So what Professor Lindo and the scientists aboard along with Jessica, Tatiana and Giovanni are doing is collecting water and plankton samples. This will then help them to look out for information about the cross-shelf transport of water and planktonic organisms and in hopes of capturing reproducing events of commercially valuable reef fish like the bluefish tuna. Remember all those picture of the cool equipment they are using? Well the image above is one of them showing cool measurements and exciting findings of our expedition to date. With this students can track with their own smartphones the trajectory of the drifters they are deploying! During a two days journey, these free flowing instruments are following isobaths of the shelf break as they go with the flow, giving some indication of a potential barrier for surface transport of waters across the shelf break! We will explore the dynamics of these invisible barriers the following days!
Today I wanted to take the time out to introduce to you the scientist and professor behind this all, Professor Lindo, a professor in the department of Engineering Science & Physics at City University of New York College of Staten Island who is an expert at Physical Oceanography and Chemical Engineering. Professor Lindo is the one that suggested for us to go aboard the Nancy Foster and explore. Professor Lindo is currently not with the girls and Giovanni but he is attentive of them. First and foremost he is checking that every student is safe, that he/she is feeling good, and that he/she is happy with the tasks he/she is doing. He also explaining them what is known and what we do not know about what they are observing at sea. Due to the different times of work shifts onboard he is technically almost working 24 hours a week. In which he shares that he does it with pleasure and is always excited about the curiosity of students onboard.
