Packing.. and ready to go!

Hi there!

This is the first post of the blog I will be writing aboard the RV (i.e. Research Vessel) Investigator, an almost 94 mt (or 306.4 feet) long Australian vessel (for the most curious: RV Investigator and for the really really curious, check the virtual tour out). 

We will depart on January 8th, from Fremantle, Western Australia, and will be back in Hobart, Tasmania, on March 5th (58 days of ship time). Destination? South Indian Ocean! To be more precise we will head to Heard and McDonald Islands, part of the very large Kerguelen Plateau (I will explain with more details the purpose of the voyage in the following posts). To have an idea of the voyage track, have a look at the figure: this represents the bathymetry of the South Indian Ocean, with part of Australia on the top right and Antarctica at the bottom. On the left (between 62 degrees South to 45) is the plateau. The white lines represents the transit lines from Fremantle to the plateau and then to Hobart. The 7 white dots.. are the reason why I'll be there.

The points in figure represents the locations where I will deploy 7 biogeochemical floats, as part of the Southern Ocean Carbon and Climate Observations and Modeling project (SOCCOM, http://soccom.princeton.edu/). I will keep you update with my journey every few days, hopefully I will be able to post some photos to entertain and show you how incredible is doing science out there!!

First, I have to try to fit everything I will possibly need for my voyage in my backpack! 26 hours of travel are waiting for me tomorrow ;-)