April Field Work: Complete

We spent most of this week in the field to conduct our bimonthly (every two months) field work across the Mississippi Sound, the third of potentially seven trips. On today's trip we saw water spouts, seagulls argue over food, and a pelican who was eyeing the BlueBoat, as if to land on it while the boat was on its transect, all captured by our wonderful Science Communication and Outreach Coordinator, Megan. We are now about to send the BlueBoat back for what we expect to be its final updates: some handles for easier deployment and retrieval, additional holes to deploy the nitrate sensor lower in the water, a new mount for our incoming water quality sensor, bumpers to protect the boat's pontoons, and some protective coatings on existing hardware. We have been really pleased with how the boat traverses calm and choppy conditions and we can't wait to get the boat back with these final updates.

Unfortunately, I didn't get great pictures this week but I will share the lovely bridge shot that I took. Many of our transects follow bridges, because they make great straight lines for our BlueBoat to follow. This bridge is in southern Alabama, along a river that flows into Mobile Bay, and a key nutrient outlet for our colleagues' hydrodynamic model.

There will not be a blog next week, so stay tuned for the next post on April 30th about upcoming events at the lab and our summer plans.

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