Cruise Day

Yesterday was an unplanned cruise day. Santa Monica Bay is experiencing “Bloom Conditions”, which means that the phytoplankton, mostly diatoms, are growing faster than usual. The water is green, yucky, stinky with diatoms, the organisms I study. Blooms happen several times a year, often in the spring. We don’t exactly know what the conditions are that trigger blooms but we’re working on that. Technology is improving so that we are aware of blooms in advance. By this, I mean that we have access to satellite images that measure the amount of chlorophyll (the stuff that makes plants green) in the water. During “normal” conditions, the images are blue, i.e. low chlorophyll. During bloom conditions, the areas with high chlorophyll, i.e. high biomass of phytoplankton, is red.

Earlier in the week, the folks from UCLA’s atmospheric sciences department alerted those of us in the biology department that the water was turning “red” — not the water exactly but the satellite images. The boat schedule was consulted then a cruise scheduled for yesterday. I got up at 5:10, rushed around the house while trying to wake up, left with a cup of steaming tea at 5:45. It’s amazing to me that even at that early hour we only travel 35 mph on the 405. Would I have to leave at 5:00 a.m. to have an easy drive on that freeway?

At 6:30 I pulled into the marina, unloaded my sampling bottles and measuring instruments, took two trips to carry them to the boat. By my second trip the people from Atmospheric Sciences arrived, except one who is notoriously late. He didn’t arrive for another 40 minutes, which made the captain grumpy because that just means a longer day. Finally our stray arrived. I settled in the cabin area with a stack of journal articles to read. Normally I stand outside to watch the marina go by, watch the scullers gracefully row their sleek boats across the placid marina water. Once we round the breakwater, I anticipate how nauseous I’m going to be, based on the swell. This time I was involved in my reading and didn’t even notice when we left the harbor; the water in the bay was mostly flat: little chop, little swell.

Ninety minutes later, we arrived at the sampling site: roughly a mile or so due south of Pepperdine University. A brisk wind freshened our cheeks and chilled our wet fingers. The captain drank hot chocolate while we shivered under hoods and jackets zipped to our chins. He wasn’t being mean, just practical. His work was done since we were “parked”. Our work had begun.

The sun came out and warmed us. Hoods were doffed, jackets unbuttoned. Chattering teeth turned to silly conversations and laughter as we passed the time, collecting samples. Two hours later, we turned from the view of the Santa Monica Mountains, rising sharply behind Malibu; the boat headed back to the brown smog of port. We saw one dolphin and two gulls and a diminutive relative of the albatross.

The collecting bottles were much heavier on the return trip from the boat to my pickup in the marina parking lot. Back to the 405, which was much more crowded, and finally exit at Sunset. Park in the loading zone, unload heavy collecting bottles and instruments, park the truck 10 minutes away in my assigned parking area, walk 10 minutes back to get the cart, push it through the building, out onto the sidewalk, to the next building, into the elevator, up one floor, then down the hall to the lab. This process, which takes 30 minutes to get bottles from lab to office and truck to loading zone, will be reversed.

In the lab my helpers were waiting. We filtered 24 liters of water through .6 um pore-sized filters. The water was stinky with diatoms, possibly the kind of diatoms that produce domoic acid, which is fatal to marine mammals. Filtering was slow. My helpers finally left at 5:15 p.m. I didn’t get to leave until 6:00 p.m., only to have to make the hour commute home. My husband understood why I was surly when I finall got home. He cheerfully handed me a martini and answered the phone when it rang.