02/28 | 03/04 | 03/05 | 03/06 | 03/07 | 03/08 | 03/09 | 03/10 | 03/11 | 03/12 | 03/14 | 03/15 | 03/16 | 03/17 | 03/18 | 03/19 | 03/20 | 03/21 | 03/23 | 03/24 | 03/25 | 03/26 | 03/27 | 03/28 | 03/29 | 03/31 | 04/01 | 04/02 | 04/03 | 04/04 | 04/05 | 04/06 | 04/07 | 04/08 | 04/09 | 04/10 | 04/11
Have been flying literally all day. Got up at 4:15 this morning, got ready, met Jennifer so she could take me to the airport, and got to D/FW at 6:00. Flight left at 7:00. Arrived at Houston 8:05. Was almost late getting on the plane at 9:30; flight left at 10:00 or so and then it was 8 hours to Honolulu! Saw 2 movies, had 2 meals - was really a long flight. I can't imagine the 16 hour flight straight back when we return. Katy fell asleep before the plane to Hawaii took off. We both agreed there was so much to do getting school lined out so we could be gone, getting packed, etc. that it was a sigh of relief to finally be on our way, bound for Hawaii. I didn't sleep, but it was nice to relax a little. Lots of good things ahead!
"I'm getting further from the things I thought I knew
But I'm closer to the truth
There's a distance to be crossed
And it's the space between me and you"
- Trout Fishing in America
It's 4:00 a.m. here, meaning it's noon yesterday back in Dallas. Just started standing watch. Over the last 3 days I have been a part of seeing an active volcano, hiking 8 miles (round trip) to sample molten lava, flown over 17 hours, etc. etc. etc. It has been an extremely busy time, frantic with all we had to do, and tense with everywhere we had to be.
Now, at last, we are here on the open ocean (so blue!) "mowing the lawn" as Dr. Stern put it, and we are beginning more of a routine. We stand watch 4 out of every 12 hours. My shift is from 4:00 until 8:00. That's fine in the afternoon, but it also means getting up at 3:30 a.m. to begin work at 4. Of course the commute is easy - I just climb a flight of stairs.
While standing watch, we are monitoring several pieces of equipment, particularly the HMR1, along with several others. Every 15 minutes we take a reading of the ocean's depth (so far it has generally been between 3 - 4000 meters!), get a magnetometer reading, and record our current latitude and longitude, the ships direction and the ship's speed. There are, of course, computers doing the same thing; we record it just as a backup in case the computer fails.
The HMR1 is a sophisticated sonar sounding device that gives us (amazingly) accurate pictures of the ocean floor. I think there is a link on the website that explains it. It's hypnotic to watch the ocean floor unfold in front of us as the device does its thing. When we put the HMR1 out, we put it several hundred meters behind the ship so the ship's equipment will not interfere with it. We are towing it about 500m behind us and it is weighted so that it stays about 100m below the surface. That is important, because atmospheric conditions mixing into the top of the water can throw it off, or at least limit its accuracy. One important aspect of standing watch is just making sure it is towing properly.
Lingo for any scientific equipment in the water is to call it a "fish". Since we are towing the HMR1, it is called a "towfish". "Mowing the yard" - HMR measures/records a swath of ocean floor 12 to 16 Km wide, depending on depth. We are travelling E for several Km, then moving up just a little and heading back W, going back and forth so when we put all the images together we will have covered the entire area. It's just like you would go back and forth with a lawn mower, mowing the path right next to where you just mowed with each pass.
Current location is 144 degrees E, 14 degrees N (NW of Guam).
Having never been on a ship before, I worried about getting seasick. I'll admit, during the first hours at sea, I felt a little queasy but it wasn't bad. Whether it was the medicine or what I don't know, but I have not felt sick since. The medicine itself made me sleepy (even though it was the "non drowsy" kind) and gave me "medicine head", but I think I will get over that.
The movement of the ship is not like I imagined (I guess I had not given it much thought). The best description would be to say it is a slow rocking motion. The entire ship leans to the right for about 3 seconds and then leans to the left for 3 seconds - it is a very steady motion, but it makes walking difficult. As soon as I brace for the right lean and start to take a step, the ship switches to left and I end up staggering sideways. When walking, I have to concentrate on that one task: walking. Otherwise I end up bumping into something or someone.
We had a fire drill today. It was a little
like at school, but not quite. When the alarm went off, we all had to go to
our berths and get our lifejacket, long pants and a long sleeve shirt, as well
as a hat. Then we (the science team) all reported to the science lab. From there
we had to file out - single file just like at school - up 2 flights of stairs
to an upper deck where we gathered with the rest of the crew. Each of us was
responsible for knowing whether we were supposed to go to the lifeboats on the
port side or the starboard side. They called roll to make sure we were all there,
and then gave us instructions on how to deploy the lifeboats in the event of
an actual emergency. To signal the drill was over, the captain blew the big
horn on the boat (loud!) and the drill was over.
This is different from most field trips I have been on. Usually, I study landscapes, rocks, and land forms first and foremost; but, I always try to note the trees and wildlife of an area as well. Here, there is none. In two days I have seen 2 birds - that is all. We are truly on the open ocean, well away from the intertidal zone where 80% of ocean life lives. One of the people from Hawaii and I agreed we wished we could see a fish occasionally. And also, there is no landscape to see-just water, water everywhere (that might make a good poem...). No, this is different. The first 3 weeks of the trip are being spent getting a picture of the landscape with highly technical equipment. The landscape, you see, is 3 - 4 Km below us. It will be only when that is done that we can begin putting the pictures together of what the land looks like, what land forms there are and where they came from.
It is truly fascinating, and there are amazing images of faults, seamounts, scarps, grabens and other things coming across. And I feel like a true explorer when I think that some of these things have never been seen before. Truly, when I am on watch, I might be the first person to have ever seen some of the things unravelling before me. But it is a different form of exploration. Instead of hiking boots and backpacks, we are exploring with sonar and computers. But we are explorers just the same.
The birds were brown boobies by the way.
One interesting thing
about ship life is that EVERYTHING is tied down in some way. With the ship constantly
rolling (side to side) and pitching (front to back) any thing perched on a table
or shelf tends to go flying. At least, it won't stay where you put it. Consequently,
all the bookshelves have bars across the front that hold the books on the shelf.
All the desks and tables in work areas are made of plywood. The table is bolted
to the floor first and then the top is made of material that is easy to sink
a screw into, and from the screws, things can be tied down. Every computer,
computer monitor and other piece of equipment has a string or bungee cord around
it keeping it in place. Things you would normally stack in the corner (boxes
etc.) are stacked in the corner, but tied to the wall as well.
No chairs have casters on them. They are all designed to not slide. The
chairs in the mess area are permanently attached to the floor (they swivel,
though). Cups, coffee pots, dry erase markers, napkin holders, salt/pepper shakers
- everything is held down or restrained in some way. It would be a mess if it
werenât, because the ship never stops rocking.
I still cannot walk across a room in a straight line. But, I've been noticing
that neither can the sailors, so I don't feel too bad about it.
The HMR1, as I think has been mentioned before, is a sonar device. It sends out sound waves and then measures the time it takes for the signal to return. From this it can figure out the depth. It sends two signals of different frequencies; one more to the right and one more to the left. This instrument is arguably the most sophisticated in the world at what it does. It can detect subtleties and draw a picture of the ocean floor at extreme depths. Most of what we have been mapping has been running from 2 - 4000 m.
The signal is reported back in two ways. One of the images we get is a bathymetry image. This is a color-coded map of the varying depths. From this we can see the contour of the floor - how steep slopes are, etc. The information in the computer is even more sophisticated than what it initially shows on the screen; later on, contour lines with relatively small intervals can be added to the finished product.
At the same time, HMR1 sends a sidescan image. This is a black and white picture of the floor. It looks similar to an aerial photograph that you may have seen of an area. This allows us to actually see forms - mounts, sediment flows, etc.
After an hour, the computer closes/saves the information to a file. Total image in an hour at the speed we are running ends up being an area about 12 - 15 Km by 15 Km. A technician takes this file and melds the two images, creating a picture with landforms on it that also shows depths/contours. It is similar to geologic atlases that I have seen before. It is truly amazing the quality it gets.
After several hours, then, we
have a "ribbon" of map as we travel due E or W for several hours.
Another person then comes in and (on the computer) lays these ribbons side by
side and merges them to make a map of the entire area (or at least what we have
done so far). It is fascinating to watch.
Here, everyone loves looking over just ordinary raw data and numbers. A lot of times science gets to be that way. On the one hand science is a study of the beauty and awesomeness of nature; but on the other hand, science is also about quantifying that beauty and awesomeness. As Michelle Overton is fond of saying, "Math is the language of science", and sooner or later a scientist has to quit gawking at the spectacular view and get down to doing the numbers. That is especially true here, since our spectacular view is covered over with 2 miles of water depth. Here, we have to do the numbers before we ever get to see the view. In fact, it is numbers that HMR1 uses to draw the picture of the view for us.
And it has been drawing. Last night we passed over a really pretty volcano. We have already seen a couple of others, and this one was not as big as some of those, but it was a pretty picture when it came across; it was a classic shield volcano with obvious lava flows down its side in all directions. And it was sitting in a sediment field so it was in stark contrast to its surroundings. (Sediments show up as white on the side scan pics, solid rock shows up as dark grays and blacks). I hope it turns out to be one of the places we come back to dredge on the second half of this journey.
