10 Days on the R/V Pelican: CES student participates in annual hypoxia cruise

BATON ROUGE - Raven Worley, a fourth-year student in Coastal Environmental Science, took a trip to remember when she worked on the annual Gulf Hypoxia Cruise, the annual sampling expedition to measure the Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico. The expedition was headed by Department of Oceanography & Coastal Sciences, or DOCS, Assistant Professor Cassandra Glaspie. DOCS Professor Nancy Rabalais and and Professor Emeritus Eugene Turner served as co-lead scientists on the cruise.

Worley, from Baton Rouge, LA, spent 10 days on the R/V Pelican, working with her fellow researchers - which included two fellow CES majors as well as CC&E graduate students - to sample water from around the Northern Gulf of Mexico. Their mission was to discover the extent of hypoxic waters this year.

CC&E caught up with her to talk about her experience on the cruise. The following conversation has been edited for clarity.

So, was this your first time out in the field on a trip like this?

It's not my first time being out in the field, but it was the longest trip I've taken, and the furthest I've been off the coast.

How did you get involved in the trip?

I have always enjoyed field work and wanted to see if I could do a more extensive trip like this.

I joined [Cassandra Glaspie’s]  lab through an internship I was doing with USGS and CC&E, while I was a student at Baton Rouge Community College. So I learned very early on that she was doing the hypoxia cruise, and it always seemed interesting because it was really an important topic that involves our coast. I completed the internship after transferring to LSU and now I'm an undergraduate researcher in her lab. Everything happened to work out and I was able to join this year's cruise.

So, since this was your first trip this far from the coast, what were your strongest impressions? What was it like?

It was a very relaxed environment. I was kind of worried [because this was] my first time being around everyone... in a different type of work setting. Overall, everyone was really helpful and kind, and we had a lot of fun. I think having a good science team and boat crew made the research experience even better.

Take us through your daily routine.

So we have a day crew and a night crew, and I was placed on the night crew. We would get up at 2 p.m. an hour before our shift started at 3 p.m. [and] eat our breakfast, or whatever we chose to do during that time. When we got to our stations, we'd all put our safety gear on - hard hats and life vests - and then go out. First we’d deploy the CTD [a sampling instrument] and while that is happening we would also collect surface water samples and do the Secchi disk, which lets us lets us know the visibility in the water column then after the CTD comes back on the boat, we would lower the YSI attached to a niskin bottle (that collects bottom water sample). And then we'd come back in and start our lab jobs, I was in charge of processing water for nutrient samples. I would rinse two vials with a surface water sample and fill them and repeat the process for bottom water samples and put them in the freezer, and then wait for the next station.

How many sites did you visit every night and how deep down did you sample?

We probably had ten or less sample sites a night, with a transit time from 30 minutes to an hour between each site. The deepness of the sites varied and sometimes it was as shallow as 15 to 20 meters, and other times it was as deep as 40 or 50 meters.

What was the biggest thing you’ve learned in terms of research, and being a scientist?

I think that the cruise overall gave me a better understanding of how our head scientists handle big projects. I got to learn how they plan the cruises or research trips out, what they look for and how they choose different sites. And so that gave me a lot of understanding of what all they have to do to even get out there. It kind of connected everything together.

What was the most surprising thing about your experience?

I was worried about getting seasick, but I didn't realize how bad it can actually be. We [had] some bad weather that started before the night shift and I happened to be asleep, so I didn't have time to take an extra Dramamine dose beforehand. When I woke up, and the weather was already bad. It was not a pleasant experience but I was able to learn from it… Thankfully, the next time Dr. Glaspie she woke me and a few others who also had similar experience previously up to make sure that we had an extra Dramamine dose before the weather got bad, which I thought was really sweet of her.

On a lighter note, the GlaspieLab’s social media featured a post about you all watching a little bit of the Olympics during down time. What did you watch?

We watched a lot of swimming and gymnastics. We [also] watched judo. It's a very unique sport because it happens so quickly. And it was interesting and funny because we had internet on the boat, but not very much, so we would have to spend five minutes waiting to download the rules of judo while watching the match to understand what was happening.