Research Cruise

Breakfast

• Pancakes
• Egg scramble
• Yogurt
• Fruit
• Cream of wheat

Lunch

• Tomato beef soup
• Beef ribs
• Cheese ravioli
• Garlic rice
• Salad bar

Dinner

• Lobster
• Grilled sirloin
• Garlic potatoes
• Chinese noodles and sausage
• Salad Bar
• Chocolate cake

Weather

Winds SW at 28 knots, seas 2-4 feet

Position

S 43° 17.97′ E 147° 23.97′

Yesterday, we got a few CTDs in before the wind picked up, at which point we headed in and stayed a very comfortable distance from the shore – to shield us from the winds mostly, but also to dangle the carrot of port before us…

Nevertheless, these past few days have gone fast; despite the weather there has been much to do on board, from sorting the last coral samples to packing everything up and stowing things away.  We’ve been compiling all of our visual data – all of the HD footage and frame grabs – as well as cleaning up our sorting and cleaning stations, taking apart our nets, and generally getting everything ready so we just have to take things off the ship when we get to port.  Most of our coral samples will actually stay on the ship until it comes back to the U.S.; Nithya is taking some samples with her on the plane, but a majority of them will be stowed down in the scientific stores of the Thompson.  Our first stop in Hobart is to switch out Jason containers, and then we’re back to the CSIRO dock to unload and get our land legs back!

Meanwhile, there has been quite a commotion in Hobart as a Dutch Vessel, the Steve Irwin, has been trying to gain permission to dock.  The controversy surrounds the ship’s mission, which is to deter Japanese whaling vessels in the Southern Ocean.  A loophole in Japanese law allows “research” ships to catch a small, but not insignificant, quota of whales every year for the supposed goal of scientific research, but most end up in the Japanese fish markets.  The Steve Irwin has been antagonizing the Japanese whaling fleet for some time, including using some rather drastic tactics – the last captain apparently rammed a Japanese ship on the open ocean!  They have been very successful so far in deterring the whaling fleet, and have chased several ships out of whaling territory.  However, their rather militant tactics have gotten quite a lot of press, and the Japanese government has urged the Australian authorities to deny the Steve Irwin port for refueling and restocking.  The fact is, however, that about half of the crew is Australian, not to mention the ship’s name itself!  The Steve Irwin has finally been granted access to port, and is berthing not too far from the CSIRO docks, so we might see some protesters, hopefully from a comfortable enough distance!

Breakfast

• Egg sandwiches
• Blueberry pancakes
• Yogurt with blackberries
• Sausage, bacon and spam
• Fresh fruit

Lunch

• Bratwurst
• Lentil soup
• Sauerkraut
• Salad bar

Dinner

• Grilled NY Steak
• Angel hair pasta
• Veggie marinara
• Peas and carrots
• Salad bar
• Chocolate ice cream

Weather

Low winds, seas 6-10 ft.  

Position

S 44° 17.57′ by E 147° 22.67′

Recently, we’ve been doing a series of shorter dives, mostly due to shortened weather windows available to us.   It has become apparent, especially over these last few dives where we dove to significantly below 2400 meters, that there is a distinct line where our target, D. dianthus, stops appearing.  On a previous cruise, this depth limit of 2400 meters was seen up at the New England Seamounts, and it was hoped that this was just due to the bathymetry and current patterns in the North Atlantic; also, this depth was not explored as thoroughly as it was on this cruise.  However, over this cruise, we have seen many, many prime places for dianthus to grow, and instead we see these faces either empty or populated by other life.  

In some ways, this is similar to the treeline on mountains, except in the coral’s case it’s a global phenomenon – the same cutoff of 2400 meters is found in the North Atlantic and the Southern Ocean!  That’s pretty incredible – what could bring about such an abrupt cutoff like that?  It could be temperature, or perhaps a pressure change that causes it.  Regardless, it’s been frustrating for us, because to fully investigate ocean circulation, we needed to get some samples from around 3500 meters – I guess that’s not going to happen.  

It’s always frustrating in science when something doesn’t work out the way it should – in the lab, this is often the case.  There are always unexpected problems you have to work around, but this is part of what makes laboratory research so interesting and challenging.  But in the field, it seems to be a different beast entirely.  Indeed, how can we even begin to answer a question if the samples aren’t there?  Disappointment in science happens in every field, whether it be finding out a synthetic route is unavailable or a purification technique is flawed, or in this case finding out that our most powerful tracer of ocean mixing at the Last Glacial Maximum cannot tell us what we need to know, because it doesn’t grow deep enough.  What is most frustrating here is the amount of time and energy it takes to conduct field work, especially in oceanography.  At $50,000 dollars a day, this research is not cheap.  To be sure, we will have the most complete set of corals from depths of 2400 meters all the way up to 6 or 700 meters – but to find that the biggest question we came out here to answer is currently unanswerable is definitely a let down.

