We have some great photos today from the clean bubble. It is so-called, because it is an air-conditioned or filtered ‘bubble’ created inside another room, sealing the working space off to avoid anything that could contaminate the water samples taken from the trace metal (clean) CTD rosette (TMR) and the tow-fish. The rosette and the sample bottles it uses, together with the TMR handling procedures supervised by Nico Fröhberg, are themselves designed to avoid any contamination at the point of sampling.
Anyone entering the clean bubble must also work free of contaminants and must therefore be dressed accordingly in protective suits. On M206, clean bubble operation is managed by Kechen Zhu, aided by Albert Firus,Laurenz van Bonn and Gwendolyn Terguer.
I caught up with Kechen today and he told me that operation of the bubble was going very well and had run smoothly for the whole of the trip so far. I asked him about how the air is circulated or filtered in the bubble, and he told me that it was brought into the bubble from an inlet at the top, and that the filtered air descends and escapes from underneath the bubble’s skirt.
The team is kept working hard, and even when there is no CTD sampling, the tow fish is always there on a station, together with the pump used by David for his radium sampling (more on that later). After filtering, the water is allocated to the other teams as required, and Kechen also takes some for his own analyses.
The photos illustrate that working within the bubble has its own peculiarites. In the pictures, we see Gwendolyn and Albert at work. The photo (above right), taken just outside the bubble, are of Kechen (left) and Laurenz. On deck, Albert and Kechen are at work on tow fish preparation and Nico supervises the Trace Metal Rosette.
Grateful thanks to Kechen for the interview and Gwendolyn for the photos!
