August 18, 2026
Land ho! After a day of transit, we finally returned to Newport, OR. We put a bow on the trip by giving presentations on our projects for the class next semester. Mine will use multi-fidelity data assimilation for better ocean current forecasting. On a more poignant note, I really am going to miss this place. It’s been such an eye-opening experience to have lived on a boat for 10 days. I’ve always had this fantasy of sailing around the Agean Islands like Odysseus did and this trip scratched that itch and then some. Odysseus certainly didn’t have as good food as we did either. Coastal Oregon greeted us as a sight for weary eyes. The rolling landscapes were so beautiful from offshore. We even noticed that the beached boat sitting on the shore was there when we came back too.
The day before was relatively uneventful up until the literal 11th hour when there was an issue with Jason and we had to recover the ROV and scrap the dive. It was a bonus one anyways, so no harm no foul. Like the first time onboard the Revelle, I was impressed by how well the Jason crew handled an unexpected event during a dive. Accidents happen when the holes in the swiss cheese align, but these guys do a very good job making sure their operation is as watertight as possible. Other than that, we were tasked with the lovely job of scrubbing down the instruments before they go into storage. There was a greenish-grey plant creature that clung to the side of the ROV that made the most unholy sludge when scrubbed. Most of them are super-glued to the side and can’t even come off without some intense pressure washing.
Today was a bittersweet end to this journey. I learned a lot about oceanography as someone who has always held a fascination with but never a means to learn about the field. I never knew that there were these massive underwater arrays serviced by multi-million-dollar robots that hold some of the most sensitive underwater monitoring equipment around. This project has made me feel as close to working in outer space as I’ve ever experienced before too which, as someone with an interest in aerospace engineering, was really cool. We even ventured to alien worlds and boldly went where no one had gone before.
I would love to continue on another cruise, but ideally as a part of the engineering team. I have immense respect for the people that do wet lab work. I know my fair share of people who seemingly love to hunch themselves over a lab bench for 7 days a week and it’s inspiring. However, I think I’d find myself closer to the controls of Jason than the analytical lab if I had any job on the ship. Robotic exploration of the oceans has so many implications in other fields too. Maybe we could use the same technology on Europa? The possibilities are endless.
As I walk along the bridge spanning Newport’s harbor, I think about how lucky I was to participate on this cruise. I hope that others get to experience the mystery of the ocean firsthand on future cruises. Most importantly, I can’t wait to give back to the community with my project!
August 16, 2026
Shortly after I headed back to my state room yesterday evening, we began an 18 hour transit back to waters closer to shore. While we have 2 or 3 more dives to go, I can tell that my time here is coming to an end. The gentle rocking of the ship during transit proved to be a comfort rather than an annoyance this time around. Perhaps I’ve gotten used to it. Note to self – I wonder if beds that simulate the motion of a boat would sell well. They sell them to infants but I’d love to take this rocking lull with me back to shore. I think we would compete in the same market that those weighted blankets do. On another note, there is a Google Maps page for the Axial Seamount filled with a disproportionate number of reviews in Indonesian. Who gives this place a 1 star review?
Figure 1: Pirate Bob leaving his wisdom on the Axial Seamount Google Maps review page.
I am still recovering from a hearty dinner of steak with chimchurri sauce. Not a very vegetarian or climate-friendly choice but I’m allowed to splurge when I’m on a ship. Everyone knows calories don’t count offshore too. My compliments to the chefs since you could not pay me enough to do what they do. Well maybe you can but compared to the jobs I would do for free (namely being a Jason pilot), it’s a hard sell. Anyways shortly before there was a false alarm of dolphins that made me get my camera from my state room only to miss them by a few minutes.
Speaking of false alarms, we also had a fire drill today. In practice, it was a diet version of the abandon ship drill we had the first day. As before the time was announced well in advance. The muster location was the Main Lab, which is a bit different than the top deck like last time. I wouldn’t feel very safe in the Main Lab, but I suppose that’s a safe a place as any if there was a fire onboard? We didn’t try on our immersion suits which shortened the drill time but subconsciously made me a bit sad. There’s another startup idea: we sell full body onezies for sleeping in. Sort of like snuggies but we improve the material and get rid of the made for TV marketing. Feel free to hire me as a consultant for your business anytime.
After dinner, we took tours of the bridge and the engine room. The bridge itself impressed me, but the most impressive part of that leg of the tour were the dolphins! They came back and swam alongside the ship. I got some good video footage of the dolphins from above too. I again try not to think how evil they are and enjoy how majestic they look swimming alongside the ship. I loved looking at all the analog nautical instruments they had in the bridge. However, I was quite disappointed by the fact that the chart room has been repurposed by a HAL-9000-like, monolithic iPad that dominates the table. While it does win some points by being a bit like that holographic map they use in A New Hope before they blow up the Death Star, I still would have liked to have seen a massive paper map sprawling across the table with arcane, hard to verify markers scattered about to the corners of the page.
