Maitreyi Nagarkar has been writing letters to her friends and family while on the cruise, and she has been drawing pictures in the letters. She’s letting me use some of the diagrams for the blog! Hopefully some of these awesome drawings will help clarify what we’re doing out here!

Maitreyi first drew the back deck. This is where all the main operations happen:

DSCN0211

She also drew the sediment traps and plankton nets:

DSCN0206 DSCN0218

But Maitreyi spends most of her time working on the CTDs with the other chemists and the trace metal team.

Here is the main CTD rosette:

DSCN0210

And how we deploy and recover it (bonus points for Maitreyi drawing herself in safety gear on the deck):

DSCN0213 DSCN0214

As it deploys, the CTD measures the temperature at multiple depths:

DSCN0219

And at different depths, the Niskin bottles “fire,” which means that they close, containing water at that distinct depth.

DSCN0209 DSCN0208