by 
My name is Rylin Lofton, I am currently an undergraduate student at The Ohio State University studying biology. My Freshman year I sailed on the JOIDES Resolution on expedition 398P and on a STEMSEAS cruise on R/V Endeavor. Upon completing my STEMSEAS cruise I joined alumni network giving me access to incredible opportunities. Through a collaboration with STEMSEAS and the Office of Naval Research I had the opportunity to sail on the R/V Thomas G. Thompson as a research assistant this summer. I ran CTD’s and uCTD’s for the ASTraL project aiming to better understand air-sea interactions in the Arabian sea during the onset of the southasian monsoon. This project will improve climate models in the region, This summer we sailed in the Bay of Bengal.
We set sail from the port of Chennai and as soon as we left India’s exclusive economic zone we got to work. Every hour was precious time collecting data. I was part of the afternoon uCTD team which meant from 12pm to 8pm I was standing on the back deck, casting out and reeling in a uCTD. Which is a probe we use to measure conductivity, Temperature and Density. Generally every cast was the same; deploy the uCTD, reel it in, cast it back out when it comes back to the surface. After about an hour we recover the probe. Download the data in the main lab and repeat. We always had two people operating the winch, My favorite part about this very repetitive but important job was talking with the other scientists on the uCTD team, like Listening to Disney songs with Ankitha Kannad, a PhD student at Scripps. Or learning all about why the clouds were interesting that day from Alex Kinsella, a postdoc at WHOI studying how cloud and upper ocean dynamics influence the climate.
from left to right: Rylin Lofton, Jay Orson Hyde, Alex Kinsella, Shivdas Bankar, Ankitha Kannad
I even got to run a few CTD drops, which measure temperature, fluorescence, oxygen and salinity and they take water samples. I liked these because I got to run them from the computer lab and talk on the walkie talkie. The CTD’s were particularly interesting because they were collecting data for NASA’s PACE project which studies how the ocean and atmosphere exchange carbon and phytoplankton growth on the ocean’s surface.
Rylin Lofton running a CTD
The cruise was an adventure from water profiling by day to stargazing by night. Sometimes we ran into interesting problems like when the uCTD winch broke or when local fishermen took a glider. Everyday came with a new set of exciting challenges and we had an amazing team of scientists, engineers, technicians and crew ready to take on whatever the ocean threw at us. Thank to everyone that I sailed with for making this experience memorable and for moving science forward. Thank you to the Office of Naval Research and to STEMSEAS for this amazing opportunity. After my STEMSEAS cruises last year I fell in love with field work at sea and I learned important skills that prepared for sea-going research and after this cruise I know more than ever that a research ship is where I belong. STEMSEAS has been integral in preparing me for my career in research and science communication.
