We're in Glacier Bay National Park, spent a wonderful week on the water checking out the park, and now it's to work. Having a few camera difficulties, but I hope to post some photos of the park pretty soon.
We have 2 days to get ready, monday morning bright and early we're off on the boat for two days. Today we spent the day building and preparing the camera we'll use to drop onto potential coral sites. The camera was sent to us by Kathy Scanlon at USGS Woods Hole, and neither Stian or I had seen it before, so it's been an adventure putting it all together.
The little shed out the back of the National Park Service buildings where we've been storing the camera system and getting it ready to go.
Lights, camera, action! Plugging it all together...and...it works! Next stop, the waters of Glacier Bay National Park!
The CTD, another instrument we'll be deploying alongside the camera system. This instrument collects data on temperature, salinity, depth and dissolved oxygen and has been loaned to us by Bob Stone from the Auke Bay Laboratory in Juneau. This will give us some good environmental data from sites where we see cold-water corals, or where we don't see cold-water corals within the bay. In the future we hope to be able to predict where to find corals based on environmental and geological data alone, so all these little pieces of the puzzle will help us in that goal. More about this little piece of equipment later!
More news tomorrow as we get our sites in order and get things ready to go!
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