I didn't realize it, but the crew had put a fishing line out sometime in the last few days. Yesterday it caught a blue fin tuna (also called a skipjack). Skipjacks are the smaller of the two common tunas; most of what comes in a can at the grocery store is yellow fin, which is a much bigger fish, and thus much more economical to harvest.
Yesterday morning, I saw several birds in the mid morning hours (8:00 or so) when my watch was over, and then I also noticed several flying fish scattering away as the ship came near them. So, there is some life out here. It's just not as abundant as it is nearer a seashore.
The work is going on, and is going well. Katy, Homer and I have been busy preparing several things for the website. For those of you following along every day, we are having a little problem getting big files sent back over to be put on the site. Looks like for now we are going to be limited to journal entries; however, we will dock for one day about two weeks from now, and when we do, the plan is to ship a lot of the videos, pics, and activities immediately so that it can be added to the site then. Just stay with us, it will be there.
Honestly, it all looked exceptionally easy when we started all this. Would you like a 6 week cruise in the Pacific? Sure! But now the reality has really hit home and we really are working hard out here, and will be for a long time to come.Ê Those of you whom are checking the website, post some messages to it!
We'll be glad to answer any and all questions that come across.
Yesterday the crew caught a mahi mahi, so there's another fish. The question for the geology right now is whether to continue on the track we are on, or maybe move to another area a little farther north. Katy and Homer did a video about the engine room, and another about the bridge. Katy and I are working on a bathymetric map activity, and I am working up a thing about salinity, and another on distillation and how water is purified shipboard.
Keep watching, and really - post some ideas on the site! Or at least say hi...
Today is Sunday. We have been out to sea for one full week now. Still have 5 to go...wow! We have done so many things in a week, and there is still lots more to do. We are switching shifts so we can work with and get to know different people. I am changing to the 8 - 12 shift. That will be easy getting up at 7:30 am instead of 3:30, but it also means I will be up until midnight every night. Of course, midnight here is 8:00 the previous morning back in Fort Worth. Everyone will be in first period and just starting the school day as I am finishing off my day. I think I will miss seeing the sunrise each day.
I am currently working on a piece about how the ship gets its freshwater supply. It's pretty interesting, and not really complicated. Be watching for it on the website as soon as I can get it sent in (2 weeks or so from now).
Fishing report: Something bit through the line yesterday and got away (so you know it must have been incredibly huge: all the ones that get away are!). The guys who know said it possibly could have been a wahoo, as they have very sharp teeth. This morning they caught another mahi mahi (also called a dorado, and sometimes a dolphin fish). I was able to take a couple of pictures this time.
The ship is really rolling and pitching today. Anything that is not tied down (including the chair I am sitting in) tends to slide back and forth across the floor. The wind is up higher than it has been; however, the crew still says this is "calm" seas compared to what they had the last trip. Apparently it was bad the whole time.
There are two things that affect how turbulent the ocean is, and consequently how much the ship rocks - waves and swells. Waves are just that: waves caused by the local wind. They are much like the waves on lakes, and the harder the wind is blowing, the bigger they are. Swells, on the other hand, are much longer, slower rolls that come from storms that are occurring somewhere far off. They can be (and usually are) coming in a completely different direction than the wind-blown waves. These two things combine to create constant movement in the water (although the crew swears they have seen it as smooth as glass at times). Today, the swells are only 4 - 6 feet tall, but are coming at the boat from an odd angle (45 degrees from the direction we are going). The wind is also brisk today, so the waves are larger than they have been all this week. One earlier day this week, the swells were 8 - 10 feet tall (still relatively "small"), but the wind wasn't blowing as hard and we were going with the direction the swells were coming from. So, even though the swells were larger, we weren't rolling and pitching as much as we are today.
The combination of waves and swells and thus how rough the ocean is is measured on something called the Beaufort scale (sp?) to determine how rough the sea is today. Completely calm is a 1, and a hurricane is a 12. Today's water is probably a 5 or a 6 (it is a subjective scale). 7 is when you should start to think about worrying, so no one is worried at all today.
Waves and swells are both the "local weather" of the ocean. The moon's gravity also causes a little rise in the level when it is overhead or directly underneath us (tides), and also the turning of the Earth creates a broad current in the ocean and atmosphere. In this part of the world these currents are generally from the East (Coriollis effect/ Trade winds). Those currents have more to do with the climate (average temperature and humidity year after year). Waves and swells give the ocean its "weather"(what it is like today). With few exceptions, the ocean is constantly moving.
Fishing report: We caught another Mahi mahi today, and one yesterday. That makes 5 days in a row we have caught something. Only one per day, but itâs still a streak.
One thing that is interesting to me out here is that, like a lot of industries and lifestyles, the people who sail have a vocabulary all their own. I had heard some of the words, but they didn't mean much to me. Turns out these are not nicknames, they are the actual term for the item out here, and I have had to learn them to be able to carry on a conversation. Here are some examples.
These are all common ones. There are more, but I can't think of them right now.
The sunset the last two nights here has been gorgeous! Just beyond belief! Being out here, there are no landforms, trees, buildings, city lights - in short, nothing to get in the way of the sunrise and sunset. Last night it outdid itself. There were some clouds for the sun to reflect off of and the colors went from one horizon clear over to the other! Pinks, oranges, yellows, salmon, browns, greys, white, blue, part of the sky was even green. I may have seen a prettier sunset before, but I don't remember when. And there is no way to take a picture of it - it literally took up the entire sky, and a camera would not be able to capture it all. It was truly a wonderful experience. We watched for a good 45 minutes, trying to take it all in, and not miss any of the nuances.
There is a phenomenon out here that the captain has told us about, but I have not witnessed yet. Apparently, at the last second, just as the last sliver of sun dips below the horizon, there is a green aura that appears for just a second. Sometimes itâs almost a flash, sometimes just a quick glow. I am going to be watching for it.
There is a question that has come up that apparently does not have an answer at this time; that is, it is still being debated/argued about. When a volcano erupts, it can be extremely explosive, or it can be a "quiet" eruption, that is not throw very much up into the air, but instead be mostly lava flows that run down the side. Typically, if an eruption is explosive, it is due to there being a high concentration of gasses trapped in the magma prior to eruption. There may also be a high silica content (relatively) to the magma that can contribute to the explosiveness as well.
Explosive eruptions make volcanoes called cinder cones, and also composite volcanoes. These tend to have steeper sides and some of the makeup of the mountain will be ash related material from the explosion. Quiet erupting volcanoes are called shields as the lava flowing down the sides tends to create a mount with more gently sloping sides.Ê The volcanoes we are seeing at the depths we are mapping all tend to be shields.
The question that has not been answered yet is this: Is it possible to have an explosive eruption in water that is 4000 meters deep? That amount of water exerts a tremendous amount of pressure. Even if the magma had enough trapped gas to create an explosive eruption, would it be able to explode, or would the water pressure force it to erupt quietly anyway? There have been explosive eruptions on some of the islands here, and even some at depths of 1000 m or so, but apparently it is still a question that there is some debate about - How explosive can an explosive volcano be when 4000 m of water is holding it down? In other word, which one wins: the volcano or the water pressure?
With the scanner we are using sediments - usually assumed to be ash related in this area- show up as light colored, while igneous rocks - usually associated with lava flows in this area - show up as dark colors. The volcanoes we see here tend to be all dark in color, i.e. all lava flows. But today we crossed over one that had a light color to one side... could it have been some kind of ash related material? Could it be that explosive eruption? At this point we don't know. During the second half of our journey we are going to go back and actually get samples from several (80 or so) locations. If that is one of the areas we go back to, maybe we can find out. If we don't, it will be out there for someone to find and research later on... any takers?
Today we passed right in between two small, apparently uninhabited islands. They reminded me of the island in the movie Castaway. We are in that part of the world, after all. These didn't have a lagoon like the one in the movie, at least not on the side I could see; in fact, the waves were crashing violently right on the rocky shore (no beach, either). When I say we passed right in between them, understand that they were still 2 or so miles away each.
In looking at these islands, I saw firsthand proof of something that we cover in 8th grade science: the Coriollis effect. As the Earth rotates it creates currents in the ocean, and in the atmosphere as well. These currents are not unlike the swirls of jet stream you sometimes see when the space shuttle lands. The Earth is moving a little more than 1000 mph (!) at the equator all the time, and this movement creates currents as the fluid ocean and atmosphere are disturbed by this movement. In the oceans, it creates large clockwise currents in the northern hemisphere, and counterclockwise currents in the southern hemisphere (can you say "Gulf Stream"?). In the atmosphere, because it is much thinner, the currents are a little more complicated, but the currents break down into the Trade Winds, the Prevailing Westerlies and the Polar Easterlies in each hemisphere. Both of these currents, in the water and in the air, play a large role in the climate of an area, i.e. average annual rainfall, mean temperatures, that sort of thing.
Here in the tropics (today we are near 16.0 N lattitude) that means that the general ocean current is usually coming from the north or northeast; likewise, the trade winds usually come from the same direction. That was evident on the two islands we saw. On the eastern side, the side consistently facing the wind and waves, were rocky cliffs with an extremely steep slope, having been subjected to a constant pounding year after year. The western side, however, which is not subjected to as much of a beating, had a much gentler slope, and looked pretty much the way it is thought that the entire island looked when it was first formed.