However, there are many other things we can look at with our sample set, even though there will be no complete picture of the ocean – through our solitary corals at least  - at the Last Glacial Maximum without usable samples from 3500 meters.  For example, we can investigate the role of Antarctic Intermediate water in many systems, from heat transport to its role in the glacial ocean.  This is actually a very big issue: no one knows right now if there was any intermediate water in the glacial ocean, and the boundary between North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW) and Antarctic Bottom Water (AABW) is currently thought to reside at around 2,000 meters.  Since our histogram goes down to 2400 meters, we should be able to say something about intermediate water at this boundary, provided we have corals from the Last Glacial Maximum.  Heat transport is also a major function of the oceans – it will be great if we can say something about the Antarctic Intermediate Water’s role in heat transport.  

I’m sure our data set will get us other very interesting data about this area and the global ocean cycle, however – so not all is lost!  In other news, we’ve been working on doing some hydrocast CTDs – in which we collect water samples at different depths – in order to measure trace metals in seawater.  Seth set up a makeshift clean lab, with some plastic sheeting and a filter and fan (see pictures below).  The concept is that the seawater samples will not get exposed to any metal particles from the air or other sources.  When working with trace metals, even a small exposure could lead to a large error in data, because the concentrations are so small.  In a trace metal lab, the environment is high-pressure and everything is plastic and teflon so there is no possible contamination.  Many times, the teflon used for bottles is washed and cleaned thoroughly before use to get rid of any traces of metal particles.  Seth is working with iron isotopes, and the Southern Ocean is one of a few regions where iron is deficient in the ocean; iron is an essential metal to life, and is found in many proteins, so the iron in seawater is directly tied to the amount of photosynthetic bacteria it can support.  In fact, one of the solutions to the growing concentration of atmospheric CO2 that has been passed around involves dumping mass quantities of iron into iron-deficient ocean zones, like the Southern Ocean, in an attempt to sequester CO2 in the form of organic matter.  Although it has been tested successfully on a small scale, we really have no idea what this might do on a larger scale.  

In other news, we’re currently in the middle of our last Jason dive of the cruise; after this, we’ll do some CTD work and then head in to port.  We exlpored this 200-meter high sheer cliff, which has been truly fascinating, with tons of carnivorous anenomes and corals covering the face, and some very interesting basalt crystal formations.  The fossil collection has been quite good, so hopefully we’ll round out the cruise with some good samples from this dive.  Stay tuned for more updates as the trip comes to a close!

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I just posted a new set of HD photos – from a bunch of dives we’ve done over the past few weeks.  Again, photos are attributed to the Advanced Imaging and Visualization Labratory, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Copyright 2008.  Thanks to Maryann Morin for the support!

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Breakfast

• Blueberry Pancakes
• Oatmeal
• Sausage
• Egg scramble

Lunch

• Beef stir-fry
• Steamed rice
• Steamed broccoli
• Salmon cakes
• Salad bar

Dinner

• Vegetable stew
• Roast pork loin
• Gravy
• Corn
• Pasta
• Salad bar
• Chocolate blueberry cake

Breakfast

• Egg scramble
• French toast
• Sausage patties
• Cream o’ wheat

Lunch

• Polish Sausage
• German pancakes
• Salad bar

Dinner

• Rack of lamb
• Broiled salmon
• Wild rice pilaf
• Penne pasta
• Salad bar

Weather

Winds from the south at 6.2 knots

Position

Steaming to the Tasman fracture zone

Sadly, our trip up North was for nought…the weather did not improve by nighttime, and didn’t look like it would get any better by our scheduled time of departure of today at noon.  The main problem was that the swell was of a very short period, so the boat was rocking a lot, making a Jason deployment very tricky and dangerous.  On top of that, the time it would take to get down to the required depth – 3600 meters – is around 2 hours, and we had little time as it was, so the dive would have been awfully short.

