Today only a short post, work is getting intensive. In the last 2 days (it seems much longer), we managed to sample at 8 stations with different program: some of them only sediment, some CTD casts for water sampling and some with both of them. It is exciting to finally get going for real, but also the workload is quite intense. At least for our team, the shift work hasn't worked out completely yet, we everyone has done some part of the work during shifts so sleep has been very short – even if we are in the "slow start phase" of our program and not in our main focus area yet! There we will arrive tonight around 2 am – and since it is 8pm now, I will try to catch a few hours of sleep before it gets more intensive.

On the other hand, we are getting more and more effective in working together and all team members start to develop their ”specialities,” i.e. everyone has found tasks where they are specially good it. Working together is fun, even if we are exhausted and sometimes annoyed about things that don't work out well – a technical problem just appearing before one wants to go to bed, a miscommunication or a change in station which we find out about too late and have to quickly  adjust our plans... But the overall mood is good. There is music on in the main lab, a full box of candy and bottles of coke (that someone uses for sampling when empty, so it's coke drinking for science!), and the great thing is that there are often unexpected helpers appearing when things seem to completely get out of control.

And the results we are getting are exciting! Methane levels in the water have been increasing the closer we come to the shelf, and I have been able to already get high enough levels to take my first radiocarbon sample. So, I am looking forward to what we will discover in the days we come!