This look - steep east sides, gentle west sides - is generally true of all the Mariannas islands, as well as any tropical island in the trade wind belt. And, if you'll notice on a map, most (not all) towns on any given island tend to be on the western side, where it is easier to pull a boat/ship in and there is less weather related damage that occurs to any structures that might be built.
Katie said she was going to write about the bioluminescent plankton, so I won't, but they are awesome! The guys said if you flush the toilet a bunch of times and turn out the lights, you can see them in the bathroom but apparently they were pulling my leg...
We are currently moving into the forearc basin of the IBM trench system. Currently we are mapping a depth of 6000 m; it will get deeper still. Right now we are moving across a feature called a serpentine mud volcano. There are several in this area. Patty Fryer from the University of Hawaii was supposed to be joining us today, but couldn't because she is currently working on another ship drilling into one of these things, and there have been some delays there.
To understand serpentine mud volcanoes, there are a couple of background items to cover. 1, the basement of the lithosphere is almost entirely made up of a mineral named peridotite. This is a dense material that is basically hardened mantle material. In a subduction zone, the subducted slab gives off huge amounts of water as it sinks into the mantle. It is this water that lowers the melting temperature of the mantle, allows melting of the mantle to occur, and creates the volcanoes that make up the island chains of the Marianas.
However, there is another scenario that can (and does) occur. The water itself can work its way up into the peridotite of the lithosphere. When this happens, it chemically changes the peridotite into another mineral called serpentine. Serpentine is less dense than peridotite, and once formed takes up more volume than the original peridotite did. Because of these two factors (which are really the same factor) the serpentine forces it way up through the crust, and spews out on to the ocean floor: serpentine mud volcano. There is no fire (lava, etc.) involved here. It is called a volcano just because you get flows running down the sides, but the flows are really a mud-type material, not lava. And the resulting landform looks similar to a shield volcano, hence the name. There is some discussion over whether the serpentine rising is like a salt dome forcing its way up, or if it worms its way through faults that already exist.
Fishing report: I'm sorry to say we have been blanked the last two days (or is it 3 now?). The guys say catching something 5 days in a row was unusually good; after all, we are not a fishing boat, we are a research vessel with a line thrown over the side. Once we start the second half of our expedition and begin dredging the ocean floor for rock samples (!), the crew hopes to be able to actually get out the rods and reels and be a little more serious about fishing. I'll keep you informed...
"The deep, blue sea". You hear that quite often - in stories, poems songs. Well, I just saw the "deep blue sea". We just crossed the Marianas trench for the first time. We will be going back and forth across it several times in the next few days. I just took a reading, and right here, right now the water beneath the ship is 9,744 meters deep. That's 9.7 kilometers or 5.8 MILES deep!
Over the years I have tried to get students in my classes to visualize what 5 miles of water depth is like, and usually it is hard for them to imagine it. And I know what they mean. It is hard for me to imagine it as well. Growing up in central Texas and then living in Fort Worth for the last 20 or so years, my whole experience with water depth relates to swimming pools and lakes. The definition of deep water in my mind is anything that I cannot hold my breath and swim to the bottom of. In other words, any thing more than about 15-20 feet is deep. This is OVER TWENTY NINE THOUSAND FEET!
I stood at the edge of the ship and looked down into the water and tried to imagine that the bottom was over 5 miles below. That is approximately how high a jet flies above the ground in the sky. If you dropped a rock in this water and let it "sink like a rock" it takes over 4 1/2 hours to hit bottom.
For every 10 meters of depth, you can add 1 atmosphere of pressure. So that is 974 atmospheres... the list just goes on and on of ways to think of it, but it still seems unreal. But we are here, I saw the number and it was measured with the finest equipment in the world. We are hovering atop the "deep, blue sea" and it is a long, long way to the bottom.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ
P.S.
This is not the deepest part of the trench...
We crossed over the Mariana trench today. One spot we went over measured out to be 10,689 m deep... that's over 6 miles! We pulled out the record books, and that is the third deepest spot ever recorded (the book says there are others that have not been verified though). There's not really any science in that - we knew it was deep, and that has been known for years - but it was still an interesting thing to look at the screen and then go out and try to peer down in and through the water and imagine how far we were above the Earth's crust at the time.
The premise of the trench is that it is a subduction zone. As new Earth's crust is created at seafloor spreading centers - in the middle of the Atlantic and in the Eastern Pacific among other places - the newly formed crust is relatively thin and thus is relatively light weight. As this crust moves away from the spreading center, over time it cools, and with cooling becomes thicker as mantle material hardens to the bottom of it, forming a layer know as the lithosphere. As it becomes thicker itÊ gets heavier. At some point, it gets heavy enough/thick enough to sink into the mantle, yet it gets held up by being tied to the rest of the plate it is a part of. Once it reaches an area of subduction, it is heavy enough to sink and does sink, taking with it the edge of the plate it is butting up against. This area then becomes a trench in the ocean. Such trenches are the deepest part of the ocean, and the Marianas has long been held as the deepest of all the trenches. The edge of the Pacific plate that is sinking underneath us dates to the Jurassic Period and is the oldest (and so the thickest and heaviest) oceanic crust/lithosphere on Earth, so its sinking is a strong force and the trench it causes is extremely deep.
I saw that first hand today. Current thinking in plate tectonics is that this sinking of the lithosphere at subductions zones may be the driving force behind the plates shifting and moving as they do. As the lithosphere sinks, it drags the rest of the plate along behind it, creating the rifts that exist at spreading centers, which then add new crust to the plate, etc. etc. etc. I think all of this is on the website in much greater detail in Dr. Stern's notes. This is just kind of the "jist" of it. We saw it firsthand today.
We switched shifts again over the weekend. I have the 12-4 watch. That's fine from noon to 4 in the afternoon; however, midnight to 4am has proven to be hard to get used to. Apparently there has been a low pressure weather system here: I have had a headache the last couple of days. I've been "off my feed" as they say on the farm. I feel better this morning though. Guess I'm getting used to it.
We've been continuing to map the area. Another 3 days and we'll finish up this part of the expedition. Once we get the maps finished we'll use them to pick areas to dredge. Dredging involves dropping a "bucket" down and pulling up samples of the rocks on the floor (we'll have pictures that will explain it better). I think we are all looking forward to it. We have been looking at (excellent) pictures of the ocean floor for almost 3 weeks now - it will be 3 weeks when we are done - and I think we are all a little anxious to be able to actually touch some of the things we have seen in the pictures. In all we will dredge about 80 places over the last 3 weeks.
I am kind of known as a "rock guy" back at my school. However, a lot of the geology I know is what I have taught myself through books, etc. and I have to admit there are "holes" in my knowledge. The people I am out here with have no such holes. It is amazing the amount of knowledge that abounds here. I don't thnk there is a question that can't be answered between us. Or I should say if there is an answer to the question. Plate tectonics still has a lot of unknowns - one of the reasons we are here is to try to answer some of those unknowns. It really is the discovery side of science in several ways.
Fishing report: Apparently, I was wrong. We caught a mahi mahi every day for eight days straight. I just didn't happen to be around when they brought it in. However, we did get blanked yesterday (Monday). I told the guys to be sure and let me know when they catch something, but with the watch I am on, I sometimes am trying to catch a little sleep. And catching one fish is not a big deal to the guys who are out here all the time.
Along those same lines, the captain told me that there was a flying fish on the deck yesterday morning. Apparently it had flown up on to the deck during the night. The guy who found it didn't think anything about it and just tossed it over the side, so none of us got to see it! We all would have loved to see a flying fish up close (they are hard to see in detail when they are 50 m or so out in the water), but again it wasn't any big deal to the guys who are out here all the time, so they didn't think to save it for us. They promised they would if it happens again though.
I think my school (Fossil Hill Middle) is on spring break this week. I hope everyone is having a good time. And, I hope they'll keep tracking the website from home. It's great to get the comments and questions you all have been sending. Keep it up.
Today is the first day of spring here (I guess it is there too isn't it?). It is also Marc Silver's - our resident computer tech - 30th birthday. So for supper tonight we had a special steak dish, and then a big birthday cake. It was all delicious. Before we were allowed to cut into the cake we had to sing "Happy Birthday" to Marc.
Then, several of us retired to the deck to sip a cup of coffee and watch the sun set, when Bob Wilson noticed that there was a fish on the line! I ran to get the camera, while Dave and Jim hauled it in.Ê It was a mahi mahi 50 inches long (we measured it with a tape measure)! Dave estimates that it probably weighed around 24 pounds, and it is (by far) the biggest fish we have caught so far. And for once, I was able to get some pictures!
Along those same lines, Homer is headed home in two days. He will be bringing with him LOTS of pictures, videos, etc. so be looking for those on the website probably next week. Including the one of the 50 in. mahi mahi...
The first half of our journey is coming to an end. We spent today busily helping the HMR group get all of their loose ends tied up, pulling in the towfish first thing this morning, and then working all day printing out and filing final copies of the maps we have made on this leg of our tour. All of the information is saved on computer discs and backup tapes, of course, but HMRG made a file that has a printout of every site we intend to dredge over our 2nd three weeks. We trimmed these so they would fit in a notebook for ready reference as we travel to each site.
