is there, ready to help you. "Please, I need ALL the empty plastic bottles to collect seawater, don't throw them away but give them to me! Keep drinking! "
In less than 8 hours, 30 bottles are there, ready to be filled.
(It's turned also out to be a recycling campaign). Thank you to all the crew!

Keep drinking!

 There still are some days remaining to find a solution, but at least the water is there, stored at 4°C, waiting to be processed (I don't want to think about the hard work to bring them back to Aarhus...).

Emergency containers: bottles of water

Having fun onboard

When we are not working (intensively…) on the sampling program, there is time for some fun in the hobby room at Dana. Despite of the waves, Julie and Diego managed to play dart while Cristina and Christof had some fun with the cross trainer. Later they put out the ping-pong table and they had some laughs about that.

Written by Melanie Sønderup

Box core

One of the many things we want to study is the oxygen profile in the very top sediment. For this we use a “box core”, or as the crew has named it “Brutalis” (see picture below), as it is quite dangerous at big swells, as it swings heavily to the side of the ship.

So far we have tried to take box cores 3 times without any luck. The sediment is so hard that “Brutalis” cannot close around it, and therefore the core tilts inside (picture below). A perfect sample would be horizontal and having water on top.

Written by Melanie Sønderup

Some of our activities on the 27th April

In short, yesterday, we finished the description of the first gravity core (last sections), retrieved a short gravity core full of benthic foraminifera, opened it and described this new brownish sediment core.
We also learned how to do crazy knots with Kim :)
In the evening, we collected water from the CTD for Suzanne's colleague, Marta and Fatima. We also try to catch European eel's larva... and found all sorts of different small organisms except the precious ones.... :(

On the left, Kim our knot teacher, with Melanie, Maria, Peter and Anna-Marie. On the right, Christof and Diego opening a new core section. On the bottom, a section of the core full of foram (concentrated especially in the lighter part).

Small squid, jellyfishes, and crustaceans, Fatima in orange protective gear ready for the net retrieval, Cristina helping Marta and Fatima with the CTD water collection. 

Gravity core sub-sampling

As mentioned earlier by Marion, the core sub-sampling was divided into two different procedures : pore water sampling and solid phase (sediment) sampling. It took us the whole day on friday to sample the entire 6m core, and despite a few minor difficulties, the operation was a success!

Pore water sampling

Pore water was collected with rhizons that act a bit like the root of a plant by sucking up water, while the other end is connected to a tube that has been vacuumed. Pore water was sampled every 25cm for the 5 first segments of the core, and then every 10 cm for the upper-most segment, for a total of 30 samples.

Two rhizons connected to exetainers for pore water sampling

We started with the bottom segment of the core and the sediment was so compact that the rhizons would not penetrate! We then had to drill holes through the core to be able to insert the rhizons and everything went well eventually. The pore water was distributed to smaller tubes of different colors, each type corresponding to a specific analysis. The tubes were finally stored at appropriate temperature depending on the analysis to be performed (4°C or -20°C).

Sediment sampling (solid phase)

Small windows of approximately 3-4 cm of width and half-diameter long were cut into the core’s tube to prevail the sediment from being disturbed too much and to minimise the exposure to the surrounding environment. With the use of cut-syringes we sampled specific volumes of sediment – 2mL or 5mL depending on the analysis.

Sampling syringes for the solid phase

Sediment being sampled for solid phase analysis

To stop the methane production by bateria we transfered the sediment into vials containing a saturated solution of NaCl. The sediment sampled for cell analysis was transfered into falcon tubes containing PFA (paraformaldehyde) and a 35 g/L NaCl solution.

Slicing the cores

Today the geologists could start their work on the successfully taken gravity core. On the photos Cristina, Fatima and Christof are slicing the uppermost section in 1 cm slices. Melanie and Peter are labeling zipper bags in which the sediment is stored. They are also taking notes about conspicuous changes or details in the sediments. The geologist found for example volcanic stones, shells of pteropods and molluscs.

Written by Anna-Marie Klamt

The "banana" corer

A gravity corer is not supposed to look like this...

At our second station, the gravity corer encountered a hard layer in the sediments, which severely damaged our equipment. Luckily we have enough spare parts to get it fixed in time before our next planned deployment.

The only solution was to cut through the steel pipe

Despite the trouble we still managed to extract more than 4 meters of sediments!

Gravity core sub--sampling preparation

 Gravity core sub-sampling preparation (24.04.14)

Tomorrow, we will be in the 1st station. We need to get ready when the gravity core will be retrieved on board. Our sediment core sub-sampling consists in two steps: collection of pore water using rhizons and  then sampling solid phase (mud) with syringes. Yesterday our goal was to label all types of tubes, syringes and bags that we need for the different planned analyses !!! With the hands of 7 people, we have never been so quick. 

Labeling  thousand syringes :)

Pore water:

Colorful tubes, one color for each analysis.

Above are the different tubes that we will fill tomorrow with pore water. The white tubes (excetainers) will be used to collect pore water from the rhizons. Then the pore water will be distributed for different analyses. The different colors correspond to a specific geochemical pore water analysis (for example: pink is cations, yellow is sulfide, blue is sulfate, etc..). Each tube has a number (1 to 100), corresponding to a precise depth, where the pore water will be extracted from sediment cores (the number 1 is the 1^stpore-water sample extracted from the bottom of the 1^st core). Don't worry everything will be more clear in the next post !

Solid phase

Marta and Julie, very concentrated and cautious about numbers...

Pre-cutted syringes, which the top has been removed, will be used to sub-sample solid phase from the sediment cores. Here, the students are labelling those modified sterile syringes, from 1 to 100 also. They wear vinyl gloves to avoid contaminating the sterile syringes with microorganisms, or amino acids from their skin. The different planned analyses need either 2.5, 5 or 10 mL of sediment. 

Now it is time to get some sleep. I think everyone is in the arms of Morpheus since a while because we had a great and successful but tiring day with two gravity cores on board !!!!

Hunting the eel

At 2.30 we sampled water from 0-80 meters depth with a large net, hoping to find eel (for a project, not eating!)

We found all sorts of fish, jellyfish, luminescent algae and a mysterious transparent crustacean (almost not possible to the naked eye, if not for its swimming around and moving things on my plate). Strange when you see things moving around "by them-self", but there was no ship ghost, just a silly evil looking crustacean waving at my with its claw. 


Totally worth it getting up at 2 am :-D

As soon as I have pictures I will post some.

First samples!

We left port in Ponta Delgada last night and reached our first station just south of the Azores at around 2 am this morning. After a detailed site survey, we retrieved a 6 meter long marine sediment core, consisting mostly of carbonates. The first sediments are now on board for sampling and description and our scientific cruise is already a success! 

Pre-Cruise Meeting

Fatima introducing the oceanography of the Azores.

All participants have arrived now in Ponta Delgada and our final day on land is dedicated to the pre-cruise meeting. Several lectures were given to introduce the variety of research projects to be carried out during the cruise.