Saba Bank Expedition: Small lab science

Steven van Heuven
Tuesday 27 October 2015

Our titration lab in the 'boatique'

Among seagoing oceanographers, it is generally assumed that personal comfort during cruises (we like to call them 'expeditions') scales with the size of the research vessel: small ships have people share huts and eat deep fried food, while larger ships may have luxuries ranging from mere pools and gyms to small grocery stores (generally liquor only) and bakeries preparing fresh pastries and cake every day. Our current makeshift RV, the live-aboard Caribbean Explorer II does not fit along that line. It a vessel of only some 30 meters long, but WITH the freshly baked cookies, bread and cake, excellent food and deserts, bedding service AND featuring a rather oversized (saltwater) pool at tropical temperatures. And they even allow diving harhar.

Are there no drawbacks then? Should every country get on board with the microship-revolution? Well, if there is a single complication about this boat, its that on with all that luxury there is little room left for anything else, LEAST OF ALL labspace. Bringing any more electronics than your underwater camera means you'll be working in the mess (locally referred to as the dining room) between meals.

For the one team on board that had hoped to be able to set up a small instrument in air-conditioned conditions this initially meant TOUGH LUCK – the dining room is not airconned, and it actually rather HOT and HUMID. After consulting with the crew – in particular the exceedingly cooperative, friendly, hospitable purser Rob – we were granted unique round-the-clock access to the ship's souvenir shop (the 'boatique' O_o), well stocked with various tourism paraphernalia (shirts, caps) at bewildering prices. Some of that was cleared away into tall, towel-covered piles to make place for our super fancy optical alkalinity titration setup.

Fresh samples to be processed

This new instrument, conceived by Sherwood Liu, our Floridian colleague and fellow passenger during week 1, allows us to perform highly precise and accurate measurements of the seawater property called 'alkalinity'. Whereas the classical super-expensive titrators would require 2 meters of bench space in a climatized laboratory and use dozens of liters of distilled water, the new instrument can be installed on the small table originally displaying 4 baseball-caps, and it consumes nothing but a single box of tissues per day (my regular rate anyway).

And that's how I found myself taking turns with colleagues Alice and Didier titrating and bubbling colorful little pots of seawater in a lab too small to fit a chair, but no less happy about it all.

Steven's Award

BYE! Steven