The San Diego Coastal Expedition: Underway!

[caption id="attachment_3544" align="alignleft" width="448" caption="Holiday cheer meets analytics lab."] [/caption]Yes! The ship is loaded with equipment! Scientists! Gear! Instruments! Rubber boots and glass jars! The last couple of days of preparation have been busy. Extremely busy. The ship is loaded with an arsenal of collection nets, a multicorer (which is a fancy name for a deep-sea mud grabber), a cold room (yes, an entire transportable refrigerated room is bolted to the back deck!), a variety of instruments to measure water properties, computers, microscopes, preservatives, and many, many jars of all sizes for preserving specimens. After months of coordination and collaboration, the scientific party boarded the Scripps ship R.V. Melville this morning and got underway (yes! nautical terminology) shortly after 10 am. [More]