Entry 03
February 19 2025
Containers, rigs and a fond farewell to Rio
Our containers arrived which means not only do we have equipment but, in our case, we now have a lab. One of my most asked questions is whether the labs are built in to the ship and the answer is yes, many are, but some are also built into shipping containers which can be mixed and matched according to the needs of the specific expedition. That called for a 0500 start today, which was easy due to the excitement we all felt at finally getting going, and all hands on deck (now I understand where that phrase comes from!) to get everything unpacked, set up and tied down to enable us to sail the next morning.
The first order of business was building filtering rigs - we have 8 in total with capacity to process 45 samples at a time, which might seem excessive but is absolutely necessary to do everything we want to do. Most of our rigs are towers connected to a vacuum pump, which uses negative pressure to draw the samples through the filters, but I also brought a peristaltic pump to filter my cartridge filters in-line, which required some clever DIY rigging to stay stable and easy to use.
We finished early and headed out for one final night in Rio - which was bittersweet as we'd come to miss it but we're absolutely ready to get going