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Friday August 6, 2004 10:32:33
GMT, 3:32am ship time Dickins Seamount,
54N 136W
Yawn. It's been a long day.
After Alvin recovery around 4pm, and processing
of coral and water samples, we were on
deck again around 7:30pm for a CTD cast,
the first of two that were done last night/this
morning. The CTD is a large instrument
(about 4 feet across) consisting of a
tubular metal frame that supports various
sensors (for oxygen concentration, salinity,
turbidity) and can be loaded with large
Niskin bottles. These bottles have spring-loaded
caps at each end that are fixed open when
the CTD is deployed, and can be triggered
remotely to close and trap water at a
particular depth. When fully loaded, the
CTD bristles with 24 Niskins, each of
which can hold about 20 liters of water.
Tonight we only had around 10 bottles
attached, as we didn't need that much
water.
The CTD was to be put down
at the fringes of the seamount in two
different locations, six miles apart,
and the Niskin bottles fired on the seafloor
around 2800m down. We hoped to collect
water from each deployment so that we
could filter out the bacteria and compare
them to those we found on the seamount
in water collected by Alvin.
Putting the CTD over the
side requires quite a team of people,
coordinated by Dave Sims, our SSSG (Shipboard
Scientific Support Group, I think) head
honcho. Armed with a radio, Dave communicates
with the bridge and the winch operator.
He also has a small army of scientists,
resplendent in orange work vests, hard
hats, and steel-toed boots. ("I feel
like the Village People!" says Nic).
Extra hands are needed to manage lines
that will guide the CTD up and into the
water during the deployment, and also
to snare the instrument upon its return
to the surface. For most of the scientists,
its as close as we will get to experiencing
the work of the crew, and its nice to
have the opportunity.
OK, it's now 4:20am, I've
had exactly 30 minutes sleep tonight,
and I am too tired to generate sparkling
prose. Time to put the laptop away.
To be continued....
Friday August 6,
2004 23:23:58 GMT, 4:23pm shiptime
Dickins Seamount 54N 136W
Filtering the seawater took
us until around 5am, and when all the
filters
were safely stashed in the deep freeze,
I headed up for a couple hours
sleep before the sub launch.
While waiting for the water
to drip, drip, drip through the filter,
I had
taken a trip up to the bridge, trying
to keep myself awake. A full moon
half-hidden behind clouds had laid down
a lovely glittering path across
the water, and the bridge was darkened,
with the only light coming from
the zillions of buttons and instruments
glowing in the dark. Two shadowy
figures, who turned out to be PJ and Jacob,
were on watch (the 12-4am
shift) and gave me a short lesson on meteorology.
The intricacies of isobars,
fronts, and all those other hieroglyphics
are a little clearer to me now. And
the good news is that those two low pressure
areas I mentioned a couple of days
ago are behaving themselves, and we shouldn't
get anything too disastrous
in the way of weather. Probably some increased
wind...
Which might be enough to
call off a dive. And with my potential
dive
coming up sometime in the next week, I
am praying to Neptune to keep those
isobars nicely spread out and not let
them bunch up and give me bad
weather. Today after lunch we had a special
screening of "Volcanoes of the
Deep", the Imax film made a little
while back. Bruce Strickrott (Chief
Alvin Pilot) participated in much of the
filming, so it was great to have
him in the lounge, giving us running commentary.
He arrived for the
screening with a box of Kleenex, which
seemed strange as this kind of
documentary is not known for its tear-jerker
nature. Turns out that
certain parts of the film made us laugh
so hard we were literally crying.
The film-makers had taken a few liberties,
such as merging real sub
footage of deep sites such as the Lost
City (a fabulous metropolis of
undersea spires) with animation of Alvin
probing the depths. With the
overall effect being that someone was
down there swimming alongside Alvin
at x-thousand feet, filming it all for
posterity. Other giggly moments came
from another animation that showed Alvin
creeping through impossibly
narrow canyons and spiralling down into
horrible dark depths from which
you might expect the Kraken to emerge.
The icing on the cake were the
sound effects - gushing geyser noises
added to the black smokers, the sound
of
crab feet scuttling over chimneys, etc.,
etc., It probably doesn't
sound all that hilarious, but I guess
you had to be there. And Bruce kept
us in fits of laughter by giving us a
heads-up when something particularly
hokey was coming along. That having been
said, the film was
visually fantastic, wonderful footage
of the depths and its creatures. My
favorite was "Dumbo" the flying
orange octopus, which seemed to propel
itself by flapping its large and pendulous
ears. I would highly recommend
the movie, if its screening whereever
you all are living.
Today was another early-recovery
day for Alvin. Once they hit bottom,
there is about 4 hours of battery time
before they need to come back up. Kevin
has processed all our coral samples already,
and we are sitting waiting
for the last of the Niskin bottle water
to trickle through the filters.
Two of my styrofoam cups went down in
the sub today. For those who don't
know, decorating styrofoam cups with colorful
Sharpie pens and sending
them down with Alvin is one of our favorite
recreational activities. The
reason being that the extremely high pressure
at depth (3000
pounds-per-square-inch) forces all the
air out of the styrofoam and
shrinks them from regular coffee-cup size
to little espresso cups an inch
high. You can also shrink the styrofoam
heads used as wig stands, and the
result are some truly devilish looking
shrunken heads. The cups and heads
make great souvenirs. I will be bringing
quite a few home with me, but if
you'd like to special order one, let me
know. Just tell me what you would
like to have written on it.
It's 5:20pm and the Pavlovian
response between shiptime and appetite
is
kicking in. I've seen the menu board and
know that it's salmon with dill
sauce today. We've been getting a lot
of great fish on the cruise so far,
but are still waiting for the ultimate
Atlantis meal - fish caught by
Patrick the bosun off the back of the
ship. Last time we were out we had
tuna seared to perfection. Atlantis is
renowned far and wide for having
the best food in the US research fleet,
and it shows in our gradually
tightening waistbands. And, no, you have
to stop kidding yourself that the
tumbledryer is shrinking your pants. According
to the kitchen crew, the
average weight gain on the average cruise
is 7 pounds. My own weakness so
far this cruise have been the wonderful
cherries from Washington state -
first the red-and-yellow Rainier variety,
now succeeded by dark and
wonderfully sweet Bing cherries. Sometimes
it's downright painful to make
a choice at dinner: "the asparagus
quiche or the marinated mushroom
panini...hmmm." The final blow to
our slenderness is the mid-afternoon
snack - tasty crackers and cheese, or
salami slices, or mixed nuts. They
sit there innocuously on the table up
in the mess deck, daring you to walk
by and get a cup of coffee without sampling...
Fortunately, we have a lot
of exercise options - treadmill, stationary
bike, rowing machine, weights etc., And
the shipboard sport of choice,
table tennis. The latter is a serious
undertaking, with an "invitational
tournament" sign-up list posted for
each cruise. Woe betide the hapless
scientist who enters mainlab to stash
her samples in the deep freeze
adjacent to the table, if she disturbs
a quarter-final or semi-final
match. According to hearsay, one scientist
incurred the wrath of the crew
by bringing a large cumbersome piece of
equipment that could only be
stowed....in place of the ping-pong table.
Perish the thought.
OK, time to sign off. So
ends the first week on the R/V Atlantis.
More
news over the weekend.
Best wishes to all,
Naomi
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