As we find ourselves in various states of COVID19 lock-downs, the mind wanders to other places. As the weather begins to warm up here in Maine, I’m getting excited about the summer months, especially since last year I missed them.
Last summer, I spent my time in South Africa, the Southern Ocean, and Scotland. I was invited to take part SCALE (the Southern oCean seAsonaL Experiment). SCALE is an interdisciplinary experiment, with involvement from institutions across South Africa and a lot of different science happened on the cruises. My role was to run, and teach a PhD student how to run, an underway optical system. This system typically measures absorption, attenuation and backscattering of light, and phytoplankton pigment fluorescence, which are vital for characterising ocean colour and validating satellite remote sensing satellites. Unfortunately for the cruise I was involved in, we didn’t have an instrument to measure absorption or attenuation, but there were other cruises as part of SCALE in which those measurements were made.
I wrote about my experience as part of the cruise for Bigelow’s Transect Newsletter, which you can read here (page 16 of the Newsletter).
Once I was back in Cape Town, I stayed for 2 weeks to work with the team at SOCCO, CSIR to help get the data processing started. I managed to squeeze in some touring around the city and surrounding area. There were some beautiful sites, but also some stark divides in living conditions and culture.