So much for that – at least we weren’t getting tossed around for five more days South of Tasmania.  We’re heading back South now though, towards our next destination, the Tasman Fracture Zone.  This is a pretty fascinating feature, and results from tectonic action between two plates.  Fracture zones occur perpendicular to plate boundaries, as a result of linear motion over a spherical surface.  Take, for example, a partially inflated balloon, and cover it in clay.  As you inflate the balloon some more, cracks will start occurring in the clay.  Another way to think about it is to consider wrapping a piece of paper around a balloon – you will inevitably get folds in the paper, because it it being wrapped around a spherical object.  The one thing this model neglects is the fact that the crust of the earth is actually made up of multiple plates, all interacting linearly with each other.  But the premise is the same – at the boundary regions, or at the interaction between two plates, the linear motion between them causes these fractures to occur to compensate for the spherical nature of the planet.  The Tasman Fracture Zone accounts for much of this compensation between the Antarctic and Australian plates, and extends from just Southwest of Tasmania all the way down close to Antarctica.  We’re heading to the northernmost tip of this fracture, which consists of a cliff face with more than 3,000 meters of relief!

What’s more, this face is the first the waters coming from the West have seen for a long long time; we’re hoping that it is rich with corals and other life.  We have a relatively small weather window of 36-48 hours, so we’re really going to try to maximize our depth coverage and lengthen the sample collection regimen, maybe up to collections every 200 meters (versus the previous 50 m collections).  Our longest dive was 50 hours, and we were able to cover about 700 vertical meters.  We’re hoping to cover around 1000 meters in the vertical on this dive, starting around 3800 meters – the deepest we’ve gone yet by over 1000 meters!  This should be an exciting dive; there has been little mapping of this area save the bathymetry work of the Southern Surveyor and some other ships; ABE dives were not conducted in this area so we have not much information about the microbathymetry or the flora and fauna.  The idea that these waters might carry many unused nutrients leaves the prospect of a flourishing community, although it might be that our solitaries will be outcompeted by other creatures like sponges.  However, our corals seem to enjoy high current rates, and are found in great quantities on ledges and outcroppings.  So we hopefully will see tons of corals along this steep cliff face!

Breakfast

• Sausage and egg sandwiches
• Oatmeal

Lunch

• Hamburgers
• Veggie burgers
• Chunky tomato soup
• French fries
• Salad bar

Dinner

• Flank steak
• Rice pilaf
• Pita and hummus
• String beans
• Penne pasta
• Salad bar
• Ice cream

Weather

Winds NW at 22 knots, swell 10-16 feet

Position

S 41° 31.64′  E 152° 50.76′

We finished up our dive at Cascade yesterday, and are now heading Northeast for fairer weather and some deeper waters!  Cascade is a fascinating feature.  It is incredibly large,  ~10 km wide by ~22 km long, and the top is almost completely flat.  It is then completely different from any other seamount we’ve visited so far  – all others have been relatively small and with a very distinct summit.  There is only one way a seamount like Cascade could have been formed, and that’s if it was once exposed above sea level.  This process is commonplace in the South Pacific – in fact, it is the same process that allows atolls and barrier reefs to form.  Darwin was the first to put these seemingly disparate land formations together in The Voyage of the Beagle: 

“As the barrier-reef slowly sinks down, the corals will go on vigorously growing upwards; but as the island sinks, the water will gain inch by in on the shore – the separate mountains first forming separate islands within one great reef – and finally, the last and highest pinnacle disappearing.  The instant this takes place, a perfect atoll is formed…If , instead or and island, we had taken the shore of a continent fringed with reefs, and had imagined it to have subsided, a great straight barrier, like that of Australia or New Caledonia…would evidently have been the result.” 

In Cascade’s case, the surrounding barrier reef continued to grow on top of the shrinking island.  The reef, of course, grows flat near the surface of the water, so as the island subsided, a flat rock layer slowly built around the subsiding peak until it was completely submerged, and completely flat.  Consider an atoll that continues to submerge until even the surrounding islets are underwater.  Thus, Cascade was once a formidable island, that, as it subsided, was overgown by a coral mass.  Now, its wide, flat summit lies submerged 500 meters under the sea surface – Pretty incredible!  This type of feature is known as a “guyot”.  Compared to the other features in the area, such as the Southern Hills or the other smaller seamounts we’ve visited, Cascade is absolutely huge – there is no way the smaller features would have been exposed so much to the atmosphere.  Instead, they are pockmarks similar to those seen around Cascade’s perimeter – “acne,” as Jess calls them.  Most seamounts are formed when the crust passes over hot spots in the magma, causing uprising in some cases above sealevel, like many islands that dot the South Pacific. 

