Sampling!

Hi All-

Sorry for the lack of correspondence, we had a gigantic thunderstorm the other day. It started pouring rain and then hailing. The thunder was so loud it shook the walls of the lab. It was really impressive and when on for at least an hour or so... long story short, it knocked out all of our communications (phone, internet, etc.) for a bit. The storm brought in a cold front. I'm not sure the exact temperature this morning, but if it says anything about the temperature, it was too cold for even the mosquitoes to come out!

Today was my first day that I actually got to go out in the field ... well at least on Lake Toolik. We took a boat out this morning to do temperature profiles, plankton towes, and water sampling at different depths. I learned how to use the Van Dorn water sampler. It is a pretty nifty device. It is essentially a tube with a door on either side that are both held open by a latch on the top of the collecting tube where the string is attached. To collect water, you lower the tube down to the depth of water you want to collect and then drop a metal guide down the line that hits the latch on the top of the tube and closes the doors. You then haul the tube full of water back up into the boat and put the water into sampling containers. That way you can collect water in even depths going down in the water column.

When I got back in the afternoon, I had a quick lunch and then went straight to standard and reagent preparation for the phosphate analyses. People are ramping up the number of samples they are collecting and today was a phosphate analysis day! Unfortunately, we are still having some glitches with the machine, although my standards aren't looking too shabby if I may say so myself! The R-sq of my standard curve today was 0.9990, but the base line for the curve was negative....I have no clue why. The machine has really been jumping around on readings with just deionized water, so something is going on. Hopefully the PI for the project will be able to help! She arrives tonight!