Aloha to All!

Your journals have been great! I truly enjoyed reading about the jellies as we too have had quite a large number of them these days in our warm waters. I didn't realize that jellies had such a far northerly distribution!

I also enjoyed reading about the coincidental encounter with the Dyson. Wow, so many scientists concentrated in that small point on the earth. Wouldn't it have been cool if you could have had a symposium at sea?

I see Dr. David and Liz L in your photos. Aloha out to them both. I was wondering if Dr. David could answer a question I have about the ocean floor. After reading your journal on how one of the experiments uses a concentrated saline solution as the base to collect sediment, I thought about something I had read about a few years ago, namely that there is a layer of concentrated brine on the ocean floor from the poles towards the equator. That the layer is caused when sea ice releases the salt when oceans go from liquid to solid (ice). True or not?

And along that same line, does that mean the sediment cores Dr. David brings up are saturated with super saline solution? Or just regular ocean water?

Lastly, have Liz and Sopie seen any albatross yet? The fledglings on Midway Island are HUGE these days!

Keep up the excellent work!

warmly, Maggie

Mark McKay

Hello I directed your question about deep brine layers to Dr. Shull. He tells me that in the area we are at the salinity on the bottom stays close to what we see with the CTD sampler. This is due to the fact that at least in this region there is significant amount of mixing occurring. So any concentrated brines that are created as a result of sea ice formation at the surface become mixed with the rest of the seawater as they sink. The core samples he is taking have the same salinity at the surrounding waters.
I was on the bridge with Liz Lubunski earlier. She reports that she and Sophie Webb have seen about eight Laysan Albatross. I have seen a couple myself.  They tend not to get too close to the ship. Both Liz and Sophie are very experienced “birders” as you know and it is amazing how many more birds they can see and identify then I can (lol). There have been a fair amount of Murres and Kittiwakes around. More so now that we are near the Pribilof Islands. I will let you k now when we see more.