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Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution's Fukushima Radiation Survey Daily Updates:
June 8
Connections:
"Oceanographers look at the chemistry of the water and examine chemical tracers (including radiation) to understand the physical processes governing the movement of water between ocean basins or between ocean and atmosphere. They look at the physical processes beneath the surface to help understand more about the marine organisms that can move thousands of miles each year or that stay in one place all their lives.
We’re taking samples of water, air, and biota (mainly the lowest levels of the food chain) to test for a suite of more than a dozen different radionuclides. These natural and man-made radioactive elements include isotopes of potassium, uranium, and thorium that are always present in sea water as well as the telltale fingerprint of releases from Fukushima and Cold War nuclear weapons testing that show up in cesium-134 and -137 and the short-lived isotopes of iodine.
Many of the samples we’re taking will not be analyzed onboard. In fact, the refrain here has been that we will leave the ship with very little data. What we will have instead is a wealth of samples that we are pre-processing and packaging to send to labs all over the world with specific expertise in studying one isotope or another."
June 9
Chasing Fish:
"The phytoplankton samples are filtered and will be analyzed for chlorophyll content back on land. The Bongo and Methot net samples are divided, with ninety percent destined to be freeze-dried and ground up for radiochemical measurements back at Stony Brook and for additional, more labor-intensive analysis at Oregon State University.
Comparing this to the amount and type of radioactive isotopes we find in the water will then tell more about how much of which substances is actually being assimilated into and passed among the lower levels of the food chain."
www.whoi.edu