When I finally stepped outside again around 5:00 this afternoon I saw that the crew had been busy as well. There were ropes neatly laid out on the deck on the bow and stern, made ready to tie us up when we get to port tomorrow. These ropes were huge, probably 4 inches in diameter. I suppose it takes huge ropes to be strong enough to tie up a 278-ft. vessel such as the R/V Melville. When the ropes are secured to the pier, there are sheets of aluminum that are attached to the middle of them to prevent rats from walking across from the land on to the ship. Of course, that is not a problem in Guam (the Brown tree snake has seen to that), but it is an important consideration in a lot of ports. Getting rats into a food supply meant to feed 50 people for three to six weeks would be disastrous.
The gangplank had appeared out of nowhere and was sitting at the ready to connect us to the pier when we get back. I did not know we had brought the gangplank with us - it is a metal staircase at least thirty feet in length, and I have no idea where it was kept while we were at sea. I just assumed it had stayed behind and was waiting for our return, but apparently it had been stored on board somewhere.
As the sun went down this evening, the ocean was especially calm - I think the calmest it has been yet. I stood on the bow and watched it set. Tinian was near and very visible, and the sky was absolutely clear. There were a few clouds on the horizon, but none at all overhead. I think I actually saw the green flash as the last bit of sun disappeared. I say I think I did; it happened quickly, and was one of those things that I either saw or just talked myself into thinking I saw, I am not sure which. I was standing alone out there, so I don¹t have someone to verify Whether it was actually visible or not.
Here at latitude 14 degrees N, the stars are of course incredible at night. Just like the sunset, there are no trees, landforms, or buildings getting in the way of being able to see everything in the sky from horizon to horizon. Tonight, those same clear skies and calm seas that made sunset so wonderful also made starwatching a real experience. Looking to the north, the Big Dipper is evident just like in Dallas; however, here you can also look to the south and see the Southern Cross. Among other things, Scorpio is evident in the east/southeast, and as the night wears on the sky gets so full of stars there is no way to count them. It is truly beautiful, and something I wish I knew more about.
Overall, this first three weeks has been a real experience. And there is more ahead...
Fishing Report: The guys caught another big mahi mahi early this morning. I expect being nearer to land over the next few days; the finishing should be good. Stay tuned...
After working the 12-4 a.m. watch, I went to bed and slept some. When I went to bed the lights of Guam were lighting up the sky; we were very close to port. It was just a matter of sailing around the island to get to our harbor, and sure enough when I awoke we were there. There was lots of work to do: All of the HMR group's computers and equipment had to be packed, and the equipment out on deck had to be unbolted. Then the ship's cranes, as well as a crane sitting on land, got busy picking everything up and setting it off the ship. I spent as much time as I could out on deck taking pictures, helping all I could while at the same time staying out of the way of the heavy equipment.
In the water at the harbor, I saw an octopus! That was not something I expected to see. And then a little later I saw a sea turtle. He and I played hide and seek for a while. He kept swimming back and forth in front of me and I kept trying to get a good picture of him. He would come up to the surface and almost break out of the top, but just at the last minute would turn and swim back deeper, making a picture that just looked like a brown blur in the water. But then finally he did stick his head out several times, and I got three or four good pictures. Some of the sailors on board said they had never seen a sea turtle before, so it was a real treat for several of us.
Originally, the plan was to leave around 3:00 and we were not to be allowed to get off the ship at all. At the last minute, for some reason, it was decided that we weren't leaving until 8:00 the next morning. All of a sudden we had a little free time! We got to go to the naval base's px, which I had never done before, and then a handful of us got to drive over to a little park and went snorkeling. That is something I love to do, and it was wonderful to see the corals and fish and also to get to relax a little bit.
The people from the University of Oregon and Tokyo are here, so we are making new friends and there's new faces to take pictures of for the website. I'll miss the Hawaii people though. They were good friends, and you know you just can't have too many friends.
Well, we are out to sea once more! On this leg of the journey we will be going back over the same areas we went over on the first leg; only this time, we will be dredging the bottom and pulling up rock samples from places we have identified as interesting. The workshift schedule is a little different. We will be working 12 hour shifts instead of the 4 on /8 off we were doing. Katie and I both are on the noon - midnight shift, which will be great! It will give us some time to coordinate things a little better than we perhaps have done in the last week or so. We were working such different hours, we hardly saw each other lately.
Dredging is going to be a lot different from mapping. Whereas I spent most of my shift staring at a computer screen before, now I am going to be able to get out on the deck and do some physical work for a change. The dredge is a metal box with teeth on the top and a chain bag that hangs out the bottom of it. The box is probably 3 feet long, and 18 inches wide (or so) and the chain bag is 6 or 7 feet long (there will be pictures - look for them). Inside the chain bag is another bag made out of nylon netting. The idea is to drag the dredge along the bottom and allow the metal box with teeth to break up the rock and then scoop them into the bag. On our first shift today, we did two dredges and did not really get too many rocks to be honest. Apparently the area we dredged was solid rock and the dredge never "bit" into it much; instead, it just slid along the surface. However, we did get a few rocks, and it gave us good practice to learn all the operation of getting everything in and out of the water.
Imagine what kind of equipment it takes to do this. The cable that pulls the dredge is 9/16 inches in diameter (that is about the size of my finger). One meter of the cable weighs 1.4 pounds. So do the math: if we have 3000 m of cable out that comes to 4200 pounds (over 2 tons) just to hold up the cable! That's not counting the dredge itself, and that is before there are any rocks involved at all! Needless to say, the equipment is huge, and the actual operation of the equipment can only be done by trained professionals, which the R/V Melville has.
Once the dredge is in the water, and as it is being lowered, we attach a "pinger" to the cable 150 meters above the dredge. This is a sonar device that sends sound waves out and measures distance to the bottom. There is a corresponding computer screen back in the lab that we can watch and infer whether the dredge is on the bottom, is bouncing off the bottom, etc. There is also a meter (the "bite o meter") that measures tension on the cable to give us some idea of whether or not the dredge is grabbing on the bottom or not. We worked hard today, and I have no doubt we will be "dredging fools" in no time as soon as we get the system down.
After the rocks are pulled up, there is a lot of work to be done to initially classify what came up. Records have to be kept on what we got, where we got it, and we also make a few field notes on what we see initially. There will be much more chemical analysis done back in Texas, Oregon, and Japan later, but care is given here to make sure we know as best we can what the rock is and to record any first impressions we have of them. Then they are systematically filed so they do not get mixed up with the rocks from the next dredge.
One of the tools used in this process is a rock saw. Katie and I both got to use it - it was pretty cool! We can saw the rocks in two, or make thin samples of them, or cut them into several sizes that can easily be worked with back at the lab on our return. It has a diamond grit blade that can cut the rock easily, and at the same time it runs water over the cutting area so that the rock (or the saw) doesn't get too hot. If there is too much heat that builds up the rock can literally shatter, which is not what we want to happen.
Until tomorrow...
Whew! Working 'til midnight sounds easier than it is. I was pretty tired when I "racked up", i.e. went to bed, last night. But, a good night's sleep and another beautiful day in the tropics (plus a couple cups of good coffee) can change an attitude pretty quickly. We are at it again. The work we are doing today is a little different than what I described yesterday. Today we are doing wax cores. What this consists of is 250 lbs of weight attached to a cable. On the bottom of the weights is an attachment that looks something like an upside down round cake pan (only heavier and sturdier). This attachment is filled with a mixture of beeswax and petroleum jelly, and then the whole contraption is dropped over the side and lowered to the bottom. Once on the bottom the idea is to slam the device into the bottom and whatever rocks are there will stick into the wax.
Sometimes when a lava flow cools extremely quickly, as it often does at the bottom of the ocean, the outer surface of the newly formed rock is nothing but glass (called obsidian) with some inclusions (particles trapped in the glass). Wax coring works especially well on this type of surface. The idea is to slam the weight down, breaking the glass into small pieces. It is these small pieces that get pressed into the wax and then brought back to the surface. And, all day today we have been over the spreading center past the back arc basin, which contains this type of lava.
All in all, wax coring goes much more quickly than dredging, so it is possible to do more of them in one day, and thus cover more area in a given amount of time. While one core is being dropped and brought back up, we work inside to get the next attachment ready to go, i.e. filled with wax. Once the core is back up, we take the attachment inside, and scrape out all the wax that has glass pieces in it. This is carefully labeled, and then filed. Later, back at the university, the glass will be separated from the wax, and chemical analysis will be done to determine what inclusions are in it and in what quantity.
Fishing Report: This area is not especially good for fishing. We did not catch anything here when we were here to map this area, so the guys do not think we will catch much this time either. However, there is some big news on the fishing front. I think I mentioned before that with dredging, the ship is often stopped and it is possible to fish with a rod and reel (when not on duty, of course...). The guys have lent me a pole, and we all put money into a pot. Biggest fish in the next three weeks gets the money. I don't think I'll be able to fish more than a half hour a day, so I don't know that I have much chance, but I'll keep you posted on how the contest is going.
I learned something new today. One of the major rocks we are dredging up is peridotite. This rock is hard to place in the normal categories (igneous, metamorphic or sedimentary) because it is really not a rock from the Earth's crust; rather, it is a rock literally from the Earth's mantle. Like the word granite or schist, peridotite is not a rock, but rather a whole class of rocks. Peridotite is the rock that the mantle itself is made of. The three most important/common minerals in peridotite are olivine, orthopyroxene (enstatite for example) and clinopyroxene (augite for example). Again, these three are classes of minerals, and there are several individual minerals that fit into each class.
