March 31, 2007...Setting Sail

And...we're off. The 2007 Spring Survey aboard the R/V Lake Guardian has begun. We left our home dock in Milwaukee, WI this morning at 10:30am and are expecting to hit our first station on Lake Michigan around 2:00 this afternoon.

For those of you who are new to my updates, my name is Jackie Adams. I'm a grantee on placement at the U.S EPA's Great Lakes National Program Office (GLNPO). This is my 3rd year out on the Guardian, and I still love it as much as my first time.

Just to give you some background information on what we test for on the R/V Lake Guardian. We're an EPA research vessel that travels around all 5 Great Lakes sampling water. We have a limnology program (water chemistry), and a biology program. My office does the limnology part, collecting water and running board chemistry. We also filter the remaining water and preserve it for nutrient analysis later. The board chemistry is quite simple. We test the pH, alkalinity, conductivity, and turbidity of the water right here on the ship. I'll include some pictures of those instruments later. The biology program monitors for chlorophyll, phytoplankton, benthic (sediment) sampling, and zooplankton. The ship runs much slower than one would think. We actually travel at an average of 12 nautical miles per hour. 1 mile = 0.89 nautical miles, so think around 12 miles per hour.

Like I said earlier, we're scheduled to hit our first station of the survey around 2:00pm today, so I'll post an update later.

If you have any questions while I'm out that you'd like to ask, please feel free to e-mail them to me at: Adams.Jacqueline@epa.gov. I'll answer them as soon as I can get to them. :O)