July 20, 2012
We are in Brazilian waters!!!!!
WE DID IT!!! This may not seem like a huge feat at first glance but for us it really is. We have been trying for three years now to get samples in Brazilian waters and now it is happening. There is a huge hole in our data set that we can now finally fill. Everyone is in pretty high spirits. We just got done with our first set of sample collection and now we are processing. The last station (We call each part of the ocean that we sample at a station. They are based on GPS coordinates and each station gets its own number.) was an open ocean, blue water station (high salinity with not a lot of life in it) and now we are heading back into the plume. Soon we will start zigzagging in and out of the plume until we get the mouth! I am pretty excited!!!! Then we will cross the equator. More about that later…
Also, I feel a little bit better. Still sick though.