Setting up all of the bottles on the rosette. There are two casts at each station, one shallow and one deep. Seawater collected from these casts is used for trace-metal analysis (including mercury). If you look closely you will see shower caps on the tops and bottoms of each bottle, these are the openings that are protected as the bottles are transfered in and out of the clean van and prepared for deployment to prevent any contamination. Everyone using water from these casts helps out with deployment, recovery and transporting bottles.

This is the GEOTRACES van where all of the bottles are brought in for processing.

There are two 20 liter bottles collected at each depth. Once in the van, the seawater is filtered and distributed into everyone's separate collection bottles. The processing takes about five hours for both the deep and shallow casts.

Beautiful day at sea