Unfortunately, the HD camera feed cut out fairly early on in our dive on Cascade, so we had to rely on the digital camera to look around – it made us realize how spoiled we were with the crystal-clear quality of HD!  It seems that the fiber optic cable that transmits the HD camera feed to the ship was severed; fortunately it wasn’t the cable that transmits Jason’s controls!  We were able to replace the cable once Jason was recovered, and we should have the video feed back for our next dive. 

Speaking of which, we’re now about a day and a half’s steam Northeast of Cascade, in an attempt to escape a particularly nasty low-pressure system descending on the area.  We’re going to try to get some deeper dives in up here, maybe down to 3,500 meters, to extend our fossil coral depth histogram.  Unfortunately, the weather is not particularly Jason-friendly up here either – although the chop and winds are down, the swell is too big for a launch, and doesn’t really seem to be decreasing any time soon.  In the meantime, we’re doing some CTD casts and catching up on coral-cleaning and other activities…I’m looking to post more HD photos shortly from other dives, so check back soon for those!

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Breakfast

• Cheese and egg quesadilla
• Bacon and sausage
• Oatmeal

Lunch

• Pulled pork and beef bbq sandwiches
• French fries
• Jamaican pumpkin soup
• Lentil and sausage soup
• Salad bar

Dinner

• Prime rib
• Potatoes and onions
• Steamed vegetables
• Veggie lasagna
• Salad bar
• Fresh bread
• Phillipino pudding cake

We’ve had a lack of activity as of late, so my posts have been sparse…but hopefully this post makes up for it!  Over the past few days, in some down time post-Jason dive and in transit to Cascade, I got to talk with Phil, our Captain, and get some information on the life of a sailor and the Thompson.  Phil started in the Marine Corps, and got the sailor’s bug after spending some time in transit on Navy ships.  Ever since then, he’s been on the sea.  “I’ve been on it all, everything but fishing boats.  Tankers, cargo ships, tugs, I was a pilot in Southeast Alaska on big ships.”  It takes a lot of time and experience to work one’s way up the ranks as a sailor; Phil spent some time as an ordinary seaman after the Marine Corps, and then worked his way up to an AB, or Able-Bodied seaman.  The ABs do a lot of work around the ship; everything from cleaning to helping with equipment and winches to actual steering.  In fact, one of the main roles of an AB is as a helmsman when the ship is in manual steering mode (I’ll get into this later) – there is always an AB and mate at each watch on the bridge.

After spending three years as an AB, Phil worked his way up through the mate ranks – 3rd mate, second mate, chief mate, and finally captain – all of which have strict requirements and tests in order to progress to the next level.  All levels require a total of 365 days at sea under that title, and a series of examinations, mostly administered by the Coast Guard.  In terms of the hirearchy of the ship, the Captain has complete power over the ship: “There was no loftier or higher position back in the old days than to be captain of a ship – his position tended to be fairly autocratic.” Phil adds, “It’s toned down a lot since then,” and it’s definitely helped that a lot of the Thompson’s crew are loyal to the ship – Frank Spetla and Jerry Branovitch, both AB’s, and Tom Drake, the second mate, have been with the Thomspon since it was built in 1991.  There is a stable core of crew on the ship, including permanent relief, which helps contribute to why many people tend to choose the Thompson as their favorite of the US’s oceanographic fleet.  Phil, who has been with the Thompson since 2000, couldn’t agree more – “Everybody gets along…we’ve got a good bunch of people here, I like it.  The mission of the ship I like, too, the oceanography’s pretty fascinating.”  It certainly is a change of pace from running tankers and cargo ships – instead of transiting from point A to point B, the Captain gets much more flexibility in where he’s allowed to go, and how to get there – it’s much more of a balance between getting science done and not beating up the ship and the crew.  This includes shifting ballast around to better balance the ship while on station or in transit, and even changing headings to take a different approach to a location.  It also makes transit more pleasurable – in a cargo ship, the most efficient heading is taken and held until the destination is reached, but on the Thompson, we’ve changed headings several times to minimize the impact of heavy weather and seas. 

Our ship is equipped with several anti-roll measures, including a roll tank specifically designed to counteract rolls.  It’s basically a large tank at the fore of the ship filled with water; as the ship rolls in a given direction, the water in the tank rolls in the same direction, which lessens the effect of the roll.  Additionally, there are several ballast tanks in the center and aft, and ballast can be shifted amongst these on a daily basis to help balance the ship.  There are also multiple fuel tanks spread out around the vessel, and fuel can also be redistributed to help achieve balance.  The bridge keeps written records of every ballast change, and the current ballast and fuel configuration is displayed both in the bridge and down in the engine control room.

