This is my last post, so I have to spice it up a bit. “It’s a bold move Cotton.  Let’s see if it pays off for him.”  In my previous posts, I had been using some salt, parsley, maybe a bit of lemon pepper if I was naughty.  Here’s where the Carolina Reaper is stirred in the pot.  I have to admit my titles have been getting pretty on point recently.  We’ll see if he can top last week’s title.

I want to start with a full disclosure that I had run out of food in my household come Friday: Colloquium Day.  I did however engulf a pot or so of coffee throughout the day, per usual.  Come colloquium time, to the untrained eye I looked like an alcoholic without his Jack Daniels.  This may or may not have affected my takeaway message from this colloquium talk.

Dr. Roberta Hamme really loved graphs.  I do too.  But on a Friday afternoon with the food/coffee issue, I was having a hard time following along.  I did, however, take away some wonderful points from this talk.

I did not know that the element Argon acts similar to Oxygen except that it doesn’t see the biological effects oxygen does.  This makes it act as a sort of control for what’s happening with gases in the ocean.

It seems as though hypoxia is almost being reached at 280 meter depths in some areas in the ocean.  This is frightening because large organisms with higher oxygen demand are in danger.  These species are typically ones we put a greater value on and a decline in these organisms would cause chaos.

The ‘Argo’ floats were quite interesting.  I have mixed feelings about these floats because on one hand you are collecting valuable ocean water quality data all over the world.  On the other hand, these floats last for several years and sink to the ocean floor, potentially adding to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.  What is the size of that thing now? 3 Texases (Texi?)?  At this point you may as well call it 1 Canada.  Of course then Trump may blame the Texi patch on Canada.

As well, it seemed as though the Argo temperature measurements over time slowly decreased, making it inaccurate unless accounted for.  Dr. Hamme went over it briefly, but I would like to delve into more so how they accounted for this error.

My research involves temperature rises in freshwater lakes and how this will affect coldwater fish species such as kokanee and rainbow trout.  We will be setting out temperature loggers throughout the region’s lakes.  I almost raised my hand to ask “Can you ‘Argo’ a freshwater lake?”  But I realized that saltwater makes things a lot more buoyant and I’m thinking the device would have to be much less dense to work in freshwater.  Stupid American.  What was I thinking?