We’ve only just begun

Preparing to cast CTD. I’m the one with the green safety hat

It’s another day at the FS Meteor and although it’s been only 4 days since we left Cape Town – South Africa – which is a beautiful place that I have to come back again – , it feels that we are here for weeks now. I don’t know if it’s the great interaction between everyone or the exhausting hours of work. Either way, let’s face it: with a sunset like this, in Fig. 1, there’s not much to complain. So far we’ve seen whales, dolphins, jellyfishes, a seal having a feast with fishes and some squids last night. The richness of nationalities within this ship gives us a great chance to know the daily routine and behavior of other people’s culture and learn from it. I’ve never thought I would listen to Brazilian music owned by a Greek guy who works in Germany for over 50 years.

Sunset somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean

Sunset somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean

As I said we are now on our fourth day at sea and with more than 5000 meter layer of water below us, we’ve been doing underway casts of XBT and uCTD constantly, besides stations of CTD every now and then. And that’s only my physical oceanographer view. So much more is happening every minute that we can’t keep up to all of it. Personally, my project includes evaluate the sea water masses through our path from Africa to South America and, from a numerical ocean modeler point of view it has been an afraid, yet great challenge to work with raw in situ data. Besides this is my first chance to actually put my hands into work to prepare and deploy the instruments, which so far it’s my favorite part!

One thing that really called my attention is how careful the crew is with our well being. The security protocols really do their job, everything is so clean, they are really available to sane all of our questions, the food is absolutely delicious and the ship really have everything to assure you are well taken care of. As you probably know, we are heading to Rio de Janeiro – Brazil and we are expecting to get there by March 18th. While I’m heading home, most of the cruisers don’t know Rio and I hope they can have a wonderful time at my city. To hear more from us, stay tuned daily for posts of the FS Meteor M124 cruise.

Lívia Sancho

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