When the mantle melts, the part of the peridotite that has melted recrystallizes as basalts, and other igneous rocks. The part that does not melt, but instead is left behind (if you will) is called a depleted peridotite. Often times this is also altered by water chemically changing it into a rock named serpentine.
In a fast spreading plate boundary, such as the East Pacific Rise near Mexico, there is a lot of melting that occurs, and so most of the rocks that can be seen there are the igneous basalts and related rocks. However, in a slow spreading center, such as here in the Marianas trough (and also in the Mid Atlantic ridge) movement occurs so slowly that not much melting occurs at all, and so there is actual peridotite and serpentine that comes up in the "crack" that the spreading crust makes. It's not all volcanoes here.
Fishing Report: Chris Popham, graduate student from the U of Oregon, caught a 19 lb. Mahi mahi this morning on a green and silver spoon! Unfortunately, he had not entered the big fish pool. He's entered now, but his fish doesn't count - he'll have to catch another.
Something that I had not envisioned was the possibility that we could drop the dredge down, drag it, and yet come up with very few rocks! There have been several drags that had very little material in the bucket when we pulled it back up. And apparently, that is the way it goes sometimes. If you think about it, it makes some sense: the areas we are looking at are the sides of volcanoes, and ridges that are solid rock. Imagine dragging a bucket across a paved parking lot, and that is similar to what we are trying to do in some places out here. There isn't much for the bucket to grab hold of and force into the net. Still, we have gotten some material to study and we have lots of dredges to go. AS far as life on the ship is going, everything seems to be going along just fine. The meals are still great, and we all seem to be getting along rather well. The folks that joined us last week from the U of Oregon, Woods Hole and the U of Tokyo have been a great addition to the crew. They are extremely knowledgeable about this type of rock (I am learning every day) plus they are a lot of fun to be around. And here I thought all the friendly people, by definition, were Texans...
Fishing Report: No catches today (and it's already after dark). Dave (one of the crew) says when it happens it will happen big. We will hit a school of tuna or some other fish and there will be more than anyone can catch when the bite is on. I hope he is right. And, I hope I am not on watch at the time. When we are dredging at night, we leave the deck lights on so we can see to work. The lights have attracted a few organisms. Last night a large school of small (10-12 in. long) squid were hanging around. I also saw a small shark. Some of the guys saw a large swordfish (!) come up during a time when I was not out there. Sharks don't count in the fishing contest, but the swordfish sure would have. And probably would win it, in fact.
A common element along the ocean floor is manganese. Manganese is released into the ocean through hydrothermal vents, that is, hot water spewing out from underneath the ocean floor. However, manganese does not stay in the water indefinitely. It soon precipitates out (drops out) of the water, coating the ocean floor as it does. This coating is a black, metallic layer that covers much of the deep ocean floor, even in places far away from any hydrothermal vents. Many/most of the rocks we are pulling up have manganese coat on them, sometimes as much as 3-5 cm thick; sometimes, our dredge pulls up nothing but manganese. This hampers our work, as we are trying to look at the rocks underneath the manganese, not the manganese itself. If you're following along with us, there are some minerals you might want to look up in a field guide and learn something about. The most common type of rock associated with island arc volcanoes (or most volcanoes for that matter) is basalt. Other rocks include peridotite, dace, diorite, and andesite. Basalts are primarily made up of the mineral olivine, pyroxene and plagioclase. All three of these are not really minerals - each one is really a broad class of minerals, and there are many variations of each one. Having not been around much basalt before; I have been reading up on these every night before I go to bed. You can too - check the library in your school. Field guides are a great way to learn about lots of things. There are good guides for rocks and minerals; however, there are also ones for trees, flowers, birds, fossils and several other things as well. They are designed with the idea of a person taking a sample he/she has collected, and using them to systematically figure out what the sample is. Check one out the next time you are in the library.
I learned tons today. I have always thought of myself as being pretty good at identifying rocks. I learned differently today. In the past, I would pick up a dark colored fine-grained rock, call it a basalt and go on. We are doing so much more here. I spent the afternoon with Clair McKee, a graduate geochemistry student from the University of Oregon, watching and learning as she was cataloging the rocks from a particularly large and diverse dredge we had gotten in this morning. Her ability to glance over a rock and instantly recognize minute crystals as being olivine, plagioclase, pyroxene or even something as odd (in these rocks) as quartz, or to see xeolites (secondary crystals in a rock's vessicles) that I could only see under a stereoscope was truly astounding. It was evident she has taken her graduate studies to heart and has learned her craft well. She can scan over a vesicular rock (one with holes in it) and see patterns to it that to me were obvious, but only after she had seen it and pointed them out to me. Her knowledge of igneous rocks was amazing.
What I did was stay close by to where she was working, and I paid attention to everything she said. When I could I tried to pick up a sample of rock from the same pile she was working on; that way, I could follow along as she called out what she was seeing (someone else was writing it all down for our dredge records). By the time the last rock was identified, I feel like I was much more up to speed on basalts, dacites, scorias, and their associated minerals and textures (which, in my defense, are not rocks we have in Fort Worth, Texas). I am truly appreciative that she taught me so much today. I'll never look at a black rock in the same way.
Fishing report: No one has caught anything in the last two days. To be honest, we have been pretty busy with the dredges and rocks. The crew has not had much time to fish either. Today, there was apparently a school of big fish around or near the boat, but none of us had time to go out and put a lure in the water. Maybe tomorrow...
Today we have been surveying, remaking and dredging an underwater volcano located only 30 Km (20 miles) or so from Saipan. The top of the volcano is "only" about 200 meters below the surface, and we have discerned a caldera in the top of it. Amazingly, this volcano has no name, and until today, had never been geologically sampled before. When our first dredge came up we were surprised to see we had pulled up a net full of old coral, coated with sedimentary sand bonded together with calcite. That was not good news to Drs. Stern, Bloomer, and Aoki (they are after igneous rocks), but it brought up a couple of interesting points. As I said, the highest point of this seamount was about 200 m below sea level. Coral generally will not grow or live any deeper than about 50 m. And yet here was coral; however, it was no longer living, and did not look like it had been living for some time. When the volcano first built itself, it obviously was much taller than it is now.
How much does a mountain weigh? If you could calculate the number, it would be one of those huge, incredible numbers that really don't mean anything to an ordinary person. Suffice it to say it is an incredible weight. After a new mountain is formed, it is actually enough weight to press down into the crust, causing the crust to sink, taking the volcano down with it. Obviously, that is what had happened to our volcano today. When it first existed it was obviously less than 50 m below sea level or even higher, because the top was shallows enough for coral to grow on it. Then, over time, the Earth's crust bowed under the weight, causing the volcano to sink to a level where the existing coral died, not more coral sprouted, and the whole reef was covered with sediments. There was even thin manganese coating on the outside of it.
The principal of the crust "balancing itself out" in this manner is called isostasy. Nature is constantly striving to achieve a balance. Here is just one more example of it.
There's a correction I need to make to a journal entry I wrote a couple of days ago. I identified some minerals as xeolite; the correct spelling is zeolite.
Whew! What a day! We have had a really exciting day in several aspects here. Right after lunch we had our weekly fire drill. However, today the crew had a full-blown drill. It was announced that there was a fire in Katy's room. The crew had to get into full fire-fighting gear, get out the hoses and extinguishers and respond as if it were a real fire. The men on this crew are truly professionals in a wide variety of areas, and today it was amazing to see their level of knowledge and ability in the area of fire-fighting. They were divided into two teams, and each team approached the fire from a different direction. The scenario was such that one team was blocked and could not reach the fire, so had to backtrack around to the same location the other team was in. Then, after the "fire" was out, the scenario involved it "re-flashing" (igniting again), so they had to go back in. After the exercise, I had the privilege of sitting in on a professional discussion of what happened/ what went right how it could have been improved/what they did right/what they will do differently next time. Suffice it to say we are in good hands out here on the R/V Melville. Katy and I were allowed to film and photograph the whole exercise, so look for it on the website after we return to Dallas Mar 16.
On top of that we got a lot of rocks today. The typical arc island basalt is truly a beautiful rock. It, of course, is a dark gray to black color and had a fine-grained (extrusive) texture; however, these basalt¹s are peppered with larger crystals (called phenocrysts) of olivine and plagioclase among other things. Looking at first glance, these crystals just look like gray and greenish specks, but when looked at with some kind of magnification - either a hand lens or stereoscope - these crystals look truly like gems. They are really pretty, and when you consider the forces and events necessary to create rocks such as these, it is incredible.
Fishing report: We caught a small mahi mahi on the jig/trolling line today. No one has caught anything on a rod and reel for the contest yet. You have to remember: we are out here doing scientific research and working full time jobs. The best any of us have been able to do is grab 5 minutes of fishing here or there. But we are all grabbing five minutes when we can get it...
