Bird day!

Posted: Fri 29th Feb, Describes: Tue 26th Feb
Today (Tue 26th Feb) was rather a lazy day, as I knew the following few days would be very hectic and I wouldn’t have a good nights sleep for ages! So I did some paper reading and bird watching. According to Huw, there were storm petrels (otherwise know as Jesus birds as they look like they walk on water as they skip across it), cape petrels (very pretty white with black trim!) and various kinds of albatrosses including grey-headed and sooty (unusual) ones. They fly alongside the ship, following us, as the wind currents generated by our passage make it easier for them.
Lunch for me was leek and potato soup. It was Adrian’s (another biologist) birthday this time, so dinner (pepperoni pizza and coleslaw) was supplemented by wine again and he got a bottle of whiskey too, though I only saw it when there was only an inch or two left! Another card was produced, signed by everyone again.
Then most people went up to the bar where we chatted for a few hours, until my swath watch again. We were on station (coring again) so I did some swath processing for Tara – this involves looking at many dots on a screen (pings). Good data looks like the bathymetry of the sea floor, but bad data looks more like a spider has been dipped in ink and then crawls across the screen. This can be due to interference with other acoustic systems, bad weather, the ship turning etc. The processing involves going through several lines at a time (the swath pings every second!) and removing the obviously bad pings and smoothing out the noise as best we can, while preserving the data. In most cases we are going along areas that have not been swathed before, so we can’t afford to lose data. My PhD, especially at the moment, mainly consists of looking at this data so I don’t mind processing too much though it is very dull! Processing is a major part of Tara’s everyday job and is a good part of why she is on board, so we all do what we can to make it easier for her, so she can do other more interesting things!
Then it was off to bed, preparing for an early start as we were due to reach BIO station 1 at about 4am, and I would be doing my first proper CTD soon after we arrived.