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Thursday
August 5, 2004 20:01:37 GMT, 1:10pm shiptime
- Dickens Seamount 54N 136W
We just received a forwarded email from
the captain containing the 2005 schedule
for the Atlantis, which is enough to ignite
sparks of wanderlust in even the most
jaded traveller: San Diego-Easter Island
Tahiti-Manzanillo (Mexico)-Galapagos Islands-Puntarenas
(Ecuador)-Puntarenas (Costa Rica)...etc.,
etc., I am particularly pleased to see
the timing of the Galapagos-Ecuador leg
(May 17-30), funded by an award from NOAA
OE to Tim Shank at WHOI, myself, and others
to revisit the hydrothermal vents of the
Galapagos Rift. As some of you know, my
first ever Atlantis cruise (and the first
participation of TIGR) was in April-May
2002, when we were invited by Tim and
Dan Fornari to join a Galapagos cruise.
This was a somewhat historic expedition,
marking the 25th anniversary of discovery
of hydrothermal vents at Galapagos. We
were seeking the famed "Rose Garden",
named for the flourishing fields of bizarre
marine life surrounding vents from which
extremely hot and chemical-laden waters
emerge. These vents support a whole marine
system that is independent of the sunlight
needed for life on the surface. Instead,
energy is derived from chemicals in the
vent water, and this energy travels up
through the food chain, starting with....you
guessed it, the bacteria! Microbes buried
in the flesh of giant tubeworms, and mussels
and clams, use sulfur compounds in the
vent waters to derive energy and inorganic
sources of carbon, and with these raw
materials build their cells and operate
their cellular machinery. These benefits
of carbon and energy are shared with the
host animals, which flourish and grow
to enormous size. The animals are dependent
on their bacterial symbionts (symbiosis
is a relationship between two organisms
belonging to different species, in this
case the relationship is beneficial to
both parties.) Check out the pictures
at www.oceanexplorer.noaa.gov, click on
2002 expeditions and look for the Galapagos
cruise.
Our search for the Rose Garden proved
fruitless. Alvin tracked over and over
the location and was unable to locate
the vent and its community. Evidence of
a recent lava flow led to the conclusion
that a recent undersea eruption had, in
the words of the song which inevitably
came to
mind, "paved Paradise and put up
a parking lot." You can imagine the
disappointment on board. There were scientists
who had studied this site
remotely for years, and the level of expectation
that had built up was
palpable. If we had had a bar on board,
there would have been scientists
lined up to drown their sorrows.
But the consolation prize was a gem -
a short distance from the original
Rose Garden site, our faithful hound ABE
(Autonomous Benthic Exporer) had
sniffed out a trace of anomalously high
temperature water with its
exquisitely sensitive nose. On this basis,
Alvin was launched with the hope
of finding another vent site. And they
did - a younger upstart that was
named (of course) "Rosebud",
as well as a teeming village of clams
that
was christened "Caly Field"
(after the genus name of the clam,
Calyptogena, I think). The reversal of
fortune sent spirits soaring, and
kept us up late at night with scalpel
and forceps in hand, dissecting out
the various tissues and doling them out
into plastic baggies. And, because
someone always asks, the answer is no,
these molluscs are not good to eat.
It's hard to get the hydrogen sulfide
(rotten eggs) smell out, even with a
good marinade of white wine and garlic,
or so French submersible crews had
reported.
So that's how I remember Galapagos 2002.
I hope fuzzy 2-year-old memory
has not caused me to mix up the details,
apologies if it has. And it was
this cruise that introduced me to life-at-sea,
and the wonders of the
Galapagos: the perfect blue waters, the
benign faces of marine iguanas
swimming alongside the water taxis out
of Puerto Ayora, landscape of hot
black rocks and prickly cactus and tiny
geckos everywhere. We will return
in 2005 to re-visit Rosebud, and watch
how the young vent community has
developed.
Well there I go again, getting off topic.