Today my son Jordan had his 13th birthday party, and I wasn't there, so forgive me if I am a little reflective tonight. It is 8:00 here. We just finished pulling up a dredge and are on our way to the next waypoint (place to dredge). The last dredge was in shallow water ("only" 300 meters), and the rocks we got were all coral and sedimentary coquinas - which are nice, but not what we are looking for. Since I had a few minutes, I strolled out onto the deck and looked at the night for a little while. There is only a quarter moon tonight, but it was really showing off. It is one of those moons Mike Lynch would appreciate, the kind that if you turn off all the lights, the moon is bright enough to cast shadows. Everything white turns silver; everything dark turns blue. And the sky seems so clear it gives a whole new meaning to the term glass ceiling. Off to the north, there was a big, puffy cloud lazily covering up Polaris, and that let the Big Dipper show off as well, as it was shining in that part of the sky all by itself. The moon was so bright that the cloud had a silvery white color to it, and the underside of it was a dark gray from its own shadow. At first I thought it was a rain cloud, but then I realized it was just the moon showing off. We live in an awesome universe. If you ever get the chance to get outside the city lights (which keeps getting harder and harder to do), take a look at it sometime. We have overused the word awesome these days, but that is the word for a clear night sky with a bright moon in it, because it truly fills with awe and wonder: awesome.
Today was Sunday, so we had steak for supper. There really is wonderful food out here, and Sunday night's food is my favorite. Dan and Mark, the cooks out here are good at what they do. As an April Fool's joke they told us the menu included "Australian Lobster". It turned out to be shrimp and scallops, which was still very good, but just the same was not lobster. I only ate one brownie for dessert (I guess that showed them). Fishing report: no catches today. We are going to have to get on the ball if someone is going to win the big fish pot. As of today, no one has a qualifying fish. We still have 11 days though...
Quite a busy day today... We spent the day working the ocean floor between the islands of Sarigan and Anatahan, which are both small, currently uninhabitated isles. Sarigan, the smaller of the two, kind of reminded me of the movie Castaway (not so much in looks, but at least in size). And of course, in looking at them, it was obvious that both islands were the peaks of volcanoes. In fact, Anatahan used to have people living on it, but everyone was evacuated in 1990 when a large earthquake occurred there, and it was thought to be about to erupt. It didn't, but it is clear that it has in its past. Anatahan has an elongated shape to it, and there are two peaks - one on each end. The two peaks are seperated by a huge caldera, evidence of a gigantic eruption in its relatively recent history.
There is an interesting WWII story about Anatahan. Saipan, a larger island also in the Marianas chain, was the site of fierce fighting during 1944. The only way the Japanese could get supplies to their forces through the U.S. fleet was to use small boats that would slip through at night. During the day these small boats would hide as best they could on the smaller islands around Saipan. One such boat apparently did not hide very well (it is a rocky coast without much cover) on Anatahan, and was destroyed by passing U.S. troops, stranding the crew on the island. It was not until 1951 - 7 years later, and long after the war was over - that the crew was rescued.
I think I have mentioned before that the dredge we use is a metal box with 4 large chains to drag it with on one side, and a chain net to capture rocks in on the other. The chains that drag it have (on purpose) a weak link in one of them, so that if tension gets too high, the weak link will snap versus the whole thing breaking. Today, the dredge got hung up and that is exactly what happened. Understand now, the "weak link" is a pin with a 3/8 bolt in it. When it got hung up the 3/8 bolt was cut in two. That's a lot of tension! When we got the dredge up, the chain net had a gash in it about the size of a football, the one big dragging chain was broken, and the net had wrapped around the top of the dredge. Unbelievably, though, it still had rocks in it!
So most of my afternoon was spent reconditioning the dredge. We patched the chain net with new links, replaced the pins, and generally reworked the whole thing. By the time we got through, I think it was as good as new (or better).
Some really nice rocks today. One was an extremely beautiful gabbro. Gabbro is a rock that has the same chemical/mineral makeup as basalt, except that it cooled very slowly and contains very large crystals (large means large enough to see with the naked eye). This one had gorgeous crystals of olivine, pyroxene and plagioclase. Especially under the stereoscope, they looked like gemstones they were so well formed. Unfortunately, there were only two little pieces of it, so I doubt there is enough to go around. I probably won't get a sample of it, since the scientists will need all we got for their study. Oh well, I did get to see it while I was here.
Fishing report: To be honest, we have all been so busy I have not seen anyone with a line in the water. No catches today. We did find a small (about as big as a quarter, legs and all) starfish in one of our dredges. It was still alive, so we threw it back.
It still amazes me that we are out here doing what amounts to true discovery science. I think Katy and I have mentioned in the past that the HMR1 was a sonar device that drew pictures of the floor for us, pictures that look like aerial photographs on land (truly amazing). It also drew a bathymetry map for us. A bathymetry map shows depth below the surface the same way a topographical map shows elevation above sea level on land. It is exactly the same otherwise - uses contour lines, contour intervals, closed circles are a hill, etc. I find that I can get a better picture in my head of what is beneath us if I study the bathymetric map first, and then place the sidescan image (the "photograph") on top of what I have pictured in my head.
In depths of less than 1000 m, the HMR1 still drew a nice sidescan image, but the bathymetric map tended to have some gaps in it where the image was too shallow, i.e. the bathymetry did not come out. That is not a knock on the HMR1 - it is designed to work at depths greater than 1000 m, and is a one-of-a-kind instrument (in the world) at mapping the great depths that exist out here.
So, today we have been going over a relatively shallow volcanic field with the ship's SeaBeam, another sonar device that can draw bathymetric maps for us, and is designed for shallower areas. (It still seems funny to call 600meters - 1800 feet - "shallow"!). SeaBeam does much more than just tell us the depth; again, here is a device that sends a swath of sound out to the port and starboard of the ship and gets a whole line of bathymetry at a time. By slowly going over an area, SeaBeam plots out the bathymetry with astounding accuracy. We then can use that with HMR1's sidescan and get a real idea of what the mountains below us look like.
The best way I have found to think of the land below us is to compare it to being in an airplane looking at the ground below. We are "flying" not on the top of Earth's troposphere, but on top of its hydrosphere instead, and the land below us is just about as far away as land is from a jet airliner at the peak of its course. And just like clouds sometimes block the view from the sky, the water always blocks our view from atop the Pacific. This equipment we are fortunate enough to get to use lets us "see" in spite of the view being blocked.
Which, come to think of it, is not unlike satellites that can "see" through the clouds and still give a picture of the ground from outer space.
Anyway, my point in bringing all this up is that today, we used as our starting guide the maps the ship has to chart its courses through this area. Most ship charts are only concerned with where the shallow water is so we don't run aground, as well as where any land is. We picked two areas that were supposed to be shallow, mapped them out, and found out it wasn't shallow at all. It was 1600 m deep! The few maps that exist of this area were wrong. Not only that, but we found other areas that were shallow, only no one ever knew that before! Volcanoes no one has ever known about! Likesay, some of what we are doing is truly discovery science: no one has done this before; we are the first. That's exciting any way you look at it!
As the day progressed, we got a picture of an old, old and huge volcanic field that then had younger volcanoes on top of it. Tonight's work will be to dredge certain areas to confirm that. The older field, from the contours we see, appears to be made up of rocks of more of a feldsic nature, i.e. there should be some rhyolites, dacites, pumices or other rocks more associated with cinder cone/ strato type volcanoes. The younger cones should contain more mafic rocks (basalts and andesites e.g.) more associated with shield type volcanoes, as that is exactly the picture we have of them: gently sloping sides and a symmetrical shape.
It really is fascinating stuff...
Today is my son Jordan's 13th birthday. That's a big birthday - he is officially in his "teens" now, and I am truly sorry I am not there with him today. I knew this would happen when I signed on to come out here; still, it was the one drawback to coming that I knew of at the outset. Even though I had prepared myself for this day, listing all the good things I am/ we are accomplishing, I still - for this one day - wish I could be back home.
That is one thing that is drastically different about living at sea. We have nearly every amenity there is in any house, in fact more than most houses: kitchen, tv room, reading room, computer room, workout space, hot tub, etc. etc. the list could go on and on. However, one unenviable fact about life at sea is that once you leave port, there is no getting off the ship. Imagine living in a huge, well accommodated house that has everything you could possibly need, but with a stipulation that once you go inside the doors will lock and you cannot go outside for several weeks at a time. That is what shipboard life is like. It is comfortable, there is everything we need here; but, we do have the one drawback that we are stuck here. No running out to the store for a newspaper, or a drink. No stopping by a friend's house on the way. No going anywhere. No getting anything. What we have is what we have.
And, I should say, that is really only a minor inconvenience or no inconvenience at all most days. The key to it all is to do a good job of packing to begin with. There is a laundry here, so no one needs more than 5 or 6 days worth of clothes (though I wish I had packed more short pants), but it's necessary to think ahead and make sure there is plenty of toothpaste, hair stuff, gum, shampoo, etc, to last for 6 weeks. That was quite a bit to pack. Overall, I did a good job. The things I forgot that I wish I hadn't were my (prescription) sunglasses, and a ball cap (I did bring a hat, just wish I had a cap too). And that's my point.Ê We can't just run in to the next Target we come to so I can get a cap. There isn't one. And, we couldn't stop if there was. That is different from life in the big city.
One other thing that is different, and not necessarily bad, is that there is not TV out here. We do have TV, but can't get any stations this far out. We have hundreds (!) of videos and DVD's to watch, but no stations. I think that is a good thing, generally, but we don't get much news out here. No newspapers, no TV, no radio. We do get emails with headlines, but don't get much detail. Since I left there has been an earthquake in Seattle, and I hear there is trouble with a spyplane in China, but that is all I know. I haven't gotten any details. And likesay, we can't just stop in and grab a newspaper at the next store we see. That is one thing different about life at sea.
