With good weather, we are making rapid progress in completing all major tasks planned for the summit of Axial Seamount during Leg 1. Yesterday, upon completion of the Central Caldera geophysical Site, we made a full court press on a major hydrot
It has been a marvelous, exciting, intense past 24 hours with the successful installation of the 4.7 km extension cable that will connect Primary Node 3B with the Central Caldera geophysical Site. Giora Proskurowski and Skip Denny, working with
With great diving weather, the ship has been abuzz with activity preparing for dives to the Central Caldera geophysical site. Last night the medium powered J-Box MJ03F was installed on Dive R7124, and a broadband seismometer and low frequency hy
Alas, yesterday the weather gods were angry and so last night we were hove to, waiting for the seas to calm. Luckily the winds dropped and we were able to get the ROV into the water again.
Today is an exciting day — it marks completion of instrument installation at the Eastern Caldera Site at the summit of Axial Seamount. This site is one of three key geophysical sites on the volcano as part of the OOI-RSN cabled observatory funded by NSF.
The past day and today have been incredibly busy with four ROV dives to the seafloor. The ROPOS team was highly efficient with some vehicle turn-around-times of <3 hrs. Most vehicles take much longer than this.
Today has been an intense, very exciting day – it is only 1815, and ROPOS has already made two trips to the seafloor in the International District vent field during Dives R1717 and R1718.
Today’s activities focused on preparing to lay nearly 4000 ft of extension cable onto the seafloor and to deploy a junction box at a depth of 8530 ft beneath the ocean’s surface at the base of Axial Seamount (Site PN3A).
Last night’s weather conditions, with sustained winds of up to ~30 mph over the past 24 hours, precluded the launch of the ROV ROPOS. These winds are not atypical of the NE Pacific
Yesterday’s Dive (R1712) went very well: we completed all of our tasks. The ROV ROPOS came on deck at 2115h. In preparation for the next dive at PN3A, a junction box was moved to the ROV working platform, and a cable drum was readied for installat