• The first problem I had was (I think) simply due to a dirty conductivity cell. Data from the very  first overnight deployment of the Microcat looked good but the subsequent week-long deployment was not good. I learned it is  important that the conductivity cell be cleaned well after each use.  When I redeployed the instrument in the NMFS Aquarium for nearly a week, it took that much time to flush out the apparently contaminated electodes. This may have been due to my sticking it  a 5 gallon bucket  with seawater  (for a few minutes between deployments 1 & 2) that  may have previously contained some chemical substance.  Or it may have been due to the seawater being dirty/oily Woods Hole Harbor seawater. The week long deployment shown here  has suspect data and not in agreement with the YSI6000 record obtained along with it.  After a call to Dave Armstrong at SEABIRD and a 10 minute flushing of the cell with fresh water, I redeployed the instrument in the aquarium again. Armstrong suggested that the "electrodes need exercising" .  Fortunately, the third deployment indicated reasonable values.  All three deployments are shown here.
• The second problem had to due with an apparent SEABIRD software bug. The cnv37.exe routine offers a "yearday" variable to be exported in the cnv files.  First, it looks to me that it may be erroneously treating year 2001 as a leap year since it added an extra day.  Second,  one must be careful in defining which "yearday" is reported whether it is a yearday that starts at zero or one.  I was assuming it was going to report the former when it appears to report the later. So, in any case, one should be careful to check the validity of the "yearday" column in the cnv files.  It could be off by a couple days!
• The third problem also  had to due with an apparent SEABIRD software bug.  The "seaterm.exe" reports the wrong year when prompted with the "ds" command.  It listed "31 August 2000"  when it should be "31 August 2001".

* Sea-Bird SBE37 Data File:
* FileName = H:\seabird\s9350202.asc
* Software Version 1.24
* Temperature SN = 1935
* Conductivity SN = 1935
* System UpLoad Time = Aug 31 2001 08:12:15
** first testthird deployment in tank
* ds
* SBE37-SM V 2.2  SERIAL NO. 1935    31 Aug 2000  08:12:34
* not logging: received stop command
* sample interval = 1800 seconds
* samplenumber = 697, free = 232319
* do not transmit real-time data
* store time with each sample
* A/D cycles to average = 4
* reference pressure = 0.0 db
* serial sync mode disabled
* wait time after serial sync sampling = 30 seconds
* temperature = 22.40 deg C
* S>
* SBE37-SM V 2.2  1935
* temperature:  07-aug-01
*     TA0 = -5.291041e-05
*     TA1 = 2.800240e-04
*     TA2 = -2.823845e-06
*     TA3 = 1.681038e-07
* conductivity:  07-aug-01
*     G = -9.668430e-01
*     H = 1.350139e-01
*     I = -1.781341e-04
*     J = 3.579110e-05
*     CPCOR = -9.570000e-08
*     CTCOR = 3.250000e-06
*     WBOTC = 4.979500e-06
* rtc:  07-aug-01
*     RTCA0 = 9.999772e-01
*     RTCA1 = 1.863524e-06
*     RTCA2 = -3.476806e-08
* S>
# nquan = 6
# nvalues = 697
# units = metric
# name 0 = t090: temperature, ITS-90 [deg C]
# name 1 = c0S/m: conductivity [S/m]
# name 2 = pr: pressure [db]
# name 3 = timeJ: time [julian days]
# name 4 = sal00: salinity, PSS-78 [PSU]
# name 5 = flag:  0.000e+00
# span 0 = 22.1079, 28.9430
# span 1 = -0.000010, 4.594310
# span 2 = 1.000, 1.000
# span 3 = 230.68132, 244.32932
# span 4 = 0.0000, 31.6989
# span 5 = 0.0000e+00, 0.0000e+00
# interval = seconds: 1800
# start_time = Aug 28 2000 15:24:13
# bad_flag = -9.990e-29
# derive_date = Aug 31 2001 08:23:47, 4.249
# derive_in = S9350202.CNV DEMO.CON
# file_type = ascii
*END*
....beginning of first deployment:
    26.7793   0.000000      1.000  230.68132     0.0000 0.0000e+00
    25.9221   0.000000      1.000  230.68480     0.0000 0.0000e+00
    22.1130   4.584260      1.000  230.68828    31.6989 0.0000e+00
    22.1079   4.564130      1.000  230.69175    31.5470 0.0000e+00
    22.1099   4.565720      1.000  230.69522    31.5578 0.0000e+00
    22.1130   4.566130      1.000  230.69869    31.5587 0.0000e+00
....beginning of secon deployment:
    22.7878   4.293590      1.000  235.30947    29.0117 0.0000e+00
    22.7832   4.294340      1.000  235.33030    29.0204 0.0000e+00
    22.7822   4.295400      1.000  235.35113    29.0291 0.0000e+00
    22.7770   4.296040      1.000  235.37197    29.0373 0.0000e+00
    22.7640   4.294730      1.000  235.39280    29.0360 0.0000e+00
    22.7678   4.295490      1.000  235.41363    29.0393 0.0000e+00
    22.7703   4.298070      1.000  235.43447    29.0571 0.0000e+00
....beginning of third deployment:
    27.5566   0.000700      1.000  242.51683     0.0139 0.0000e+00
    22.2633   0.003460      1.000  242.53766     0.0236 0.0000e+00
    22.5232   4.565720      1.000  242.55850    31.2599 0.0000e+00
    22.5276   4.584420      1.000  242.57933    31.3999 0.0000e+00
    22.5362   4.585880      1.000  242.60016    31.4049 0.0000e+00
    22.5380   4.585050      1.000  242.62100    31.4080 0.0000e+00
    22.5459   4.587320      1.000  242.64183    31.4090 0.0000e+00
    22.5482   4.587700      1.000  242.66266    31.4102 0.0000e+00
    22.5480   4.588040      1.000  242.68350    31.4130 0.0000e+00
 ...last record of  third deployment:
    22.4890   4.586290      1.000  244.32932    31.4420 0.0000e+00