August 25, 2024
It’s Sunday, the last dive is done, and our main responsibilities are over. I had woken up at 4 am for my final shift, and when I got to the control van, it was empty as the dive was over. When I went to the Main Lab to check in, we were told that that everything had been wrapped up and we were free to go back to sleep. I did exactly that, and it was nice to be able to sleep in, even if it was only for a few more hours. I made sure to look up into the night sky one more time, but the
We pulled into port this morning and took group photos on the bow of the ship. The sandpiper that Trina, the APL engineer, took in has recovered nicely and was released to shore from the ship once we were reasonably close to land. It returned to land safely, and we all cheered loudly.
Once in port, we helped several RCA scientists and engineers were packing and loading for departure. The wet lab containd even more sediment cores then just the 36 they aimed for, and they needed help with getting these samples ready.
At 1 pm, we had our last science meting for the trip. It was time for us students to present our project proposals for what we would potentially be working on during the fall quarter. For all the life that we saw on the ocean floor, I had difficulty with coming up with new ideas. The biggest issue was that I couldn’t think of how the data we collected during our trip would aid me in investigating the larger biological life on seafloor, and any cyanobacterial that we could have collected had been dumped from the CTD’s already. That’s not to say that I don’t have any available data for biology, we have plenty of footage and photos of the lifeforms Jason came across; it just wasn’t the focus of this cruise. I think that while a novel project might be a bit too ambitious, helping with the biological catalog of the life Jason comes across is a great way to make my contribution.
Once out meeting was over, we hung out on the ship for a bit before heading into Newport. I went to a Mexican restaurant with Leo, Cathrine, and Andrew. I normally don’t like going to Mexican restaurants because most of the food there is food I can make at home. But after not being able to go home in months (I had been taking summer courses and working full time), it was nice to have a taste of something familiar. We had a great time and great conversations all around. Once we got back to the ship, we had a movie night and watched Mamma Mia.
Now it’s time to go to bed. It’s our last night on the ship, and I know that I’m going to miss the way the boat rocks as I fall asleep. I’ve already packed most of my things, now its just a matter of time before it all over. Andrew told me that a PhD isn’t required to work aboard this ship as an SSSG, and that there is an alternate program for training if this is the kind of work I’m interested in. I think I’m going to look into I more later, for now, I need to rest for tomorrow.
August 24, 2024
This week has gone by faster then I could have imagined. I don’t feel too torn about it though, I knew it was coming to an end, and I am satisfied with the experience I have had. Our duties are slowing down and will come to an end by tomorrow. Most of the work that’s going on is surveys with Jason on the sea floor to document and determine potential future sites for more instruments.
I’ve stepped away from my shifts for the day and spent my time observing the things that I didn’t have the time to see before. It’s helped me get a new perspective, and a deeper respect, for the people who help with the operations of this ship. The kitchen crew seems to be working around the clock, and despite my curiosity, I haven’t asked what their hours are like because I don’t want to distract them from their work. They are really good at their jobs and make wonder full meals for a crew of over 60 people.
Everyday is something new, and with the ship’s crew operating at all hours of the day, they have food available to anyone all the time. I’ve almost asked if I could help them in the kitchen, if only to try out that experience of cooking for such a large group. I refrained, as I have my duties, and they have theirs; id rather not hinder them in what must be a fast paced environment.
Today we also had a tour of the bridge, what is arguably the most important part of the ship. The First Mate was on watch at the time, and explained to us what his duties were and the instruments that he uses to fulfill them. It seems that there is a lot of experience required for his position, I think he said something about 10 years minimum at sea to qualify for the exams for licensing. We had a lot of questions for him, and he answered them all with care and honesty.
