Bikini sampling

….well….actually the temperatures are not THAT high yet, but soon. Ă–hm, probably. Spring is finally here, which is actually the topic I wanted to write about. Choosing that headline as introduction was just for the purpose of getting as many clicks as possible and breaking the current click-high-score 🙂 Yet, the idea is indeed worth spending a proper thought. Hmmm, I might come back to it in, let´s say, mid June.

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Spring finally arrived in Kristineberg. Pictures: Dana Hellemann, GEOMAR.

Now, that trees and birds recognized that it is finally time to become green, resp. sing and mate, the spring bloom in our mesocosms is slowly coming to an end. To catch every little detail on the bloom and its development in the mesocosms we went through weeks of long working days, spending hours on the water and in the labs. The summer lab was (and still is) buzzing and steaming of productivity with a constant exchange of the latest results between the flowcytometer-, sediment-, filtration-, nutrient-, CTD-, zooplankton- and microbial-people, running around just like busy bees, escaping the lab only for dinner times. And maybe a quick coffee break in the sun. General conversation topic: the bloom. In specific: what was just found in a sample, usually the starting point of a dedicated and passionate discussion, carried out during breakfast/lunch/dinner, on the floors/in the lounge/at the party. Uuuups, wait party?

Well, though the main characterization of us, “The Germans”,  is, that we are working ALWAYS (and eat hell of a lot, but that´s another topic), we somehow managed to celebrate sampling day t54, being the middle of our planned sampling days.

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KOSMOS people (aka “The Germans” though not exclusively being German) and Kristineberg friends at the Bergfest/ half-way-through-celebration. Picture: Andrea Ludwig, GEOMAR.

Back to schedule the next morning, not to miss a single sampling day and maybe a key happening of the bloom. “You know….you guys….are tough! How do you DO that?!” Well, the secret is probably a strong mixture of work dedication and team spirit, combined with a good portion of nerdyness and a constant flow of coffee and chocolate. But as Lenni said in an earlier entry: after all the problems at the beginning we really deserve a bloom! And we got on. Lucky us, no matter how tough the days have been. 

Coming back to the dresscode of sampling…..instead of going directly from heavy undersuit to Bikini, we kept the order and changed from heavy to light and even partly to no undersuit, leaving woolen hats and woolen socks finally on shore. Spring is here, no doubt about that. 

By Dana Hellemann