Jose Cornejo Blog Leg 2

Aug 24

During the deployment of J2-1635, we saw a very biologically beautiful but gruesome scene, a fish got eaten by several hagfish between the chore chambers. I didn’t know much about the exact diet of hagfish, and I thought they would eat small prey but it does make sense that being a benthic carnivore animal it feeds on other animal flesh, like the fish that was dead before it starts to be eaten. That’s the cycle of life. Later on that day we had an engine tour, which is basically like the heart of the ship. I couldn’t hear much of the explanations because of how loud it was but it was nice of them to give us ear plugs for the high volumes there. Actually, for part of tour we had to have the explanation in the control room before entering and looking at the engine itself. We also saw big work benches were they also hang out and it was really cool to see they are very into having stickers everywhere, there are some Alvin sticker, and they look pretty cool, I think I will buy some. They also had some stickers around the engine room, some sharks from Jaws, which is funny cause I am pretty scared of sharks.

After the engine room tour, I planned to go to the gym areas, there are like 3 different areas, which it is crazy already to have one in a ship.  I did some workout with the punching bag, bench and at end I run a little bit on the treadmill. I wouldn’t recommend running on of those while there are some good waves, I felt like I needed to change my velocity from 0 to 100 every time the ship went side to side.

Anna Hilderbrand, Chesapeake Biological Laboratory, University of Marylan Center for Environmental Science. Taking a sample of void gas from chamber for methane; Credit: J. Cornejo, St. Mary’s University, V24.

Later on, that day I helped in the wet lab. Sadly, I couldn’t help as much as I wanted since I still needed to work on a small paper and the time to do it was limited ( the paper went out fine and its looks pretty nice).  I helped the PI, Dr. Laura Laphem, and PhD student, Anna Hilderbrand, on their research focused on seep, dissolved organic matter. In the big picture, since there is a great amount of dissolved organic matter (DOC) they want to be a source of carbon. A great part of that DOC seems to be older than it should so they theorize it could be from cold seeps. Therefore, they study sediment cores and water samples.

 This is really interesting for me since they are taking methane concentration and for my summer research I was studying methane emissions, also at SHR. They also were planning to take some cores from Northern Hydrate Ridge, an area not in the cable array but it seems that has a lot less bubble plumes than SHR. I started to think the implications that it could have on my research. During my shift helping them, I helped seal their first core with a void gas. I got really scared in the beginning because I thought I messed up taking the core out of the chamber and I started to get anxious until I saw both of them looking at each other with a great excitement. You could see the passion for science in their eyes!!

Also, in the evening a couple of people went to see the sunset over the deck, I can assure you sunsets are beautiful at sea. My camera it’s just not the best which makes pretty pictures look at least 10 times worst, but I will look for the best angle possible y camera can get to have a good picture of ocean and sky.

Aug 23

Today very early in the morning we started the CTD deployment. It was really cool that Roy and I got to learn and help prepping the Niskins bottles. I had a similar experience on the R/V Rachel Carson owned by UW, so I was fairly familiar, and it felt nice to apply my previous experience.  It was really good to have a refresher and to see how it changes from ship to ship depended on the objectives, for examples on the Rachel Carson we got to fire 10 or less Niskins while in Atlantis they fired 24 at 12 different depths. We also secure them with a thin rope and check that the caps are closed for the best chances, you know if you want to get those samples again you will need to go 2900 m down below sea level again.

Later on, we went to the lab to learn about readings, and deployments, we learned from Kellen Rosburg. Since my background its not in physics I got to learn a lot and it was really cool to learn implications on ecology. It was interesting to learn more about diurnal vertical migration of phytoplankton and zooplankton. I got very interested in it and read some papers to understand the changes of carbon productions depend on the time of the day and why the change. Since I’ve been studying benthic communities this summer, I haven’t thought much about the science of surface ecology, but every type of ecology is interest, and many can affect not just the tropic chain but the ocean itself.

The crab team got a picture in the lab while the CTD was going down.