Next, we visited the engine room. I love mechanical stuff (I am in theory an engineer after all!) and this scratched that itch to no end. There were pipes that were hot and pipes that were cold, probably some pipes that carried electricity rather than water, the works. Of course there was a machine shop with a cadre of technicians trained to use them. It reminds me of the days when I used to make physical things rather than code at a computer all day. This trip has been perpetually calling me back to creating tangible deliverables again. Everything in the engine room is made with precision and purpose. It’s almost poetic. Even the liminal spaces between the machinery would make good inspiration for a piece of literature. All the authors who raved about live at sea were totally right: the ocean rocks.
August 15, 2026
Yesterday was an incredibly eventful one. So eventful, in fact, that I could not write my blog with the remaining brain cells that were still firing in the empty space that filled my skull that evening. The main highlight of yesterday was the dolphins that surrounded the ship with a majestic frolick that made me jealous of their carefree attitude. It disturbs me to think that their actual behavior is closer to psychopathy than lackadaisical whimsy, but I push that thought out of my brain with some determination before turning my gaze back on the horizon. The clouds even parted to make the sight even more majestic. I put on my best Jack / Rose face and climbed up to the bow to get an even better look.
That morning’s dive was rather eventful too. I recall that as a kid, my family and I took a helicopter ride around the big island of Hawaii. I don’t think that I had seen a volcano before then. Seeing the geological formations was unfortunately not memorable enough to stick in my brain long enough until today. Moreso than the lush trees that cover the crust of Hawaii’s fiery interior, what impressed me the most about that trip was the sense of scale. We were so high up – and it surely felt higher than the planes I had seen before – and the rolling hills continued on and on and on. I had a similar otherworldly feeling looking at the vents of the ASHES site that we visited yesterday. Its alien landscapes were in such a different place to the ones that I know. Someone played the soundtrack to Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Dune and it was perfectly fitting. The sheer feeling of discovery I experienced on this trip has had few parallels in my life, and this particular moment of being in a spaceship-like control room with synth music and alien volcanic activity thousands of meters below the surface really was the cherry on top.
I woke to a dive that just had come back from the depths. There was an issue with Jason’s arm leaking hydraulic fluid, so I was able to grab breakfast at a more leisurely pace than I normally would have if I was on watch. The food has continued to impress me, but the burrito I had a few days ago remains the coup de grace for the trip so far. I note that the timing of the dive really determines a lot of my schedule for the day. Since the transit to and from the surface is so long, the density of my logs tend to vary wildly depending on when I am in the hot seat. We managed to look at some other amazing volcanic pillars; someone on our team even managed to make a 3D model of them. The existence of life even in these harsh conditions makes me ponder where else life could thrive in the universe. I wonder why the tube-shaped creatures who wave in the scalding waters have come to adapt to that environment.
Later on in the evening, I was treated to a spectacular show by the Jason team picking up a cable and wrapping it around two horns on the return basket. This perhaps was the most impressive sight I have seen on the entire cruise. I asked one of the pilots afterwards whether they could tie their shoes with Jason’s manipulators and I think he didn’t rule it out entirely. I wish I was that good at using something mechanical like that. There are quite a few applications of model predictive control and computer vision I can think of for future autonomous ROVs like Jason. More research is to come…
August 13, 2026
Yesterday was a day of transit, interspersed with sleep so I didn’t have much to report on. I expected to begin my day working on the dive from the day before – a long survey with a lot of hype. The team decided to venture on with a shorter survey and continue to service the other dive sites. Consequently, when I woke and wandered to the mess hall to grab breakfast, we were well underway to our next site Axial Base. This was an 18 hour transit with an equally long period of more aggressive rocking of the boat. I decided to spend most of the day vibe coding and trying to set up a research project with RCA data.
I ended last night by monitoring a dive down to around 1500 meters at the summit of Axial Seamount in the ASHES hydrothermal field. However, due to the long transit there, it only occurred at the very end of the day and my watch. I was getting tired and after Jason experienced some issues with FOD, I headed back to my state room to sleep instead of staying up to watch the rest of the dive. I am noticing a pattern in these blogs with me talking about sleep more often than I normally would. Despite me getting over the initial sleep-related issues with the motion at sea, I notice that I still get tired much more easily here.
It was fortunate that I slept when I did since the dive was delayed substantially by the same FOD issue. I think that there as a loose zip tie or some other fastening that came loose on the Jason frame. The dive today was again to 1500 meters and involved changing out a CTD sensor and taking a survey of the dive site. The sensors here are all incredibly interesting technology, particularly the hydrophones. As an engineer, this cruise has been really rewarding. There are even a lot of ex-aerospace people here too. I suppose that this is the closest you can get to being an astronaut without leaving the atmosphere.
This was the topic of conversation during tonight’s dive. We finished picking up an instrument early on in the dive and spent the rest of our time on a long return to the surface. While Jason is an extremely impressive piece of engineering with many applications to my own research, part of me wishes that I was on a cruise with Alvin, the manned research submersible. I am making it a point to get as familiar as possible with the Jason systems as possible before I leave. I think there might be some cool machine learning applications with generating a 3D field with the cameras available to Jason for better manipulation with the robotic arms.