I could get into the nitty gritty of everything that we learned, but I think I’ll just stick with writing what stuck out to me most. You need to climb several stairwells to get to the bridge that rests on top of the boat, and at the last stairwell, there is a red light that floods the space like a horror movie. It turns out that there is a very good reason for this. A lit-up room suddenly cast into darkness will cause a person to be blind until their eyes adjust, but a red light does not affect your night vision so harshly. The people manning the bridge need to be able to see at night to ensure that there are no issues at sea that could harm the crew, so they use a red light to maintain clear night vision while also being able to see the dark room of the bridge.
To avoid waking my roommate, I use the red light from the heat lamp in our bathroom to see in the dark, and I’ve noticed that when I turn it out, my eyes are already adjusted to the darkness of our room. Having experienced this phenomenon, and knowing that it has a practical application, has tempted me into getting some red lights of my own for my apartment.
There are also some arts and crafts available to us to create and relax. I’ve learned how to make two types of weaved bracelets today, and I plan to learn a third tomorrow. No matter how I occupy my time, it seems that I am unable to stop learning new things. It’s comforting in a way, to relax from hard academics in a classroom and still be able to absorb new information so easily. I feel reassured that my desire to learn is natural to me. It makes me want to put my best foot forward all the more.
August 23, 2024
Today we did something new for our watch shift. Jason was not deployed at the time, so we went to the computer lab and helped with several tasks collecting data and samples.
During the night we had travelled to the deep Slope Base site, which reaches depths up to 2900 meters. First, we took turns maneuvering the CTD to specified depths from 2900 meters to 200 meters and fired Niskin bottles, which are containers used to collect water samples. Afterwards, we helped with collecting the water samples in various containers for different purposes. Some were for oxygen content, some for salinity, and some for chlorophyll. Once the samples were collected, we disposed of the excess samples by manually draining them on deck. For this, I am grateful I brought rain boots and a raincoat; water got absolutely everywhere!
Our styrofoam objects were sent down with the CTD, and they are compressed. A lot of the styrofoam cups became misshapen, but I think my ornament turned out alright.
We returned to the computer lab when we finished with the samples. Our shift was still on, so we got to help with watching the sonar for methane plumes from the seafloor. The sonar had a blue to red gradient, and the sound of it pinging though the water could be heard all around the ship. I had never seen or heard a sonar in action before, and seeing the methane seeps in real-time was pretty cool.
The Jason also uses sonar to help with determining the location of objects around, but it is comparatively weaker, and we can’t hear the sound from the control van.
While we were looking at the sonar, one of the APL Engineers caught a bird that had become stranded on the ship. The poor thing had been unable to fly away from the corner it backed itself into. She picked it up with ease. It turns out that this happens often enough, but there’s no procedure for dealing with this issue. They rigged up a box to keep the bird safe, but I haven’t heard anything about it since this morning and it’s unlikely that it will survive to make it to shore. I guess it’s a sad reality of operation on any vessel, but that’s the point of this trip, isn’t it? to learn more about the reality of a job like this and see if it’s something that I want to pursue for a future career. (note it did survive).
I’m on my last shift for the day right now, and this time Jason is on deployment. Unfortunately, we had to leave the Slope Base after completing out work, as we are on a tight schedule, so that meant no looking at real-time deep-sea organisms for me.
The area that we are surveying at Southern Hydrate Ridge has a lot of bacterial mats, and we can see the methane gas escaping from the ocean floor as bubbles. We had seen several plumes through the sonar this morning, it’s interesting to see it in real time though the Jason’s cameras.
Life is present in every place we have explored so far, and each day has brought something new. As we slowly move to shallower waters, I can’t help but think about how the environments and organisms will continue to change.
August 22, 2024
To wrap up last nights watch, we collected several sediment core samples and saw a whole lot of crabs and hagfish. A couple of crabs tried to hitch a ride with us in the undervator (a gated basket that we use to lift irregular instruments) and we had to push them out with Jason. It was funny, watching such a powerful machine try to gently coax a stubborn crab away. I also learned more about the site locations we will be working on during leg 2 of the cruise. Andrew said that it will be unlikely that we will be visiting any locations deeper then 800 meters, and that we will not be visiting the slope or the hydrothermal vents, which reach over 2000 meters deep. This was incredibly disappointing, as I find deep sea life to be fascinating and enjoyably bizarre. The hydrothermal vent ecosystems would have been amazing to see in real time, but I guess that will have to wait for another time. It’s no big deal though, the VISIONS’24 cruise is an opportunity unlike any other that I have experienced, I can be more then satisfied with the work we are doing.