Elena Calderon, Roy An and Jose Cornejo posing with crab team sign ; Credit: J. Cornejo, St. Mary’s University, V24.
Shrink Styrofoam cups compared to normal size cup. ; Credit: J. Cornejo, St. Mary’s University, V24.

J2-1639 dive, the crab team kept a ritual of taking pictures with whoever is in the back during our shifts. The first picture with someone else was Alex Rose and today’s picture was with Andrew Paley and Chief Scientist, Mike Vardaro. We will be looking forward to taking pictures with other people and having some good time with everyone that stays or passes by. After my shift, I went to look at the Styrofoam cups and other shapes that we sent to 2900 m at Slope Base. I got two very important drawings for me. One of my country, Peru, I don’t think any other Peruvian has been in the particular program so I felt like it was a must to represent with our flag, if you ever get the chance to visit South America, come visit us in Peru!!

 The other one of is my alma mater, St. Mary’s University in good ol’ Texas. Go Rattlers!!

Augst 21: One of the best days in my VISION experience!!

CAMB103 in Einstein Grotto and area of focus during J2-1632. Taken by Jose Cornejo from Control Monitor. Credit: J. Cornejo, St. Mary’s University, V24
Ocean at night. Credit: J.Cornejo, St. Mary’s University; V24

In the 12-4AM shift we were in the launching of the J2-1632 dive. We are going to the Einstein Grotto in SHR, the area where I based my summer internship research with Dr. Katie Bigham. The research was focused on finding the primary productivity of the SHR with ecology dynamics. I did image annotation to find abundance of animals classify by morphology in which I used pictures taken by the CAMSB103. I am really excited to see the bacterial mats, the great number of rockfish the area has, and I hope I get to see some deep-sea soles, because it was really hard to find any in the pictures of Einstein Grotto. Also, one of this dive’s mission is to change the old CAMSB103 for a new one, which means I will finally get to see the camera state and hopefully see it take a picture!!

After my shift looking at the ocean at night was somewhat scary but the moon makes it beautiful.

Update!! I got to the see the old CAMDSB103, the new camera and lots of biodiversity that I saw during the picture’s annotation process and highlights videos that I worked on for the OOI data team. I got to see a flatfish, deep sea soles, lots of rockfish, a variety of crabs, hermit crabs, hagfish, sablefish, soft corals, sea urchins and sea stars. It felt great to know what thet are after trying to identify them all summer with low visibility pictures. I got to see the CAMSB103 and the area that takes pictures of which is the place that I have been looking. I remembered some instruments that were always in the back of the pictures that in the beginning I didn’t know what they were and some of the geography. It also took a picture of Jason. I felt like I just completed a full circle, and it was of my highlights of my VISIONS experience. My favorite dive!! We were all very excited, and we took the first pictures of the “crab” loggers’ team.

Flamingo Marker from MBARI taken by Jose Cornejo from Control Monitor. Credit: J. Cornejo, St. Mary’s University, V24

Also in the next shift, for the dive, I saw a flamingo marker from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI). Since I came to America, I have been taking pictures. I felt like I was getting prepared all summer for this, since I have been taking pictures with anything flamingo related (not particular reason, just for fun) but the last thing I thought it was going to be able to take a picture with one 750 m below sea surface.  Apparently, markers underwater can have any shape as long as it works.

VISION’s students in Scientific Laboratory lab listening to Alex Rose explanation of Osmo Sampler. Credit: A. Paley, University of Washington; V24.

Andrew Paley and Alex Rose, both RCA technicians, gave us an explanation of the functionality of the Osmo samplers that were recently retrieved. There are three Osmo samplers used at SHR, all of them work based on osmosis: The CAT, the MOSQUITO and the OSMO.

I was interested in the MOSQUITO, an instrument made of a couple of Osmo Sampler pumps (OS) which are two chambers where one is filled with distilled water and the other one with saturated saline solution. These OS have Teflon coil on one side of the chamber connected to Ti capillary needles, and thanks to osmotic pressure a net flow of distilled water gets to go through the membrane to the saturated chamber and it is also continuously pulled. Adding a tracer injection device, consciously measures fluid flow rates and solute fluxes.