The Thompson was built to last 60 days on the open ocean, although it is hard to find a science party or crew that is willing to spend such a long time at sea.  There are two aft fresh water tanks, holding a total of 10,000 gallons.  These tanks are replenished daily using a reverse osmosis system.  The fuel tanks’ total capacity is 295,000 gallons of diesel fuel (!!!!!), and we started with about 180,000 gallons at the beginning of our cruise.  As of yesterday, we’re down to 150,535 gallons; one engine online consumes 1,500 to 2,000 gallons a day, and with two main engines running the consumption jumps to about 4,000 gallons per day.  The operating cost, minus scientific costs such as Jason or Alvin, is around $28,000 per day, and Jason pretty much doubles this number – that’s over $50,000 spent each day we’re out at sea – now you can see why everyone’s so bummed about this bad weather holding us back from diving with Jason – each day is at least $30,000 down the drain!!!

This may seem a steep fee for oceanographic research, but compared to cruise ships, whose pure purpose is entertainment, this is a relatively tiny impact, both in terms of fuel consumption and operating cost.  And compared to the amount of money we’ve poured into extraterrestrial research – such operating costs are miniscule.  Indeed, the divide in research funds is startling, considering 2/3 of the globe consists of another world that is barely known to us – on our own planet no less!   

A few of us also got a tour of the engine room from Paul, the head engineer on the Thompson.  The Thompson is powered by electricity, generated from three main  1500 kW engines and three smaller 750 kW engines.  These engines generate 600  volts of AC power, which is converted to DC to power the two Z-drives and the bow thruster.  The Z-drives are named such because the configuration of their axles forms a Z-shape.  Using 1 1/2 engines (that is, one main and one small engine), the Thompson can generate speeds around 10 1/2 knots, and a top speed with all engines around 12 knots – there are minimal gains with more engines, and a severe drop-off in fuel efficiency.  What is special about Z-drives compared to other propulsion systems is a lack of a rudder – like an outboard motor, except that the prop can rotate 360 degrees, allowing for much more control when doing oceanographic work.  This also means that the directions are reversed compared to rudder-controlled ships – if you want to go right, you have to turn the controls to the left.  This made for a rather harrowing experience when, in transit from the ship’s birthplace in Mississippi to Washington, the crew had to pass through the Panama Canal while still getting used to the reverse controls!  

The two Z-drives are around 3,000 horsepower, and the bow thruster has about 1100 horsepower.  Apparently this is slightly underpowered, as Tom, the 2nd mate, and Phil have expressed, compared to the tripled horsepower of the Z-drives – but my room abuts the bow thruster room, and believe me, it is definitely not underpowered when it starts running at 3 in the morning when we’re trying to hold station!!  Sleep interruptions aside, the bow thruster is a pretty amazing tool.  It’s basically a big water jet – the motor powers a water pump that sucks in water and spits it out in a stream.  This stream can be rotated full-circle, lending incredible control for docking and also holding station while doing CTDs or Jason work.  

The Thompson is usually controlled in the bridge, using one of two systems – the manual control system operates using separate helms for each Z-drive, and a host of other equipment for speed and navigation, including GPS.  The other mode of travel is the Dynamic Positioning System, which can be operated in manual or autopilot modes.  This system is usually only used at small speeds, to minimize the stress on the engine room – it’s usually operated at around 1 1/2 knots.  The system lends much more control and moving flexibility, including line moves (strafing) and is mainly used when holding station.  In the case of GPS failure, the crew is also trained in the use of celestial charts and sextants.

While some oceanographic vessels are lower tonnage, the Thompson and her sister ships, the Atlantis, Roger Revelle, Melville, and Ron Brown, are all unlimited tonnage vessels – this means they’re in the same class as the cargo ships carrying tens of thousands of tons.  Phil has captained such large vessels – the largest was  60,000 gross tons!  Recently, though, he splits his time sailing Master of the Thompson or relief on University of Hawaii’s oceanographic flagship, the Kilo Moana.  “I’ve been on ships…people don’t smile a lot on other ships a lot of the time; it’s their job, you know.  These ships to me are a lot more laid back, [the people are] easy to get along with.”  A good mission and pleasant people – certainly a good combination for a job where you spend 30 days at sea with a very small group.  Phil works 6 months out of the year – 2 months on, 2 months off – and this seems to be fairly common for most of the sailors on the Thompson.  “You could put up with anything for two months if you’ve got two months off,” Phil jokes.  He spends his down time at home in Kitsaap County, Washington in a small town just South of Olympic Sound – “Off the beaten path, so to speak.”  In his downtime, he does enjoy sailing and fishing – but strictly for pleasure.  