A few miscellaneous and incidental points:
When we are dredging we do our best to point the bow of the ship into the wind and dredge in that direction. This is the safest way to keep the ship as stable as possible while we are stopped at one place for the 3 or so hours it takes to do a dredge. If the wind is not blowing strongly, we can do it differently, but in general that is the way we usually do it. That means, for the most part, when we are dredging the ship is facing east into the trade winds. That also means, then, that if we are dredging at sunset, the sunset occurs off the stern, making it easy to observe from several areas of the ship.
A
topic of conversation every day after our 5:00 evening meal is whether or not
the horizon is free of clouds enough for us to see the "green flash"
of the setting sun. So far I have not seen it, but several have. As the last
sliver of sun sets, there is a quick flash of green on the horizon. If it is
clear enough, it can be observed.
If
you don't know how to use Adobe PhotoShop, learn. That is going to be my next
computer lesson. I have seen what some people out here can do with it, and I
am going to learn.
The
reels that everyone fishes with out here do not have a levelwind feature on
them. You have to take your thumb and guide the line back and forth onto the
spool as you are reeling. This allows the reel to cast further, but it takes
some getting used to.
A
more than full time job on the ship is painting. There is something that needs
painted every day. Saltwater and air constantly weather everything, and in order
to make it last, paint is constantly being applied so the water and air cannot
get to the metal the ship is made of. It's not latex paint either. There is
some serious chemistry involved in the makeup of the paint used out here.
The
ocean is blue because blue is the smallest, and most intense, form of light
wave. Thus, it penetrates water much deeper than any other color, and is the
dominant color in the "deep, blue sea".
I
still don't know how big whales are. We saw two of them today, but just like
every picture you ever see, we just saw them blow water out their spout and
then saw their tail as they dove back down. Since they were quite a ways from
the ship, there was no way to tell if they are as big as a school bus, or as
big as a school building.
People
from outside the U.S. have as much trouble with feet and pounds as we have with
meters and kilograms. Of course it is the meters and kilograms that is the international
standard, so they are not at as much of a disadvantage as we are.
When
it is 10:00 a.m. on Tuesday here, it is 7:00 p.m Monday in Dallas. That means
when I send an email, people can read it before it was written...Ê
The
first time we had fried calamari out here, I thought they were onion rings and
got a heaping plate full. Luckily, I liked it and still ate the whole thing.
Because
of the constant rocking motion of the ship, all doors must be closed or if left
open, must be secured in some way so as not to swing back and forth and potentially
hurt someone. Anyone who goes through a door must make sure it shuts behind
him.
Directions
on a compass are broken down into the 360 degrees of a circle out here to ensure
accuracy of a heading we might take. 0 is North, 90 is East, 180 South and 270
West. Saying we are on a heading of 210, for example, is much more accurate
than "sort of south/southwest".
Even
the dullest of rocks can turn into a field of gemstones if viewed under a microscope.
As
a show of respect to a Japanese man, you add "son" (san?) to the end
of his name. Saying "Ishii - son" is, in effect, addressing him as
"Mr. Ishii".
If
you get too close to the dredge cable as it is being pulled in, it can catch
on your life vest and pull you up into the air very easily... If this happens,
people will tell you to "quit fooling around" before they realize
you really are stuck...
One of the amazing things about really deep water
is the pressure that much water can exert on anything put down in it. There
is a reason why the Titanic was not found until 1985, years and years after
it sank.
Pressure
is compared to the amount of pressure the air around us normally exerts. Our
troposphere, the layer of the atmosphere that we live and breathe in every day,
is approximately a 10,000-meter "deep" layer of air that encircles
our globe. Our bodies are adjusted to withstand the weight of this amount of
air pressing down on us, and this amount of pressure is defined as being one
atmosphere of pressure.
Ocean water,
of course, is much denser than air. It takes a layer of ocean water 10 meters
deep to exert one atmosphere of pressure. Every increase in depth of 10 meters
adds another atmosphere.
Tonight
we took some styrofoam cups and tied them to the wire that pulls the dredge.
We then allowed our sack of cups to sink to a depth of 4400 meters. That would
be 440 atmospheres of pressure if you do the math. When we pulled them up, the
cups that had been 4 inches tall were now about 4 centimeters tall! The pressure
had squeezed the air out of the styrofoam, and what was a foam cup was now a
plastic shot glass! It was pretty incredible. Before we sent them down, we all
signed each other's cups, making a really special souvenir for each of us. Plus,
it was a great demonstration of atmospheric pressure.
Just as
it did to the cups, so it also would do to most submarines and other types of
equipment that people try to send into the abyss, particularly anything that
has an air cavity of any type. There was a crude bathysphere in the 60's that
made it down to the Marianas trench, but it was not until the 1980's that workable,
manoeuvrable equipment that could withstand that kind of pressure existed.
And, for
this reason, any field involving the ocean deep - oceanography, marine geology,
etc. - has a lot of opportunity even today for any enterprising young person
willing to do what it takes to become an expert in the field...
It takes a special person
to be a part of the Merchant Marines. I think I have mentioned before that these
guys (gals, too) are true professionals in what they do; everyone of them, from
the beginner seaman to the oilers and wipers on up to the captain, take their
job seriously and strive to maintain an exceptionally high standard of excellence
in the operation of this ship. They are paid well for the job they do, but attaining
a level close to perfection the way this crew does only comes from personal
pride in seeing a job well done, not money.
A typical work schedule for the crew consists
of them being out to sea for four months (!), and then having two months off.
Usually, during the time off, many of them hire on to fishing boats and/or go
for additional training to improve the job they are capable of. A big factor
in all these people is their capacity for self-discipline, and their desire
for self-improvement. At any time it is not uncommon to hear discussions of
what schools in firefighting, machinery training, et al, are available and when
it can be worked in (to personal off time), and daily personal schedules are
maintained by each of these guys to see that every thing happens as it ought
to.
Not that they don't have fun - they do. And we
have had a lot of fun with them. But seeing that the ship is running safely,
efficiently and according to schedule is priority #1 to everyone of these crew
members; the fun just goes along with it. And the fun is important: when you
are locked on board with 40 people you either must get along, or be completely
miserable. Everyone realizes this - I mentioned before there is no way to get
off at the next corner - so looking out for each other and getting along (even
with short term scientists) together is a skill everyone practices. And, as
the old saying goes, practice makes perfect.
The schedule the crew keeps - 4 months on and
2 off - makes this completely different from most careers. There are no weekends
out here. Most of the work is scheduled in 12-hour segments, so that everyone
works 4 hours on and then 8 off. It is easy with that kind of schedule for the
time to stretch out into one long never-ending day, as a.m. and p.m, daylight
and moonlight, all of the physical markers most of us use, get blurred as the
trek continues. At any given time of day, some are at work while others are
sleeping - the ship runs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week - and here again consideration
for fellow coworkers has to be a priority. And here again, these guys are experts.
I have known this crew for almost 6 weeks now,
and it has been a privilege for me to get to know them, at least a little bit.
Thanks for the ride, guys.
Fishing Report: I did
it! I caught a fish! Sort of, anyway. This afternoon we are underway to another
area, so we more or less have the afternoon off until 5:30 or so. I put a couple
of jig lines out to troll, and caught my own mahi mahi! It was not as big as
several we have already caught, and since it was not on a rod and reel it doesn't
count in the big fish pot, but I put the line out and I pulled the fish in,
so I officially caught it. I guess I should embellish the story some, but there
really was not much to it. I cleaned it before I thought about having someone
take a picture, but I do have witnesses...
The last several days we have been farther north, just above 17 N latitude.
We are moving back down nearer Guam, Tinian, etc - nearer 14 N latitude - today
to go back over some areas, and also look at some different features of the
southern part of the Marianas trough and back arc basin.
Last night we found a rock that had a xenolith in it. Lots of rocks here
do, but this one was particularly large, and probably has a story all its own.
A xenolith is a chunk of rock that came from somewhere else and is imbedded
in the matrix of the rock being studied. Typically a lava flow will move over
other rocks, picking them up as it flows. If these other rocks don't melt, they
become xenoliths in the basalt (or whatever rock) that forms from the lava.
The one in the basalt we found last night was
not large by most standards. It was probably less than a centimeter thick and
2 cm wide and 3 cm long; however, that is exceptionally large for a xenolith.
The consensus is that it was probably a piece of quartz, although I am still
not entirely convinced of that. What made it the topic of conversation for quite
some time, though, was the fact that around the xenolith was a thin layer of
glass, and then outside of that a thin layer of crystals. When lava cools extremely
quickly, it forms glass; obviously, the cool xenolith caused some of the lava
to cool immediately as it fell into it (or was picked up by it). That explains
the thin layer of glass. But then, some type of chemical reaction took place
that caused the thin ring of crystals to form just outside the glass. It will
be an interesting job - back in the lab - to figure out exactly what the xenolith
is made of, and then deduce what type of reaction took place to form the crystals.
Michelle Overton, a math teacher friend of mine,
is fond of saying "Math is the language of Science". That's true.
It's also true that Chemistry is the Math of Science. When you break any science
down into its most minute detail, you will end up doing chemistry. This xenolith
is a fine example of that. We can ascertain the basics of what happened out
here, but it won't be until there is a full chemical analysis done that the
whole story can be told.