It hasn’t been nonstop work on the boat, we have a few activities available to us as well. One of which is preparing a styrofoam object with designs that we will later send with the CTD to shrink them under the immense pressure of the depth of the ocean. I have chosen one in the shape of an ornament and have colored it with marker in shades of blue and gold. I’m looking forward to how it will turn out after it gets compressed, here’s the before picture and I’ll post the after image in my next blog.
Speaking of retrieving things from the depths, we visited the wet lab today and they showed us some creatures they had accidentally retrieved in their baskets with the sample cores from the sea floor. They had a starfish, some clams, and a sea urchin. They didn’t have much work for us though. They managed to collect the 36 samples they had wanted, now they just need to divide them amongst their colleagues back on shore and prepare them for transport.
Instead of a science meeting today, we had a tour of the engine room and its facilities. It takes up a large portion of the ship and has so many feats of engineering within. I’m sure if I was an engineering major, I’d be foaming at the mouth during this experience. I am not an engineering major though, so it was nice to simply admire the machines that make this trip possible and listen to the explanations provided by our guide. The engine room itself was incredibly loud, and we had to wear earplugs to enter the room.
It’s the tail end of afternoon watch right now. We haven’t gone any deeper than 780 meters on the dives we’ve seen so far. A few unfortunate fish got caught up in the propeller blades of the Jason ROV, but that’s the only new thing. One of our mentors did say that we might make a trip to the Slope Base, which reaches to nearly 3000 meters deep. So, its possible that exploring an even deeper environment is still in the cards.
August 21, 2024
It’s Wednesday, the 21st of April and my 4th day out at sea. It’s with great relief that I say that I don’t need the motion sickness pills. I actually find the rocking of the boat to be enjoyable. It’s like riding a gentle roller-coaster, and at night it’s like napping on a swinging hammock, rocking me to sleep. I can already tell that I’m going to miss the feeling once I return to land, so I’m doing my best to remain in the moment and enjoy it while I can.
Back to where I left off, we had gone to the science meeting and listened to the researchers in the wet lab. Their work is incredibly interesting, even if the full scope of it goes beyond me. Essentially, they take cores of the sediment, like ice cores at the Antarctic, and remove all the water from the mud and slice the mud into 3-inch layers. The water is removed carefully with a comically large syringe in a way that air does not enter the chamber. Once removed, the water chamber is filled with a gas that has no carbon. The idea is that since carbon likes to escape liquid into gas, all the carbon will escape into this gas, and the gas can be contained in packets and measured in a lab. The wet lab scientists don’t have much use for the sediment, but they keep it anyways. They told us that since the mud has clay-like properties and minerals like iron, others will buy it to make colorful pottery.
After the meeting we (Erik and Catherine, my shift mates) went on watch and helped with the deepest dive the 3 of us have seen yet. It was over 700 meters. And the life that we saw was absolutely amazing. The equipment down there had been free of any anemones, and was so clean, our watch manager had almost mistaken it for being new equipment that Jason had brought down. What was really cool though was all the crabs and fish and hagfish all over the site. The fish sat so still, not even the gills moving, that I had thought they were dead! They started moving once Jason began moving equipment, if only to get out of Jason’s direct path. They were very calm otherwise, waiting in the sediment and conserving energy. After our shift, the three of us, plus Jose and Roy, watched the first movie of Pirates of the Caribbean, and the movie was a lot better than I remember it being. Three in our group had never watched the full movie, so it was a lot of fun watching together aboard the Atlantis last night. The sky was cloudy again, so I missed the blue super moon, again.
