June 28, 2018
Today has been such a great warm day. I’ve taken every opportunity to be outside, recording Jason deployments and recoveries, getting pictures of the recovered science pods for a mini documentary I’m working on about the shallow profiler moorings, and just feeling the warmth on my face and the slight breeze in my hair. This morning during my shift we deployed MARUM 1, one of the German sonars that I’d been looking forward to see deployed. It was installed near Einstein’s Grotto and plugged into MJ01B. It was fun to have the other students in the control van watching and recording the dive and seeing them just as enthralled as I was. Katie Keil was using two GoPros to capture the operation, I’m excited to see how she incorporates that into her video.
I was relieved for a few minutes during my shift to help Julie with titrating the oxygen samples from the CTD that we collected the other day. I remember doing this last year and felt more confident doing it since having taken two chemistry lab series at the Bothell campus this past year. Before dinner I found Josh Manger the Res Tech on the deck playing his guitar. I sang along to “Moonage Daydream”, “Ocean Man”, “Creep”, and “Island In The Sun”. I got him to sign my shirt too! I found out today was his birthday, along with J.T. an oiler. The cooks made them a birthday cake that we all got to enjoy after dinner, the shredded bits of coconut were my favorite.
Later I played cribbage with Julie and Paul. Bing watched and learned the concept quickly, now Eve and I can play with him sometime. After that we watched as the two scientists Yann Marcon and Ulli Spiesecke process their methane samples. It was interesting to see the process. They filled a syringe with the gas and then filled a vial of saline solution with it. The salt in the solution was necessary to prevent the water from dissolving the gas by lowering the gas’s solubility. A second syringe needle was inserted into the vial to allow the previous air in the vial to escape and not break the vial with high pressured gas.
We will be back in port tomorrow and I just can’t believe how fast the time has gone. I’m grateful for the opportunity given to me to stay for the next 3 legs of the cruise and will treasure each and every moment. Bing and I have planned to do a video on the flipping tilt meter being installed next leg, and Eve and I will complete our video on the shallow profiler mooring after it’s installed on leg 3. I’m ecstatic to be here and to see and learn so many new things every day! Even talking with everyone on board gives me new perspectives and inspiration. I await leg 2 with baited breath.
June 27, 2018
I’d really love for the Res Techs Josh Manger and Carmen Greto to do a duet. Josh said he’d learn to play at least the chorus from “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” for me. Brian the cook said he’s be the singer for the band I’m assembling. Maybe I can gather more people for the band when we get to port. They need to sign my R/V Roger Revelle shirt that I bought today. I was really happy to get one this year since they were sold out before leg 1 of last year. The shirt is a pretty coral blue sporting a graphic of the ship with a wake behind it. I love way the names of ports that the ship docks in are used to create the ship’s wake, it’s one of my favorite uses of word art. Something that I love about being on the cruise is that you can really get close to everyone on board and learn new things from them. Each person has a unique life story to share about how they got to this moment, and I love to hear them. I look forward to learning more about the people on the cruise and learning new things from them.
June 26, 2018
The waves have been pretty rough recently and it feels like I’m on a nonstop roller coaster! The CTD was lowered 2900 m today at the Slope Base site. Eve and I watched as Julie led the CTD cast and we listened to Carmen Greto’s instructions. When the CTD was on deck I was happy to help collect the samples again as I remembered the techniques from last year. My Styrofoam cup came back comically tiny, just the perfect size for the funny hat I plan to make out of it.
During our student meeting we asked the Captain for a tour of the bridge and were allowed to sit in the captain’s chair and look out the binoculars. Looking at the control panel and seeing the vast open ocean in front of me from that high up felt like I was in a scene straight from a movie. The sights I’ve been seeing the past few days feel so special as I know that most people only ever see portrayed in films or written about in novels. I struggle to find the words to express how amazed I am. If things get any cooler I’m afraid I won’t be able to appreciate any other important moments or milestones in my life as it will all seem mundane, but if the experiences I’ve yet to have keep stunning me like these I’m in for an extraordinary future!
June 25, 2018
My morning started with getting pictures of the CAMDS recovery. After Jason was pulled up and I got the pictures we needed I took a nap. The waves have been making me so sleepy, I might just start fueling my veins with coffee if this keeps up. Dive J2-1049 took place at Einstein’s Grotto. Looking back at it was wild, it hardly looked like it did last year! There was a new plume, hydrate deposits, and the area that was once flat has now collapsed. While we were doing the survey, we were looking for a place to put the new German sonar equipment, I can’t wait to see it being deployed and the mini documentary Katie Keil’s doing on it.
Among the many different biological sights we saw at Einstein’s Grotto like microbial mats, soft coral, rockfish, and bivalves, we saw what looked like a hagfish nursery. There were several baby hagfish in the “nest” that at first glance I mistook for pyrosomes. I wish the camera feed could be changed to show the science cam view in the galley, so I could keep watching the dive while I ate, it’s currently showing the deck feed. On a side note, I’m looking forward to the CTD dive when our Styrofoam cups will be taken down and shrunk. The schedules are always tentative, but Orest said the CTD might go down after breakfast, which is my shift! I’m going to make a funny little hat out of my cup when it comes up.
June 24, 2018
My morning started off pretty rough. I thought the waves would have helped me sleep better but I was restless all night. When I woke up I was feeling a bit nauseous, this was odd because I’m not prone to seasickness. After my shift in the control van, eating a bit and getting some fresh air really helped. Other than the rough start my day went pretty well.
During dive J2-1046 three legs on LV01C-2017 were recovered. Only one pin was pulled during the operation so only one leg was detached from it. There was a cool octopus that had made its home on the node and had a baby! I hope they find a new place to call home since we had to take away their old one. The new logging system could use a biology button to easily categorize animal events. This would be useful for quickly finding the time in a dive video where the creature appeared to add it to the biology catalog. The camera system could also use the ability to change the camera view being shown and available for screen grabs. A few good shots of the octopus were missed out on because we weren’t able to change to a different camera view.
I really liked being able to get more involved in the deploy and recovery process as this year students are encouraged to take pictures of Jason going off and coming on the deck. Since helping to update the site summary book, I plan to help get a lot of photos of the instruments, as I noticed that a few instruments were lacking in photos from the last cruise. With new instruments being deployed this year I’ll get to see them personally on their initial deployment. This will make updating next year’s site summary book more memorable for me.
June 23, 2018
I am so excited to be on the Revelle again because last year was such a great experience! Since boarding the vessel on June 20th I’ve been able to re-learn useful knots from the last cruise and help tie things down, help complete chemical MSDS lists for the analytical and wet labs, and assist the other students. While giving Bing Yu Lee, Katie Keil, and Leroy Miller the grand tour on the 22nd, Captain David let us help him pull up the crab pots. The crabs he caught were served for dinner tonight.
A new logging and camera system are being used for in the Jason control van this year, so I’ll have to re-learn how to use them. Katie Bigham had said the camera system should work similarly, and I like the idea of the new logging system. With it, anyone on the ship can sign on either as a user or guest and add an event. This means more eyes will be on the dives and it’s more likely to have an event recorded for something like biology.
My student project consists of a flow tank to look at and capture images of microplankton and count them. I’ll be making comparisons of the data I collect at the different sites along the Cabled Array and from vertical migration. I’m currently contacting Kathy Newell from UW Seattle about possibly getting a microscope on leg 2. I’d love the chance to look at the little guys!