Back to reality and the Gulf of
Alaska, where the weather continues to
be gorgeous and un-Gulf-like. For
the sub recovery yesterday, it was warm
enough on deck for short sleeves.
If that Perfect Storm is still lurking
out there, we're not seeing it just
yet. Yesterday's Alvin basket was brimful
of rocks and sponges. The rocks
were either porous lava-type rock, which
gives us information about
formation of the seamounts, or so-called
"erratics", rocks that originate
on land and catch a ride out to sea on
an iceberg, then fall to the
seafloor when the iceberg breaks up. The
erratics sometimes have telltale
smooth surfaces, where they have been
polished by the grinding of a
glacier many miles away.
We had quite a sponge zoo in the lab
yesterday. In addition to the
aforementioned tubular glass sponge with
the Clinton coiffure, we have
seen sponges that, until they get properly
identified, are nicknamed
"peach sponge", "white
fuzzy sponge", "white poofy
sponge", and the like.
Today I was watching the video of yesterday's
dive, admiring the dexterity
with which the pilot broke off a chunk
of white poofy sponge with Alvin's
manipulator arm, and deposited it neatly
in a biobox. The manipulator claw
is tough enough to break rocks, and yet
in the hands of a skilled pilot
can hold a Coke can without crushing it.
I really hope I get the chance to
see the process in real time from inside
the sub, rather than just seeing
the replays the next day.
In scrambling to gather books to take
with me on this cruise, I had the
good fortune to grab hold of "Huxley"
by Adrian Desmond, subtitled "From
Devil's Disciple to Evolution's High Priest".
I think my Dad may have
given me this book, if he didn't, it's
exactly the sort of book I would
expect from him.
I'm going to quote here, because I love
Desmond's style:
"Thomas Henry Huxley became Darwin's
Rottweiler, instantly recognizable by
his deep-set dark eyes and lashing tongue.
Where Darwin held back, Huxley
lunged at his limping prey. It was he,
not Darwin, who enraptured and
outraged audiences in the 1860s with talk
of our ape ancestors and cave
men. Listeners were agog in a prim, evangelical
age."
I have only read the first couple of
chapters, but am
already intrigued by this man's road to
scientific fame. It couldn't be
more different from what we have come
to regard as a standard scientific
training: a science-heavy high school
curriculum, followed by years of
undergrad spoon-feeding and then the post-grad
years, with their odd
mixture of drudgery and inspiration, and
the final sprint of writing and
defence. Followed, of course, by post-doc-hood
and then the bifurcating
(or trifurcating) paths of academia, industry,
or policymaking.
Huxley was born above a butcher's shop
in Ealing, had only two years of elementary
schooling (from age 8 to 10), then his
schoolteacher father moved the family
north to the silk-weaving city of Coventry.
Tom Huxley became a teenaged apprentice
in medicine, learning the trade, as it
was then, over cold cadavers at the tender
age of 13. He followed his brother-in-law
to the "Great Babylon" (London)
where his apprenticeship transferred to
an East End doctor treating "the
gloomy waves of the hovelled poor".
By day, he sat grinding drugs for the
apothecary. By night, he immersed himself
in books:
"His workbench discipline was extraordinary.
Week in, week out he kept up
a punishing schedule: on Tuesdays and
Thursdays physiology, on other
weekdays a 'chronological abstract of
reigns', evenings of arithmetic,
Saturdays devoted to chemistry and physics,
with an hour's German each
day. In between he grappled with Guizot's
"Civilization in Europe" and
built electromagnets. Always he pushed
harder: 'I must get on faster than
this,' he chivvied himself as he fell
behind in Ancient History, 'and let
me remember this - that it is better to
read a little & thoroughly than
cram a crude undigested mass into my head'.
Wow. Talk about self-motivated. Not surprisingly
he clawed his way into a
medical college and distinguished himself
by receiving multiple academic
prizes.
More to come on rocks, sponges, and perhaps,
Huxley.
Best wishes to all,
Naomi
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