During today’s morning shift, we saw rare life forms, like a couple squid, and even an octopus and cat shark! But what was really special today was the work we did after morning shift in the chemical lab. We (my crew and 4 others) helped Alex and Andrew, with recovering samples from 3 different osmosis machines. They were the CAT, an old MOSQUITO from 2022, and an Osmo sampler with no acronym. The work was practical and deeply enjoyable, even though it was mostly pulling out coiled tubes filled with sea water from metal frames. The lack of an acronym for the third machine didn’t sit right with us, so now we have the self-appointed mission of creating a new animal themed name so that it can match the others. It’d be a fun contribution from us that would remain here for years to come, if we manage to come up with something.
I can’t wait until we get further away from land, the light pollution from Newport still affects the sky from where we are, even though we can’t see the land. I look forward to a clear night sky. Right now, I’m in the middle of our afternoon watch. We are helping the Wet Lab technicians with collecting their sediment cores in the control van, but the process is slow going. A couple of our mentors are here in the control van with us, so I’m going to take this time to engage in conversation and continue what happens tonight for tomorrow’s blog.
August 20, 2024
It’s Tuesday morning, and a lot has happened since my last blog. After lunch and a few rounds of UNO, my shift mates and I went to help with the assembly of the MOSQUITO. I forgot what the acronym stands for, but from what I understand, the instrument slowly takes in samples of the water over the course of several days through several thin coiled tubes. The assembly was fairly straight forward, and yet required precision and care to avoid damaging the tubes, as any kinks or air in the plastic could compromise the intake of water.
We were working up until the science meeting at 2pm. I’d like to say that we still operate on Pacific Time, but truthfully, time has lost all meaning rather quickly. With the diversity in our schedules, the only time that matters is when your shift starts. Anyways, the meeting was presented by Mike Vardaro, and he talked about the biological life that we might encounter on the Jason dives. The presentation was thorough, and I was thoroughly fascinated. At this point I had only worked 3 watches, and the life I had seen was limited to anemones, jellyfish, and that one orange fish from the first dive. The potential variety was stunning, and I can’t wait to see these unique lifeforms on future dives.
After the third meeting we went on our 4th watch shift, and I finally got to see more lifeforms. We had been working on shallower dives before (about 70 meters) and this dive was much deeper (about 500 meters). On our way down, the Jason cameras captured swarms of jellyfish and bioluminescent cone jellies and schools of tiny silvery fish that flashed like reflective tape. We even encountered a few chains of orange siphonophores. I managed to grab a few still frames of these colony organisms on the video grabber; I wonder how they turned out.
During our shift we learned that that night there was supposed to be a super blue moon, but when we went to go see it after our shift, there was too much cloud coverage. I had decided to go to bed and try to catch the moon in the morning before our 4am shift. For the last few days, I have been dealing with some drowsiness from the motion sickness pills. I’ve decided to stop taking them and see how I deal. I wasn’t able to catch the moon this morning either really, only a snippet though a gap in the clouds. I’m not sure why they call it a blue moon, it seemed more yellow to me this morning. It’s supposed to be a rare celestial event, so I’m going to try to catch it at its height again tonight; hopefully there’s no cloud coverage again. Though I couldn’t catch the moon, I did get footage of the deployment of Jason into the water.
We are about to have lab meeting again in 8 minutes and after that is my 5th watch shift. This time the meeting is going to be the science teem in the wet lab presenting. They work with mud/sediment cores and have the ambitious goal of collecting 36 cores during this cruise with a team of only 2 people. I don’t have a frame of reference for how difficult this task might be, but I’m sure I’m going to learn more about it during the meeting. I’ll blog about it tomorrow, until then, let’s hope that I don’t get super seasick without the dramamine.
