What happened when Laura got stranded in the Midwest

A little fun backstory before I proceed:

Laura and I were on different flights out of the Knoxville Airport leaving NSA. My flight got delayed by more than an hour, so I had to run across the airport, poster tube in hand, to make my flight. Laura wasn’t so lucky, and got stuck in Chicago overnight. Today, I took on the responsibility for water chemistry sampling and system maintenance. My first time flying solo and it wasn’t so bad!

• Water chemistry sampling: 1L grab samples and bottle samples
• Took standard curve measurements first, everything looked consistent with previous iterations of this process
• Quickly poisoned samples while waiting for Rick to get to the office
• Used Rick’s probe to get salinity data
• Cleaned filters
• Bleached algal lines
• Moved probes
• This time I also recorded what time I moved the probes so we could match it to our data
• Drained and vortexxed all tanks
• Found more of that stringy stuff (see below) in Tanks 1 and 2 (the ones closest to the pH monitors). The other times we found this stuff, it was in the same two tank positions. Perhaps it’s something in those lines or valves? Laura and I are going to take microbial samples when we shut the system down.
• Rinsed all oysters with freshwater
• Pulled polychaetes from oyster shell if I saw any. I’m going to ask Chelsea Wood if she can help identify them.
• Found one dead Oly in Tank 2. It was at the bottom of the tank instead of in an oyster bag, so I don’t know what population it came from.

Figures 1-3. That weird stringy stuff found in Tanks 1 and 2. It’s a little difficult to see, which is why I made a box around it.

Figures 4-5. Data collected.

Laura and I are letting the system run for one more week, and then we #shutitdown.