August 20th, 2024

A corroding connector. Credit: UW/NSF-OOI/WHOI and E. Calderon, Whitworth University; J2-1628; V24.

Today 12-4 Am shift was my first time doing a sealog. I was quite scared of this one because of my limited English vocabulary. Even though we were going down, where we didn’t see many highlights or comments needed, I was intensely looking at the cameras to find something to comment on. It was cool to see a shark mid-way going down, we sadly didn’t get a picture though. I think it was a cat shark and fun fact I am pretty scared of sharks.

XBT after deployment. Credit: J. Cornejo, St. Mary’s University; V24

The recent mission to Oregon offshore, Dive J2-1628, was aborted due to strong currents and during our 12-4 Am shift we were the loggers for the Dive J2-1629 where they attempted to deploy the BEP. The BEP was deployed successfully but it couldn’t be connected because two of the pins seemed to be corroded. That was bad for the mission, but it was interesting to see some type of stuff growing on one of the pins while we were there.

I made my first drawing on Styrofoam and after looking at other previous VISION expeditions I learned that we would deploy them to go down to 2900m at the Slope Base site!! We had an explanation of the functionality of the Expendable Bathythermographs (XBT), and we got to help with the deployment for the EM survey of Southern Hydrate Ridge. The XBT is basically a probe to measure temperature in the water columns but is cooler when that data is gets to the software and when combined with surface salinity data to determine sound speed profiles. This helps sonar operations.

I took some pictures of the biology guide in the Jason van to learn more about the ecology around there, since the next place we are going is the Einstein Grotto!!

August 19th, 2024

Enteroctopus dofleini on medium power junction box. Credit: UW/NSF-OOI/WHOI; J2-1626; V24.

Today’s shift 12-4 AM, we saw a crab fighting a cable. Something that I have never thought I would see more than 500m below the sea surface, but we loved it, so our new team name is the fighting crabs!!. We also saw three giant pacific octopuses and some cool biodiversity around the seafloor of Oregon offshore. I was working on the vidgrabs so I got to take of some pictures of the octopuses and a flatfish that was lying inside the old power junction box. The first octopus was lying on the medium power junction, the second one was crawling around the titanium cylinder and the third one was below the flange box. I got to record my first 4k video and it looked awesome. 

August 18th, 2024

Figure 1. Leg 2 VISIONS undergraduates listening to the explanation of vidgrab in the Jason Van. Credit: A. Rose, University of Washington; V24.

First day going out of the sea!!! We had our Atlantis cruise tour, we got to see the Jason, which was a lot bigger than I thought. We got to see the control van of Jason, in which I didn’t understand half of the explanation(vidgrabber) like I think most people, but it looked as cool as I thought. It looks even better when the lights are off and the screens on.

Training for Abandon ship, getting into emergency suit. Photo Credit: A. Rose, University of Washington; V24.

After the tour, we got our safety meeting to basically understand what to do if anything bad happens in the ship and we need to save our lives. Good thing that really doesn’t happen very often, and it was cool to wear the safety suit, we looked like the among us characters.

On this first day I got to be one of the first undergrads to learn how to do take vidgrabs with Sealogs for Jason. It has many steps, which made it seemed very hard to make in the beginning and I had to run through it a couple of times. Once I got the hang of it and the ROV Jason got deployed, it got a lot smoother. Our time on that first deployment was fairly short, but we got to learn a very detailed explanation since we were the first undergrads. One of my favorites moments was to learn how to change the vidgrabs cameras, it felt like I had more responsibility and can I have my own personal input into the dive. Another cool thing happened on the deck with my team, when we got too helped the APL engineers and one of the OOI data team members, in the calibration of the opta inside the benthic experiment package. Andrew gave us an explanation of the function of the BEP and I got to read the sensor.

RCA research technician Andrew Paley demonstrates calibrating an instrument on the benthic experiment package to V24 students Jose Cornejo, Elena Calderon, and Roy An. Credit: M. Elend, University of Washington, V24.

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