August 11, 2026
Last night was spent using Jason to replace a digital still camera on the ocean floor that was installed in 2026 driven by the pilots in the control room on deck 800 m below. I am still amazed by the high-tech environment there. The replacement of the camera at Southern Hydrate Ridge, coincided with me seeing the most marine wildlife out of any dive before it. I saw two sharks dance in view of the science camera, their reflective skin bright from the shine of Jason’s spotlights. As we descended further beneath the waves, a school of sardine-like fish swam in a school all around the ROV. I feel a bit out of my depth when other members of the team can name the exact species without a second thought.
Today I woke up feeling better, my jet lag having subsided from the days before. This is welcome news as I desperately needed some good night’s sleep. I ate a banana in my room before heading upstairs to sit in the Main Lab. I thought that the Jason dive yesterday would still be going on this morning. There was supposed to be a lengthy survey after the camera replacement. However, all objectives of the survey were met – multiple methane bubble plumes were imaged, as well as exposed hydrate so the dive was shortened and the ship oved to the Slope Base site. An hour into my four-hour shift, we were ready to send Jason back to the ocean floor at the deepest site yet.
This dive was different from the others I had been on before. It took about 2 hours for Jason to descend 2900 m to the sea floor – much longer than the more shallow dives I logged. During this time, I had the privilege to operate Jason’s $300,000 robotic manipulators using a bespoke controller in the control van. I can only hope Jason has some insurance. One of the operators made a heart with the two claws and I thought it was pretty cute. However, when we reached the bottom a much cuter sight of a light purple octopus greeted us. It clung to the side of one of the junction boxe like it was home, and I was a bit sad to see it mildly perturbed by our presence.
I only had an hour to observe the operations on this dive before I grabbed a hearty burrito for lunch. The chefs here really know how to make incredible food. I am writing this in my state room as I kill time before the next dive. I am not sure whether I have watch tonight since we have an 18 hour transit to the next dive site. Until then, I will get some needed rest
August 10, 2026
Another day on the high seas and I am feeling a bit better from yesterday. Still, the bunk beds did not provide for a very comfortable sleeping environment; my sleep was sporadic and light. I woke up at 12 am to the sound of the winch pulling Jason back on deck. Note that I had to go to sleep at around 10:30 pm the previous day. I definitely will invest in earplugs the next time I am sleeping on a boat. I woke up around 5 times in the night, but somehow I feel pretty ok. After waking up one final time, I wandered up to the Jason control deck and was taught how to be a videographer.
Operating the 4k cameras onboard Jason is a very immersive experience. Seeing a school of fish fly by the camera almost startled me with the amount of wildlife at those depths. There were all sorts of crabs, anemone, and shrimp that accompanied the ROV as it descended to the bottom of the ocean. Being in control of Jason is a lot slower paced than I thought it would be. Half of the time, the crew is diagnosing issues with map readouts, cameras, or coordinating with the bridge. All the while, I photograph the murky depths where the instruments sit with the unique wildlife of the ocean.
This particular dive was to replace a BEP package. The dive went well aside from an issue where the Niskins that were unable to be deployed properly. All of the instruments deployed on the seafloor look so industrial and functional. The yellow-painted metal stood out in stark contrast to the natural landscape of the ocean floor. Jason emerged from the water about half an hour earlier than my shift ended, so I headed down to get an early lunch before heading back to my state room.
I spent most of the afternoon in my room fast asleep, a much-needed siesta due to how poorly I slept before. I spent my 8 hour free time in my room trying to recuperate before heading back to the control room. I think that I am feeling quite a bit better, but let’s see how I sleep tonight.
August 9, 2026
We’re off! After a few months of planning and pensive waiting, we passed through the gates of the bridge spanning Newport’s harbor and into the blue. Coastal Oregon is quite an amazing sight, especially from offshore, but the weather outside will quickly indicate why no one lives here. The wind and cold are relentless and unforgiving. The sea lions on the buoys we passed don’t seem to be too perturbed.
I am more impressed by the humans onboard; the ship is run in an incredibly orderly fashion. We were given a pre-cruise safety briefing while docked ashore last night to tell us about all the various ways we can hurt ourselves onboard. I learned that the alarm for piracy and the alarm for a fire are identical. You must latch the doors shut every time you enter or exit them to prevent them from flying all over the place. Dramamine is in the medicine cabinet upstairs – all good to know. Partly because of this meeting, yesterday was a rather tiresome one. The 6-hour car ride was worse, but in retrospect the back of the van was good preparation for the constant, lulling motion that I am experiencing now. I think about how incredibly adaptable the human body is to being annoyingly shaken 24/7, since other crewmates don’t even seem to notice.
This morning, I woke up bright and early at 2:30 am with a runny nose and sore throat. Jet lag sucks. The room is so dry and my head was angled weird. I will use the second pillow tonight.