Week 3! Today we learn about our UVI participant: Vanessa Wright

Sun dog

Welcome to week 3 of our NF1502 cruise! Today we continue learning about our diverse science crew! 

Vanessa Wright is an Oceanographic Field & Lab Technician at the University of the Virgin Islands’ Center for Marine andEnvironmental Studies which is located on beautiful St. Thomas.  

Vanessa and Sam get ready to recover the CTD

While on land, Vanessa calibrates and maintains oceanographic instrumentation for multiple gears like ADCPs, CTDs, fluorometers, water quality meters, etc. She also performs all data offloading and processing, quality control and analysis “QA/QC” of all data coming in, and setting up instruments for deployments in the ocean. 

Real-time buoy deployed in USVI waters

Vanessa explains: “I also manage all of the Virgin Islands assets apart of CarICOOS (Caribbean Integrated Coastal Ocean Observing System). Check out the website at caricoos.org. We have 2 real-time oceanographic data buoys, one south of St Thomas and one south of St John. Real time data (like the one below) is updated every hour for wave height, wind speed and direction, air temperature, water temperature, salinity, and ocean currents.  We also have 6 weather stations on land and small islands around the Virgin Islands.”

Real-time data from the St. John buoy

Back-deck selfie!

Vanessa joined our cruise not only to enjoy being out to sea but also for “doing hands on science, and help collect samples.  My previous positions have given me many at-sea opportunities including expeditions in the Arctic Ocean, North Sea, Baltic Sea, Gulf of Mexico, among others.  In my current position we still get to go out to sea but we use small fishing vessels and go out for short day trips. I was excited about this opportunity to help NOAA scientists and learn about their project in the USVI.”

We are delighted to have Vanessa's valuable expertise during our cruise and as leg 1 gets ready to end, we hope to continue our collaboration with UVI scientists and staff.