Wallenius Wilhelmson is one of the major shipping lines in the world and a sponsor to the Volvo Ocean Race. The Bio Mass test has been designed by scientists working with WW to help them track the migration of invasive species around the world and the role that the effects of ballast water ships move around in their hold. This is a largely unknown but potentially disastrous problem. Therefore I'm happy to do my part as best I can. The whole kit comes in a large pelican case that is filled with syringes, dishes and test reagents as well as an outrageous looking machine called the Luminometer, which I'll get back to.
The test involves gathering water from the ocean, and passing it thru a filter so that all the water is squeezed out but all the Plankton, Phytoplankton and any other stuff remains. It is stuck to the filter, then a series of re-agents are added step by step to the filtered samples which is periodically placed in the Luminometer where a light is shone thru the sample and a reading can be made. The measurement unit is an RLU*...don't ask me what it stands for or means! We log the data, do the whole procedure again twice for accuracy, write it up, send it in and PLANT SAVED...Well not today, the Luminometer has been problematic from the outset. For some reason it doesn't seem to like our electrical system on the boat and has a nasty habit of blowing fuses, but today it went one better and required that our onboard electrician Chris Nicholson break out his soldering kit to make repairs to a broken connection in the power cable. To look at, the Luminometer looks to be a fairly well made and rugged piece of equipment that would probably last 20 years in a normal laboratory situation but not out here on our high powered sailing research station. We fixed it and got the results, whatever they mean, thanks to Chris. Lets hope that the Luminometer makes it, the future of the planet may depend on it!
Rick
*RLU stands for Relative Luminscence Unit
