A Day in the life of a researcher on board the Peter Wise R/V Lake Guardian
And...we're off. It's 3:00 pm on April 14, 2008 and the 2008 Spring Survey aboard the Peter Wise Research Vessel (R/V) Lake Guardian has begun. We just left our home dock in Milwaukee, WI and are expecting to hit our first sampling station on Lake Michigan in a few hours.
A typical day on the Peter Wise R/V Lake Guardian is not like your typical day in the office. There are at least 8 people up and working at all times, as the ship doesn't dock until the end of each lake. You begin your day by waking up, showering, and then heading down to the galley (ship term for kitchen) to grab something to eat. Then you hear it: "15 minutes to station". It's the captain or one of the mates on the P.A. system letting you know that you now have 15 minutes left to get everything together for your first station of the day. So, you finish that something you were eating, drop the dish in the dirty dish tray, and head back to the lab to put on your mustang suit (protective work clothing to help people survive if they fall into cold water) because it's really cold outside, and your hard hat. Then, you grab your sample bottles and the temperature probe and head on to the deck.
Out on deck, you get the probe covers off of the SeaBird, which is the instrument attached to the rosette, which gives us a profile of the water column (learn more about the sampling equipment). Once we're on station, the captain calls "On station", over the radios and the sampling begins. The marine technician lifts the rosette out of its stand using the winch, and you guide it over the side of the ship and watch it go into the water. Now comes the fun part. You head up to the rosette control tower where you see the profile of the water as the rosette is lowered deeper into the water column. You decide where and which depths it will be that you'll fire the collection bottles. Then you head back down to the rosette deck to retrieve the rosette, guide it back to its stand, and begin collecting the water from the rosette bottles.
Once all of the water is collected, you take it into the lab, where all analyses are run. Then you can head into the lounge, the computer lab, or up to the bridge to wait until you hear that next 15 minute call.
Onboard the Research Vessel Peter Wise Lake Guardian
Jackie Adams works for IL-IN Sea Grant 
in the EPA Great Lakes National Program Office. Her research interests include effects of induced stresses on benthic invertebrates, Great Lakes water quality, ecosystem monitoring and habitat restoration. Jackie works aboard the R/V Lake Guardian for both the spring and summer GLNPO Open Lake Water Quality Surveys as well as helps communities to develop habitat restoration master plans following sediment clean-up.
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