NOAA Teacher at Sea
Kevin McMahon
Onboard NOAA Ship Ronald H. Brown
July 26 – August 7, 2004
Mission: New England Air Quality Study (NEAQS)
Geographical Area: Northwest Atlantic Ocean
Date: August 3, 2004
Weather Data from the Bridge
Lat. 43 deg 38.65 N
Lon. 69 deg 43.93 W
Heading 096.4 deg
Speed 7.9 kts
Barometer 1009.84 mb
Rel Humidity 99.47%
Temp. 16.5 C
Daily Log
0635 hours and we are in dense pea soup fog.
1120 hours. We have been delayed by the fog but are now underway at a very slow speed, fog horn sounding every minute. The ship need to travel about 10 miles to the entrance to Boothbay harbor so that we can put ashore by launch one of the scientist and bring back to the ship another of the NOAA scientist who has been working at Pease.
I am starting to hear other fog horns in the distance. I spent some time on the bridge. The radar’s give a very accurate view of what’s around us, shoreline as well as vessels large and small in the area, but still it is not perfect and hence the need to proceed slowly.
We made it in very close to the entrance to Boothbay Harbor. I was hoping to get some pictures of the area but we were entirely fogbound. One scientist was sent ashore at approximately 1330 hours but then the return of the launch with the replacement took longer than anticipated. Apparently they became lost in the fog on their return to the ship.
We spent most of afternoon south of the Boothbay area traveling in an east west pattern taking air and water samples. We seem to slide into and out of dense fog…
I spent about an hour today on the bridge. The ability to track and identify an object at sea is so common now that it is taken as a guarantee of safety. The personnel on the bridge made it abundantly clear that it is not.
It is amazing to me that the same technology which is used to see and identify ships at sea is in a way the same technology that allows many of the scientists onboard to identify and measure many different species of chemical compounds.
Question
What size are the smallest particles we can measure in our Chemistry lab at Grady H.S.?
