Water Testing

Day 3: February 25th

Post by Annie Strada:

Today we started off our day with bagels for breakfast (we all enjoyed these!). After breakfast we had about an hour of free-time before our first class. In our class, we learned about hydrography. Hydrography is the study of water chemistry. The parameters that we discussed were pH, dissolved oxygen, salinity and temperature. We learned that in the ocean that these parameters have specific ranges that ensure the health of the organisms. For example the pH of the ocean should normally be about 8.2, but this value is changing due to anthropogenic forces - global climate change being the main factor. After our discussion, we learned how to measure the dissolved oxygen level in a sample of water. We collected water from the bite (the water in front of the camp) and had an opportunity to work with the test kits firsthand. It was fun! We first had to fix the water (so that we could preserve the amount of oxygen in the water, which we did with a series of chemical reagents) then we titrated the sample to make the actual calibration. The average dissolved oxygen level was about 8.4 ppm: A healthy measurement. We will be taking measurements of the dissolved oxygen, pH, temperature and salinity at each of our dive sites! It was a busy morning, but a good one!