Thanks so much to Phil for showing me around the bridge [and putting up with my lack of knowledge of seafaring] and to Paul for the tour of the engine room!  It’s been fascinating exploring the Thompson and how it works. 

Now that the weather’s clearing up, we’re back in the water with Jason – this time on the Cascade seamount, a large feature with lots of steep walls and faces – perfect for deep-sea coral collection.  We’re diving down to around 2,500 meters, which is the deepest we’ll have gone yet, and hopefully we’ll find even more solitaries at these depths!   

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Menu

Breakfast

• Cream o’ wheat
• Canadian bacon and egg muffins

Lunch

• Grilled ham and cheese 
• Chicken/tuna salad wraps
• corned beef and cabbage 
• lentil soup
• chicken noodle soup
• salad bar

Dinner

• Cranberry glazed pork loin roast
• Mashed potatoes and gravy
• cheese manicotti 
• rice pilaf 
• salad bar

Weather

Calm seas, winds picking up in the afternoon to around 30-35 knots.  

Position

St. Helen’s Seamount, 41° 14.30′ by 148° 49.09′

We finally got back in the water with Jason today!  Immediately after hitting the bottom, it was evident why this seamount has been so heavily fished – there are fish everywhere!  Lots of orange roughy, whiptails, rays, and even sharks!  We actually had sharks circling Medea for pretty much the entire dive; it might be because they’re attracted to the electromagnetic radiation put out from the tethers, or it might e that they’re just waiting for the occasional fish that gets shredded in one of Jason’s thrusters…  Either way it was much more lively than the other seamounts we had visited – and during the first watch, the fish received much more interest than the objective of finding solitaries.  Not that this mattered much, because the numbers of solitaries were astonishingly low here.  This could be because of the overfishing, but also probably because solitaries are less abundant at 1,000 meters and above.  We managed to collect one live Caryophillia, an isidid and some black coral, I believe, but the catch was severely limited.  

Unfortunately, we had to cut the dive short due to several problems with Jason.  During our watch, three of Jason’s thrusters consistently cut out every 5 minutes, a dangerous problem in an area with many ledges and ravines.  The other issues were navigational – both the nav and the doppler sonar were intermittent.  Power had to be diverted every once in a while to revive the doppler, and there was no fix for the nav while the computers were up and running.  So the Jason crew decided to go into “layback mode,” which basically means that Jason comes up a hundred or so meters off the floor, and gets towed behind the ship, which is moving at a very slow speed of 0.3 knots or so.  At this point, all of the computers in the van were rebooted to see if this would fix the problem, and unfortunately it didn’t, so we had to cancel the dive.  

It turns out that the errors are associated with the leap year – the computers didn’t like the 366th day and decided to poop out on us – so we’re headed back in tomorrow for a short dive, and then we’ll head down to Cascade where some fair weather awaits us.  After that, our plans are still mostly up in the air; at our next scheduled location, the weather is supposed to stay bad until into next week, so we’ll wait for a report while we’re diving at Cascade and decide from there where to go.  

New Year’s came early for us on the boat – a whole 16 hours ahead of the East Coast of the US – and probably one of the earliest on the globe!  Unfortunately, a lot of the crew had work to do, so there was minimal celebration.  Apparently there were fireworks on the mainland that some crew saw from the boat, but on board the Thompson it was a relatively quiet affair.  Nonetheless, it’s 2009 – time for some new resolutions, and I know several people on this boat whose resolution is to not spend another holiday season at sea!!

NEW PUZZLE:

An eight-letter synonym for boring consists of three consecutive notes of the musical scale (do, re, mi, fa, so, la, and ti) plus the letters “ME”.  What is it?

Menu

Breakfast

• Bacon Scramble
• Grits

Lunch

• Beef barley soup
• Tuna melts
• Salad bar

Dinner

• Baked soy chicken
• Broccoli
• Boiled potatoes
• Seasoned wild rice
• Salad bar

Weather

Seas 17-20 feet, winds around 15 knots.

