SOCCOM

We’re heading out again!!

SOCCOM is featured on @mbari-blog website! 

Check it out: mbari.org/a-profiling-fl…

SOCCOM featured in University of Arizona article

Our scientist, Hannah Zanowski, reflects on life aboard the Polarstern:

“I guess the most surprising things are all the little details you need to think about that you wouldn’t normally on land.

1. Tie your stuff down. All the time. Always. It will fall down and roll or break otherwise haha.

2. Sometimes keeping yourself in your bed is hard when the ship is rolling a lot.

3. Having to separate trash into burnable vs. non-burnable items. It makes sense but I wouldn’t have thought of it on my own.

4. Don’t stack your plates after meal times. They will fall if the ship rocks too hard.

5. Every ship is different and has it’s own particulars to follow. For example, here we cannot enter the C-Deck mess in our work clothes, and the captain and other main crew members have a particular table designated for them. Smoking is allowed on certain days in certain places (ick).

6. Getting used to the shipboard lingo. “Your polar clothes are ready for pickup on the monkey deck.” Great, where the heck is that? Aren’t they all supposed to be letters?

7. Everything is in German (not surprising really), but the important announcements and signs are in English as well. However not everything is translated so sometimes you just have to guess.

8. Walking is hard. Standing is hard. You should always keep one hand holding on to something when you are moving around, especially going up and down the absurdly steep stairs.

9. Don’t waste fresh water, though you shouldn’t be wasting it on land either…

10. Be on time. If you don’t have your act together it could hold up someone else.

11. There are loads of different types of scientists aboard the ship, not just physical and chemical oceanographers. We have ice corers, biologists, people who are going to take zooplankton catches and who study things that live right under the ice (don’t know what to call them haha), whale watchers…”

This visualization created by Ryan Abernathey, an oceanographer at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, uses data from the Southern Ocean State Estimate to illustrate sea ice thickness (pink) and motion (arrows). Darker blue colors indicate greater salinity in the water below. 

from Princeton Environmental Institute