August 19, 2024
It’s Monday, our first day out of port with no land in sight. It’s not as jarring as I had expected to be, the ebb and flow of the waves and the way the crash and foam against the ship hull is more mesmerizing than anything. I try to put my attention to matters aboard the ship, but the few times I’ve gone out on deck to see the waves, I find myself gripping the rails at hand. I don’t think it’s a fear thing, it’s more of a preventative action. Even though I can swim, I’d really rather not on this trip, thank you very much.
Speaking of the outside, we saw a pod of whales! We were surrounded by them, whale spouts of water on all sides of the ship. Amongst the waves, I even got to see the smooth dark hide of one of the whales. I wonder that kind of whales they were. I’ll have to ask one the researchers.
I had my first morning watch shift today. If I had known that we were going to be looking at computer screens in the darkness for 8 hours a day, I would have brought my blue light glasses! At the very least, I find the watch shift to be an interesting labor. Everything that is done with the Jason gets logged, and the array of cameras keep a video record as well. There are two student jobs within the Jason control van, and those are as the event logger and video monitor of the dive. The event logger takes note of every action the Jason performs, while the video monitor makes sure that the footage is operating as it should and grabbing frames from the active footage as still images. I’ve tried both of these roles, and I find them to be engaging!
So far, the biological life I’ve seen though the Jason camaras has been without much variety. Anemones cover the instruments we’ve checked, cluttering every surface and making it difficult for the operators to be sure that the cables are properly plugged in. The most unique would be the only fish that we’ve seen on this dive. It was a medium sized bright orange fish possessing fins and scales with two yellow lines running parallel along a spiked spine. I don’t know what it was exactly, I guess I’ll have to ask about it too. It’s only a mild disappointment we can’t actually operate the Jason ROV; it’s incredibly sophisticated equipment and I knew it was a long shot anyway.
Since the waters are a little rough right now, we were released from our watch in the control van. We’re finishing up our shift in the main lab, writing our blogs. After this we plan to eat breakfast and spend time in the library until 12pm. At 12 the graduate students are putting together an instrument called the MOSQUITO, and we plan on helping them out with that until the science lab meeting. I don’t know what the meeting is about, so I’ll leave the details for tomorrow.
August 18, 2024
It’s Saturday, 8/17, the first full day of ship activity, and boy has a lot happened since our departure from Seattle! Arriving at the Newport NOAA facility was worrying as I had split my bags on account of space between the two vans, and I wasn’t sure if I had my ID with me. Everything got sorted out though (I did have my ID!) and the previous students on Leg 1 gave us a tour of the ship and showed us our rooms. Here’s a photo of our first look at Atlantis.
We didn’t know who exactly we were going share to rooms/work shifts with on the boat. We are bunking in triple rooms and some in doubles. It’s an interesting situation, as some of us (including me) haven’t experienced this kind of dorm life yet. We had some time to settle in, so after unpacking I explored our quarters a bit. I find myself noticing all the little things that are different from living on land versus the ship. For one, all the doors have either magnets or hooks to keep them open or shut, so that they don’t go flying open and closed during movement. Drawers have latches and tables have this border that keeps things from flying of their surface. The most interesting to me was the heat lamps in the bathrooms, which cast a “horror movie” red light and that gives off heat and are used to dry the room and everything in it.
We ran though orientation and learned when our watches (work shifts) were. My shift is from 4-8am and 4-8 pm. I get an 8-hour block of free time between my shifts, so if I wanted, I could sleep the day away and explore the ship at night. I might try that once, if only to see the night sky and endless black sea. Sleeping on the ship is also something novel. From my spot on top bunk, I can hear the humming of the ship thought the ceiling. It’s a nice white noise, and the rocking of the boat actually helps me sleep, despite the unfamiliarity.
On Sunday, 8/18, we ran ship safety drills and tried on survival suits. The suits are bright orange and have claw like hands remind me of a lobster. I appreciate the effort they put into the safety drill, its good to know that our safety is important to the people we are working with. I had my first real watch yesterday, but ill save the details for tomorrow. Already I feel that I have learned more about life on a boat, and I’m enjoying taking it all in