Greetings from Cape Town! - by Isa R.

TG Thompson, our home for the next 6 weeks

After a veeery long journey from San Diego, I arrived here 4 days ago. I only had the chance to visit a small part of the city, close to the waterfront. It's gorgeous, especially because of the view of Table Top and Lion's Head Mountains. We had a couple of days with a very beautiful marine layer, a thick fog coming from the ocean and enveloping the mountains... a spectacular view!









The loading of the equipment and the setting up of the labs went smoothly. There are still few more things to finish, but overall this initial work went very fast.

John Calderwood (ODF/SIO) and Joseph Gum (ODF/SIO) with gear for the CTD rosette

Andrew Meyer (UW, SOCCOM) preparing 2 Navis biogeochemical Argo floats. On the back: Craig Hanstein from CSIRO, Australia working on core Argo floats.

There's a wonderful atmosphere on the ship, result of a very welcoming and professional ship's crew.

This is my 3rd US GO-SHIP cruise, and the 2nd as co-chief scientist. Needless to say.. I'm very excited and I can't wait to "set sail"! On board we will have not only CTD operations, but also several additional projects.. so stay tuned to know more about our work in the next weeks!

Pirate ship in the fog ;-) ...with Table Top and Lion's Head mountains in the background..

We are almost ready to go... so follow us in our adventure in the South Indian Ocean!

Alex Orsi (chief scientist from Texas A&M University, on the right) and me (Isa from SIO, left) ready to go!!