Position

Steaming to St. Helen’s seamount, 148° 47.17′ by 41° 14.34′

Today was another fairly uneventful day; we got some swath bathymetry of Cascade, and are steaming to St. Helen’s to do some bathymetry there too before our dive tomorrow.  It’s been very interesting to see the change in the weather over the past few days – there are two main types of waves that affect the ship.  One is the swell, which is consistently around 15 feet during the storm.  This is manifested as long periodic waves that are fairly predictable.  The second type are the wind waves, that form from the wind whipping up water off the top of the swell.  These waves are non-periodic, much less predictable, and also increase the overall height of the swell sometimes as much as twofold.  Right now, the wind has all but died down, so there’s nothing to do but heave and roll on the large swells – these swells still make diving with Jason very risky.

So since none of us were really doing much during the heavy weather, I got some time to interview Akel, the lead navigator of the Jason group for this cruise.  Akel works for the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution as a contractor, and currently lives in England with his wife.  Although Jason is run through WHOI, most of the work is contracted out; of the 10 Jason crew members,  “only 3 or 4 of us are actually employed by WHOI,” Akel says.  Akel grew up in Massachusetts, and later moved to Hawaii.  He got a Bachelor’s in geology and a Master’s in geophysics, completing his thesis under Paul Wessel, the creator of GMT (a very common and powerful mapping program).  After his graduate work, Akel stayed in Hawaii as a sonar specialist, working with data systems – UNIX and Linux processing scripts.  He first started working as a data processor for Jason 2 when it was first was released.

The job of the lead navigator is mainly to serve as a liason between the Jason crew and the chief scientist about where he wants to go.  This includes preparing maps, and, in Akel’s case, do some GMT troubleshooting “if the chief scientist finds out I’ve worked with it before” – as is definitely the case on this cruise. Akel does admit it’s “fun to play with old tools” every once in a while, though.  The Jason crew has several ways of tracking Jason once she’s on the seafloor.  One way, which isn’t used on this cruise, is to lay down a series of transponders before the dive, and set up a “transponder net”.  Once Jason is in the water, the pilot and navigator can triangulate to Jason using this net.  Jason is also equipped with a sonar, which gives the van a picture of the sea floor using doppler techniques.  A second way to get Jason’s exact position is to use the ship itself.  In order to get Jason’s exact bearing, the ship is held on station (in one place), Medea is positioned under the ship, and Jason is positioned under Medea.  Now, any inconsistencies in the doppler sonar are reset with the exact bearing from the ship’s GPS.

The main job of the navigator, during a given dive, however, is to drive the ship.  The Jason crew is given control from the bridge during a dive to make sure that there are no communication errors, which could lead to Jason getting pulled by the tether, which is very dangerous on an uneven seafloor.  Jason, being a *remotely* operated vehicle, is tethered by Medea via a fiber optic cable, and Medea is tethered to the ship via a similar cable that is spooled out of the aft A-frame winch.  All data, be it camera feed, position, depth, etc., is all relayed via this tether, so one could imagine that a sever or kink would be disastrous to Jason’s livelihood.  To control the ship and prevent Jason from getting dragged around by the ship’s movements, the navigator takes advantage of a glitch in the Dynamic Positioning System (DPS) that  the ship uses.  Basically, the control van tricks the ship into thinking its actual position is where the navigator wants the ship to go, say, half a degree to the West (this is a large distance, but we’ll use it for explanatory purposes).  The ship then recorrects its course, and heads to this new spot, all the while thinking it was just trying to stay at its original position.  This way, the navigator uses the DPS to move the ship where he wants it to go, all the while making the ship believe it is constantly correcting its course to stay at the same position – pretty neat!

This is Akel’s third consecutive Christmas at sea, “And definitely my last,” he says.  The Jason dive schedule is already set for next year, and thankfully no dives take place over the holidays.  Jason cruises take up about 5 months, and are generally well-spaced throughout the year.  Some of the most interesting dives Akel has been a part of (other than this one, of course) took place along the Ring of Fire, that is, the Marianna volcanic arc.  They got to dive around active volcanoes, see a lake of bubbling liquid sulfur, and one time, witness volcano actually erupting in front of Jason – surely a sight to behold, and to run away from!   Vents are also up there on Akel’s list, but become a little more mundane “when you’ve been down to them 20 times”.  Akel has also worked on towed sonar systems and commercial Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs).  

To provide some backstory here for those who don’t know, there are three basic types of underwater exploratory vessels – the autonomous vessels, such as ABE, are completely programmed and unmanned.  This of course sacrifices a lot of flexibility in the vehicle, and these types of vessels are usually restricted to mapping and taking some basic footage.  For example, we used a lot of ABE-generated maps from last year on this trip.  Then come the ROVs, which are used in all sorts of areas, such as working on oil stations or nuclear power plants or deep submergence scientific work.  The nice thing about ROVs is that they are completely controlled, and are very flexible in terms of what they can do and where they can go – Jason is rated to about 6,500 meters depth.  The only downside is that they must be physically connected to the ship; there is no way to transfer all of the data necessary to pilot an ROV wirelessly.

