Post by CIMAGE Teacher- Mary St. Denis
Heading out of Tampa Bay on the Weatherbird II

It is a beautiful morning and the crew and science team have loaded everything on board and we are motoring out to site of the former Deepwater Horizon drilling rig. It is a beautiful sunny day and the ship is moving along and I for one am trying to find my sea legs. You are much closer to the water than on a cruise ship, so close in fact that as we cross the deck in our closed toe shoes (safety first) our feet get wet. The seas are running 4 to 6 feet and waves regularly splash over the side. I am typing this sitting in the shade of one of the watch stations in a plastic stacking chair. Life is GOOD!

 

 

 

 

 

Leslie Schwierzke and Bo Yang relaxing while we travel

 

Teresa Greely and I are doing a variety of test calls for our video conferences on SKype but we have available times if any classrooms are interested in talking directly to us. You can e-mail mary.stdenis@polk-fl.net or greely@usf.edu if you are interested in setting up a videoconference. Besides blogging, I am also taking pictures and getting to know some of the crew and researchers. Today we are traveling to the first of the locations, near the Deepwater Horizon platform where we will do our monitoring of the ocean water, plankton, sediments, and methane in the water column.

Modeling my high fashion cruisewear!