November 10, 2015

Meg Chadsey, WSG’s ocean acidifcation specialist, has teamed with scientists at NOAA ‘s Pacific Environmental Laboratory to provide hands-on seawater chemistry monitoring experience for several students from Eagle Harbor (on Bainbridge Island) and Garfield high schools. The students met at the NOAA Sandpoint campus on a recent cold November morning to analyze Puget Sound seawater samples they’d collected as part of their summer field work. The students conducted their first set of tests in a “container lab” — literally a shipping container outfitted as a seagoing laboratory for research cruises: very tight quarters with lots of fun gadgets and computer equipment. Later they gathered inside a (much warmer) indoor lab for a second set of analyses. Once they get the results, they will finally have all the information they need to convert two weeks’ worth of raw data, which they collected in August using autonomous monitoring equipment, into a time series of local seawater chemistry.