Alvin is a manned submersible commonly used in deep submergence work, and can dive as deep as 4,000 meters or so – which is plenty for the kind of work it does (mostly focused around the hydrothermal vents at midocean ridges).  There is a large debate right now – much farther reaching than just the deep submergence community, too – about the pros and cons of manned exploration vehicles into inhospitable areas.  For one thing, it surely is a thrill to dive down to a hydrothermal vent and see with one’s own eyes the life that surrounds it.  But the scientist is limited to a 10-inch glass porthole through which to see; not to mention the danger of being so far removed from help if something were to go wrong on the seafloor.  Jason, on the other hand, is completely remote, and is equipped with enough sensing equipment – and in our case, even an HD camera – that a science crew can extract just as much information from a Jason dive as an Alvin one.  Also, Jason is capable of being underwater for days at a time, whereas Alvin’s dives are limited to 10 hours.  This debate can also be extended to outer space: is it reasonable, or even feasible, to send a manned mission to Mars?  What benefits are there from such a mission?  There are certainly limitations to the current Mars landers, and I feel that human curiosity will get to the point that a human expedition will be inevitable, but I still wonder if it is necessary to do so.  I would love to hear people’s comments about unmanned/manned exploration vehicles!  When asked about the Alvin-Jason argument, Akel says that, although physically being 3,000 meters under the sea would be ridiculously cool, “Alvin never seemed to be that enticing,” mainly because Alvin dives 8 months out of the year – a long time to be at sea! 

Apart from fooling ships into going where he wants them to and being part of the Jason crew, Akel’s other passion is surfing.  In moving from Hawaii to England, Akel jokingly concedes: “I traded in the North Shore for the North Sea,” and admits that the surfing is just okay across the pond.  But, the perks of being a Jason crew member is that you get to travel all around the world, and a lot of times leave port from some pretty exotic places – Tasmania, Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, the Galapagos – just to name a few; all of which Akel has surfed.  As to the ships that the Jason frequents – the Thompson, Atlantis, Roger Revelle, Ron Brown, and others – the Thompson is definitely his favorite; mainly because of the layout and the great crew on board.  It’s good to hear this is the favorite of some Jason veterans – it certainly takes the heavy seas well!  Look forward to some more interviews of crew from around the boat – I’m sure we’ll get some more down time as the cruise progresses.

Breakfast

• Eggs
• Pancakes
• Bacon and sausage
• Fruit salad

Lunch 

• Beef and mushroom stir-fry
• Steamed rice 
• Fried chicken 
• Salad bar 
• Cauliflower 
• Tomato beef soup 

Dinner

• Baked ham 
• Penne pasta 
• Mashed potatoes 
• Gravy 
• Lima beans 
• Butternut squash
• Salad bar 
• Pound cake 

Weather:

Winds out of the West around 29 knots, seas 13-19 ft.

Position:

Steaming to the Cascade seamount, 150 miles due East of Hobart.

The weather looks pretty grim for the next week at least, so to hopefully make up some science, we’re heading out to the Cascade seamount to hopefully get a dive or two in. Since Cascade is more Northeast than our current location, we’re hoping that Tasmania will shelter us from some – but not all – of the bad weather systems heading our way. The captain recently corrected our course, giving us 6 extra hours at Cascade, so we’ll get to squeeze in some swath bathymetry of the dive region on Cascade before the planned dive time. However, the weather will not be perfect, and the chance that we’ll actually do a dive tomorrow is pretty slim. If the weather stays crummy, we’ll head up North some more to the St. Helen’s seamount, which will be more or less completely sheltered by the Tasmanian coast. Although this spot isn’t ideal, it’s mostly uncharted by scientists (but heavily fished). So at the very least we should get some interesting footage from this site, and hopefully collect some corals as well. In the meantime, we’ve all been catching up on reading, movies, and card games; Nele, a German post-doc in Jess’ group taught us “doublehead,” a card game from Northern Germany, and one that probably hasn’t spread too much farther than that – the rules are so complicated!!  After 4 hours of playing we were still confused about the rules!  I’m sure those of us who have learned it will take some sadistic joy in teaching it to our friends and family back home…

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