Daily Journal

July 11, 2010

By David M. Lawrence

For most of the expedition, we had been lucky with the weather. We'd see squalls around us – and maybe we'd get a bit of rain here and there, but it rarely lasted long.

The past couple of days have been quite different. We've been in and out of squalls since yesterday afternoon. We've seen them on our radar. We've watched them on the horizon. We've been entertained by spectacular light shows with flashes and even bolts from distant and not-so-distant storms.

But for much of last night and this morning, we got rained on a lot. Some watches have been luckier – when C Watch took over for midwatch last night at 2300 hours, we saw the lights, but didn't feel the heat or moisture. When C Watch took over for afternoon watch today at 1300 hours, we walked out onto a bright sunny sky – a huge difference from what B Watch had been experiencing as late as noon.

Of course, C Watch may feel steamed like a lobster in an hour or so as the moisture tries to evaporate from the deck, but at least the C-dawgs (as they call themselves) won't swelter with their foulies on.

We're less than two days from Bermuda now. Even though we continue to do neuston tows, the primary scientific activity is wrapping up chlorophyll and nutrient analysis of water samples collected during the surface stations. On deck, crew are cleaning bits of the ship that don't normally get much attention during the cruise.

I'm trying to keep up with my writing and editorial responsibilities, but I've been asked to do the hourly plastic observations during the watch. Lest you think I'm about to enter into a rant or a whine, my first hourly obs (a bit late at 1317 hours) reminded me of something that I've been meaning to write about for some time – the ever-changing color of the ocean.

OK, let me backtrack here. Physically, the color of the waters of the Sargasso Sea have not changed since we've moved a good bit away from the influence of upwelling around and runoff from Bermuda. The apparent color, however, changes a lot as lighting, cloud cover, and other factors affect the characteristics of the light striking it.

In bright sunlight – no shadow, no glare – the water is a deep, dark blue. The closest named color I can find to what I see is the color "Sapphire Blue" in my verison of Adobe Illustrator. As the sun strikes it, and with the ripples and waves driven by the wind and swell, the blue pattern breaks up into a mottled and moving montage of sapphire blue, white, and gray.

At night, the palette is usually much simpler. The water is black, except where it reflects the light of the moon or planets, then you get flecks of yellow and white superimposed on the waves. Often, the crests of waves, when they break, catch the light and refract it in unique ways that are almost impossible to describe. Of course, when bioluminescence is present, the dark waters are turned a bright yellowish-green – usually in the turbulence of the ship's bow waves, but you can also see mysterious flashes from unknown and unknowable sources in the depths below.

At sunrise and sunset, the creeping rays of the day star turn the waters on fire with vivid yellows, oranges, or reds mixing with blues of the water itself and the white of the foam on the breaking waves above. The reflection of the sky's colors in the foam are like that last little bit of spice that turns an ordinary okra soup into a first class, exquisite gumbo. At times some of our photographers have been able to capture it, but our images are inadequate in comparison to the real thing.

Finally, there's the effect of the weather. On overcast days, a light blue patch of water may indicate a break in the clouds. A darkening – almost to black – of the water suggests and usually is the shadow of a cloud. And on days like today with lots of cloud cover, the gloom of the sky is reflected (figuratively and literally) in an ashy gray sea.

Today the big news is that we are celebrating another birthday – that of second mate Colleen Allard. In her honor, the ship's company began a whist tournament (Colleen is a mean whist player) in the main saloon at 1400 hours. After the second round of the tournament, the players took a break. Refreshments, including a pepperoni-pizza themed cake, were brought up on deck and everyone, including the science crew – who had a neuston net in the water at the time – had their share.

Athena Aicher eventually won the whist tournament. Most important, though, is that Colleen had a good time.

Today we had another ship pass relatively close by – within a few nautical miles. As it disappeared beneath a bank of towering clouds to our west, I noticed an effect of the curvature of the Earth. The last I saw of the ship were its masts. The rest of the ship – its hull – had dipped below the horizon, hidden by the great arc of the Earth's surface.