PhD on Pause - Part One
As the heading suggests I am currently taking a break from my PhD. This is an opportunity from the INSPIRE Doctoral Training Program I am on, which lets me experience research at another institute. For the next three months I’ll be in Hamburg and I am documenting the experience with photos and short reflections.
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// Week 1 //
I've been in Hamburg for four days and I'm beginning to settle in. I love the feel of this city and I'm amazed how green it is. My apartment is perfectly placed between parks and a big lake which is a great place for jogging in the morning. I'm not a keen runner but it'll keep me fit these next few months while I'm here and won't be playing hockey. I've also taken my camera out with me to capture some of the beautiful cherry blossom.
// Hamburg Harbour Fesitval //
This weekend the Hamburg Port celebrated its 834th birthday. The largest harbour celebration in the world attracted about a million visitors (me included). The last time I came was 5 years ago when I saw the closing parade. This year I enjoyed watching the opening parade as the wide range of boats entered the harbour. I also got to see the famous tug boat ballet and a demonstration of the search and rescue teams who operate in the German Bight and Baltic Sea.
// Week 2 //
I can't believe how quickly time is flying by. I'm currently in Hamburg for a research project at the University in the Institute für Meereskunde (Institute for Oceanography).
For the next three months or so I'll be analysing measurements taken by long term moorings in the Denmark Strait. That's the passage between Greenland and Iceland. What's really exciting is that this is where I went on my first research expedition on MS Merian way back in 2018. That means I've helped to collect some of the data I'm analysing, which at the time I didn't think I'd have the chance to work with.
// Week 3 //
The highlight of my week has been having some family come to visit. The perfect opportunity to go sightseeing and enjoy being a tourist in Hamburg. I particularly like the Elbphilharmonie building. The form and colours are amazing and each time I go to see it looks slightly different because of the reflections and light.
// Week 4 //
In a previous post I mentioned that I'm currently working on a project looking at data from the Denmark Strait. The data has been collected by a mooring which are instruments deployed from a research vessel and left to take measurements for around a year before being collected again. The videos show the process of deploying these moorings. This team of technicians make it look easy. I can tell you with the heavy equipment and swell it's far from straight forward to deploy this kit. I'm looking at the temperature and salinity of the water at around 570m deep. We're interested to see if over the time we've got measurements, which is about 18 years, these properties have changed. I love this detective work especially when I can make pretty figures and graphs to visualise the data. Keep and eye out some one in future posts.
