Station 1: all hands on deck!

It’s always a bit of chaos at the first sampling station; a mix of stress and excitement as the first CTD is lowered, and we get the first glimpse of what lies beneath us. Today’s agenda relies on maximum efficiency from all the scientists and deck crew as we race against the clock until the early hours of the morning to sample, collect, filter, observe, incubate, store, and repeat. And somewhere in between, make time to go to the kitchen for an ice-cream as it’s ice cream day today!

Today we recorded very productive waters in the upwelling area off the coast of Namibia with lots of tiny critters and marine ‘snow’ (particles). This was good news for our zooplankton expert Marja Koski from DTU (and her sidekick Manuel from VU Amsterdam), who is researching how zooplankton influence the ocean's export and sequestration of carbon, particularly through diel vertical migration, respiration and faecal pellet production!

Looking at plankton diversity through a microscope.

Another beautiful day of sampling with a modified 55 micron WP2 net (left) and Marja concentrating the plankton (right), including her precious copepods!