FISHING REPORT ADDENDUM:
About 5:45 this afternoon, Dave and Alejo - two crew members - pulled in the
biggest mahi mahi we have caught on the entire trip so far! It was 54 inches
long and weighed 28 pounds, just beating our previous best by 2 pounds! And
it's not dark yet...
We are currently in transit,
heading west to do a couple of deep dredges - 4500 m or so - over the spreading
center. Trip is supposed to take 5 hours, so we have a little time to relax
this afternoon. We're going too fast to fish with a rod and reel, but I may
put the jig lines out here in a minute.
Our adventure is quickly winding down on us. We
only have 3 more days until we are in Guam. One of the ship's thrusters went
out about a week ago, so we are scheduled to go directly into dry dock when
we return. That should be an interesting experience all in itself.
Today, we were all required to have our rooms
clean. They call it a sanitary inspection out here - we had to empty our trash,
vacuum the floor, clean the sink and bathroom (head), etc. Our watch swept the
science labs last night, and little by little we are starting to get everything
ready to leave.
Yesterday, we did a plankton collection. We took
a large, fine-meshed net and drug it for a while. This net was probably over
a meter in diameter and some 15 -20 feet long - it looked like a huge butterfly
net. We sank it down to 425 meters deep and back up, plus moved the ship forward
as we did it. When we cleaned the net out, we had about a cup of plankton -
that really is not much. But out here in the open ocean that is pretty typical.
80% of everything in the ocean lives in the zone that goes form the coast out
to where it is about 50 m deep. We are way beyond that here. (Plankton,
by definition, is anything that drifts in the currents instead of motoring itself
from place to place. Some can swim, but the currents are stronger than their
ability to swim. Most are small organisms; however, some large things like jellyfish
qualify as plankton. Things that can swim well enough to overcome the currents
are called nekton; things that live attached to the bottom are called
benthos.)
Last night we had an exceptional dredge. When
we pulled it up, there were two rocks so large they would not fit in the dredge;
they were just perched on top of it being steadied by the chains. I don't know
how they kept from falling off on the way up. The net also had several large
rocks. And what good rocks they were! Some really nice basalts, but there was
also some hydrothermally altered material. That means that hot liquid - probably
water with chemicals in it - forced through the rock material, changing it chemically.
These rocks last night had minerals like kaolinite and pyrite in them, among
other things. It was a nice haul.
FISHING REPORT: I have not been able to get a
clear report on whether we caught 3 fish yesterday or 4. Different people heard
of different things, and no one person knows the straight scoop of who caught
what. It is hard to tell if the fish I caught is also the one someone else heard
was caught early in the day versus there actually being another fish. Anyway,
I told you about the one I caught and the big one yesterday. Apparently there
was also one, or possibly two, others caught yesterday as well. I'm heading
out now (it's 1:00 pm right now) to put the jig lines out, so maybe I'll have
fish to report tomorrow as well. So far, there is not a single entry into the
big fish pot. We've got to get to work...
I mentioned an exceptionally
good dredge haul yesterday - one with large rocks that did not fit in the dredge,
but were perched on top of it as well. That site involved some discovery science
as well. It was the location of a large seamount. Expeditions in previous years
had dredged the side of it, and the rocks they had gotten proved to be volcanic
in nature, so it was already known that this was an underwater volcano. However,
the maps of the area had this mount drawn with a peak. When we went over it
with the R/V Melville's SeaBeam technology, we discovered the top of the volcano
was a caldera, not a peak! The walls on the inside of the caldera were about
1000 m (1 Km) tall - what is that, a 300 story building tall? - and it was on
the inside of this caldera wall that we got the huge dredge haul. Pretty exciting
stuff... another thing that no one knew about until we came out here.
I am trying to talk some of my scientific coworkers
into writing a "guest journal entry". It looks like a couple of them
are willing to do it, so be on the look out for those.
All this time, unbeknownst to me, one of the ship's
crew members (Dave Grimes) had a guitar. I used to play a little; last night,
we sat out on deck and passed it back and forth, taking turns with it. We had
a great little sing-along going that lasted well over an hour. It was a lot
of fun. Wish we had done it earlier. But then, I might not have gotten as much
work done if we had gotten it out earlier...
With each dredge, rocks are put into as many categories
as there are different types of rocks. Then, representative samples of each
type are selected, described in detail, and from these, the scientists select
what samples they want to take back for further study. Any extra rocks are sacked
up and put into an archive that will stay with Scripps (the school of oceanography
that operates the ship). This archive is actually 2 large wire bins - probably
1.5X1.5X1.5 m each, and both are full by now. It occurred to us tonight that
no one had been keeping track of what went into each bin, so it became my job
to pull everything out, write down what was in there and then put it all back.
I didn't mind - it wasn't hard to do. But it was a good example of the idea
that good planning can make a job easier; if we had been writing it down all
along, my job tonight would have been unneccesary. Fortunately for me, this
was not hard to fix.
Today is the 10th; we will be in port at 8 a.m.
the 12th. That is pretty much what is on everyone's mind, and the topic of most
conversations today. We have a lot of cleaning, straightening, and packing to
do between now and then, plus we are going to do (I think) 6 more dredges before
we are done. Lots and lots to do.
FISHING REPORT: No fish today or yesterday. I
finally got the straight poop on the weekend -we caught 2 fish Saturday that
I did not know about, and then the 2 Sunday I did know about. That was where
the rumor that we had caught 4 came from. Right now, it seriously looks like
no one may win the big fish pot. Our last chance may come in these last couple
of days though. We are going to be closer to land, specifically Guam, in waters
that should have more life in them. So someone may still take the money...
Everything is really
winding down this evening. Once again, from out of nowhere, the huge ropes have
mysteriously appeared and are neatly laid out on deck awaiting our arrival in
port where they will be used to tie the ship to the pier. I suspect the gangplank
(which I never did find the storage place for) is not far behind. We are scheduled
to arrive in port at 8:00 in the morning; just like when this adventure started,
I have not yet even begun to pack.
I tried to be really careful and only take the
choicest of rocks, but even still, I am not sure how I will get them home. The
suitcase I brought was pretty full when I came, I don't know if all the rocks
I have gotten will fit. I know a lot of the stuff we have collected is scheduled
to be mailed or shipped back; maybe I can throw mine in with that.
There is still some uncertainty about what the
ship will be doing in the next few days. Originally, it was supposed to be put
directly into dry dock so the broken thruster could be fixed, but now that is
not a sure thing. The rumor now is that it may be another 10 days before it
can go in, so we may just tie up to the same pier we left from instead of going
directly to the shipyard. If we do that, we may all spend one more night on
board to save one day's worth of hotel bill. So as of right now, this may be
our last night tonight; if not, tomorrow night will be. Either way is fine with
me. The beach we are all looking forward to snorkeling is actually on the navy
base, so it will be close by if we do end up getting to stay.
We had a really nice
dredge today. It pulled up some rocks that, if on land, would have been called
a welded tuff. Tuff is formed when red-hot ash falls and welds itself together
as it falls out of the air. The thing is, this rock today was found 1500 meters
underwater - tuff usually connotates ash falling out of the air. For now, I
think the initial name given this rock is that it is a type of dacite; however,
it is one that will be given a lot of testing when we return. This rock also
had some really nice phenocrysts (small crystals imbedded in the rock) of hornblende.
That is the first time, as far as I know of, that we have found an abundance
of hornblende.
Right now we are just off the coast of Guam. We
are so close that the island stretches from one horizon to the other, and it
is easy to see houses, buildings, etc on the land. We are scheduled to do one
more dredge this evening, and then the other watch will do the last one sometime
before the sun comes up, and that will be that: our shipboard adventure will
be over. That is a little sad. To be certain, I am a little homesick, and want
to see everyone back in Fort Worth, but still... this has been home and a grand
adventure for what seems like a long time now. I sincerely hope I get another
chance to do something like this again in the future.
The other watch has "graciously" (eagerly)
agreed to wake us all up at 6 in the morning so we can help with the off loading
that has to be done in the morning. Actually, that is not a bad thing. The last
time we were in port, I got off watch at 4 a.m. and then slept 'til 10 and missed
seeing the ship dock. Hopefully, getting off at midnight will still give me
6 hours sleep and I can see the whole thing this time. Plus, I haven't gotten
to eat breakfast in 3 weeks - I have missed the great breakfasts they serve
here. If I get up at 6, I'll get one more of those, at least.
I hope everyone enjoyed following along with us
on our adventure. To be sure I will post a couple more journal entries, but
it could be after we return that I get them on the site. There are several things
I'll relate about Guam, I just don't know that I'll have email access again
until I am back in Fort Worth. While in Guam, a couple of things we will be
doing is checking out some limestone that is supposed to have crab fossils in
it, plus we'll be doing quite a bit of snorkeling (Katy intends to go scuba
diving as well). And, Guam boasts the world's largest Kmart - we can't miss
that! I'll let you know all about it.
Also, when we return we are bringing back a ton
of pictures to post on the site. Be looking for those, as well as a few lessons/activities
to teach and learn some of the science that has been going on out here. We have
started several of those, plus we will be working on more things like that for
some time to come. So keep us bookmarked....
Fishing Report: No fish today. Being close to
Guam, I am sure there are fish in the area, but no one has had time to put a
pole in the water. I guess if no one catches anything tomorrow, there won't
be a winner in the big fish pot. I wonder if the harbor after we dock counts...