Hace unos años, mi amigo Yeray me dijo: "¿Y si creamos un ciclo de charlas semanales en la Facultad de Ciencias del Mar sobre los distintos trabajos que se llevan a cabo en ella?". Me pareció una buena idea y nos pusimos a ello. En seguida nos dimos cuenta que necesitábamos involucrar a la biblioteca para el anuncio y la difusión de las charlas. Avelina, (entonces, bibliotecaria de la facultad) en seguida se unió al proyecto, y entre los tres creamos Ciencia compartida (ver videos). Al principio, nos rascábamos los bolsillos para ofrecer, en la entrada de la sala, café y galletas para convencer a un público tímido a venir cada martes. Hubo suerte y la gente comenzó a venir, e incluso algunos profesores decidieron usar el ciclo como herramienta para sus clases. ¡Y eso que tuvimos que dejar de poner las galletas y el café porque la cestita para recaudar no daba!. Luego, tras dos o tres ediciones, mi amigo y yo, pasamos el relevo a los nuevos estudiantes, quienes desde entonces, han mantenido el ciclo conjuntamente con la nueva bibliotecaria. Así que me enorgullece anunciarles que ¡¡El próximo 22 de Septiembre comienza la SEXTA edición de Ciencia Compartida!!
Comparto el anuncio: ¿Sabías que gracias a la información satelital se puede conocer cuál es el mantenimiento y la variación de las comunidades de fitoplancton? Este jueves 22 de septiembre nos lo cuenta Marco Correa, investigador del Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas y Costeras - Invemar (Colombia). ¡Te esperamos! [+] #BlogBass http://bibwp.ulpgc.es/carlosbas/ de la Biblioteca de la Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria y Ulpgc Para Ti Ciencia Compartida tiene Facebook y canal de youtube. Published on August 10, 2016 in the OSNAP Blog Tonight, during our 2000-0400 shift, my watch-mate and I are feeling like Neil Armstrong; walking into the dark to achieve a better knowledge of the unknown. As we approach our next station, the whole ship shakes due to the high winds and waves, as a spacecraft does on its way up, but more harmonically. After all, the Saturn V had a speed of 21,785 knots while ours is 10 knots; and, while it took Neil Armstrong’s spaceship only 3 days to arrive at the moon, we would take 755 days. Anyway, with this shaking one cannot avoid remembering the lyrics of the serenade from the Steve Miller Band: “Did you feel the wind/As it blew all around you”.
Strong gravitational forces can be felt when going down the steep vertical stairs in these waves, where one must be careful not to fall in front of Neil Armstrong’s picture and make a fool of yourself. When we get out to sample, it is as dark and cold as it probably is in space, but here we also have the wet component. The deep ocean, like space, is one of the least explored areas scientifically and, as such, is also a hostile environment for mankind. Around 2500m depth, water temperatures hover around 1ºC and the pressure is enough to convert a foam coffee cup into a little shot glass. Unlocking the mysteries of the ocean requires a big passion for science – as is true for space exploration. All of a sudden, from the porthole, in the far distance a tiny light appears. It is not a satellite; it shows the position of another ship in this immense solitude of water. It is 0200, and all you can hear is the engine (and some background music in the main lab). We two astronauts of the ocean are launching the rosette into the deep; we also wear a helmet and boots, but instead of a space suit we use a personal floatation device. [The rosette contains a CTD, which is a sensor that measures conductivity (to estimate salinity), temperature and depth; a LADCP that measures the ocean currents using sound (the Doppler effect); and 24 bottles of 12 litters each to capture water at different depth. This collection of instruments is deployed from the surface to 10 m above the bottom, which takes hours to do.] Perhaps our real space suit is the immersion suit (affectionately known as a gumby suit) and is only reserved for ship-evacuation cases – designed to secure survival in this hostile environment. As morning arrives the vessel’s common areas start to fill with people and the vessel no longer has the lonely feeling of a space craft (luckily!). Published on August 5, 2016 in the OSNAP Blog R. V. Neil Armstrong was sitting on the Icelandic dock. Next to it, a little wooden Viking boat comes in and out taking tourists into the experience of sailing in these Nordic waters where puffins and seagulls take turns to fish in an ocean full of white and brown jellyfishes. On his right, the German ship Poseidon sits, and in front the Spanish B.O. Sarmiento de Gamboa. If we also count the two Icelandic research vessels on the port, it makes 5 research vessels on the same port. This is something unusual, not every day you can see so many high-tech research vessels together in the same dock.
I had the chance of visiting again the Spanish vessel with two American friends while it was on port. It is the same one that took me in 2011 across the 24ºN trans-Atlantic section and interestingly, it had the same crew and my old lab-mate and cabin-mate on board. It seems that we have all decided to move north. My Americans friends point out that the Spanish ship has a better coffee machine but a harder name. I must say that in both ships the food is amazing. Slowly, one after the other, all the foreign ships left Iceland, first B.O. Sarmiento de Gamboa, then Poseidon and then us. The weather since we left the dock has been AWSOME, incredibly calm and flat. I know, I never been before so further north (I’m originally from the Canary Islands) and maybe AWSOME is too much of a strong word, but the north has tough reputation, and right now the ocean is a glassy-smooth mass of water and I’m kind of expecting to see some whales with this weather. Right now we are on transit and tomorrow we will start to work, let’s hope that the weather decides to travel west with us! |
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