Who's out here with me!

Well all I do have to apologize, I've been slacking a little lately with the posts but we've been pretty busy out here. But to catch you up we just finished our first leg of the cruise and switched out personnel and food in Veracruz, Mexico (more on that in a later post). Unfortunately after about two weeks into the 2nd leg of the cruise, the Gordon Gunter has been called into port and will possibly be re-tasked with oil spill monitoring. This is unfortunate but not unexpected. However I will speak a little more about the oil spill and its affects on the cruise in a subsequent post.
       Anyway as I have a bunch of half finished posts that I meant to get out before we got really busy sampling I'll try and put them out now. I thought since I've spent this much time at sea working with the people on the scientific field party you all should see who I've been working with. Below is a picture of the two scientific field parties for each leg of the cruise, It is probably easy to note the difference in the amount of people in the scientific parties between legs. Though one might think it's because the workload maybe much less on the 2nd leg (I can assure you that's not the case) it's simply because we lost all of our volunteers from ECOSUR a private Mexican oceanographic institution partnering with us after the first leg. We have been very fortunate to have both volunteers from ECOSUR and INAPESCA the two Mexican organizations we have been working with. Having these volunteers on board also has allowed me some much needed practice with my Spanish. Thankfully both on the 1st and 2nd legs there have been scientists from INAPESCA and Pascagoula, and Ships officers that I knew from last year. So it was a welcome change from last year where I didn't know anyone and it took a while to get to know everyone.
From left to right: Dr. John Lamkin, Leobardo, Adam, Elizabeth, Me, Karyna, Denice, Pam, Laura, Ramon, Juan Luis, and Jack. 

 From Left to right: Kenneth, Me, Hugo, Elizabeth, Denice, Pam, Kristin, and Glenn.

From left to right: Van, Adrienne, Don, Kent. Wearing some hats another crew member picked up as presents for them in Veracruz. Gotta stay protected that sun is hot out there in the middle of the Gulf.
  Anyway it has been an absolute pleasure to work and get to know all of these volunteers as well as the regular scientific staff from the NOAA Labs at Pascagoula, MS, and the NOAA Corps officers who run and participate on this cruise and many others yearly. And keep us safe, secure, and working while out at sea!!!!

Well that's it for now... next stop dry land :(
Sennai

For More information on any of the organizations I mentioned above, see the links below:
INAPESCA
ECOSUR
NOAA Corps