An hour ago, Colt was leaning over the side of a Zodiac boat in Icy Bay, Alaska, lowering a Niskin bottle into glacier-fed water.
“The things we’re gonna be looking for are salinity, clarity, temperature, depth,” he told me as he collected a sample. “We’re also going to be looking at levels of chlorophyll and plankton.”
Before heading back to our main expedition ship, he also helped run a Secchi disk test, tow a pair of plankton nets, and haul chunks of floating ice aboard for the ship’s science team to examine — all part of collecting data for a citizen-science project for NOAA.
Colt is my 14-year-old son. For our family, this is the latest…
