| Starting way back in say.... last autumn sometime, the subject of NMTs participation in NEAQS (New England Air Study) came up. The study was to be conducted using data collected from land based, air based, and sea based instrument platforms. NMTs job was to work part of the sea based array aboard the R/V Ronald H. Brown. As the semester moved a long, I was asked to join the Professor I work for (Dr. Oliver Wingenter) onboard ship for part of the cruise. I (of course) accepted. the result is the following series of photographs that document the events of my summer in a much more exciting light than what really happened. (Life aboard any ship other than a cruise liner is only exciting under 3 scenarios: 1) You meet another, cool looking ship. 2) You are caught in a storm. 3) Something breaks. The rest of the time things are very mundane and monotonous.) |  |
 |  The above the pictures are of the Brown, the ship I was on. The photos are of portside, stern, and looking across the fantail, respectively. I spent about 2 weeks on the Brown. The rest of the summer was spent working in less (or more) exciting places: Socorro, Charleston SC, Portsmouth, and Mt. Pleasant MI. |
 Here's a couple of pictures of my "stateroom" more affectionately known as my "rack". One of the things I picked up on was that the crew seemed much more willing to help you if you sounded like you knew what you were doing. The toilet is the "head", ropes are "lines", cables are "wires", the floor is the "deck", the dining room is the "scullry", the kitchen is the "galley"..... you get the picture. Curiously enough, the Boson's Stores are NOT the "Foc'sle," however. |  |
 |  |
 | The pictures on the top right and left are of some of the insturments we had in our lab. There are more pictures in an analog format that I will post here as soon as I get them developed and scanned. The picture on the right is of the equilibrators, which extract trace gasses from sea-water. The picture on the left is of the instruments themselves. Depending on when you looked, we had 2 chromatographs going, one connected to a Mass Spectrometer, the other hooked up to a Flame Ion Detector and an Electron Capture Detector. We were measure the concentrations of Hydrocarbons and Halocarbons in both the atmosphere and the ocean. This information will allow us to decide if the chemicals were man-made pollutants or naturally produced by phytoplankton. The picture on the lower left is a picture of the ship's plume, which was visible to the horizon. A great deal if care was taken to avoid sampling our plume, even if it meant we had to make a long turn prevent crossing it. |
 On board ship, there were signs all over the place. Most of these signs were merely to assign something a common label that could be used as reference for repairs or an emergency, so that everyone was clear on what was being talked about. However, a few signs had less significant importance. These are some examples. |  |
| One of the coolest things about the trip was the wildlife. On the last 24 hours or so of the trip, we saw tons of flying fish (they are just like chickens), dolphins, and glowing plankton in our propwash. Here's a picture of some dolphins that I didn't personally see, but was caught in a photo by someone else. | |
| We took a short side trip up to follow the turret of the USS Monitor into Norfolk. We were also joined by this patrol boat, the Chinook the rails on the back are for a Zodiak that spent it's time rooster-tailing small boats that dodged between the barge and the ships. Note the really big exhaust ports at the waterline. |  |
 |