Studying Climate Change from Beneath the Ocean

Land Ho!

2010-07-31T16:58:00.000-07:00

Aug 1,2010

Location: Wood's Hole

Lat/Lon: 41 ° 31.1985 N / 070 ° 40.3464 W

Air Temp: 19.6 ° C / 67.280 ° F

Wind Speed: 6.68 Knots

Humidity: 56.8 %

Water Temp: 22.39 ° C, 72.302 ° F

Salinity: 30.7115 psu

Depth: 28.20 m

Paul Walczak did an amazing job capturing this image of this Atlantic White-Sided Dolphin last night before sunset - great shot!

So today we return to WHOI! We are scheduled to be at the dock for 8 am and Customs will come aboard and do their checking.

It's been a terrific opportunity to be aboard the R/V Knorr with this talented, hard working team! Thanks for a amazing time!

Frank Scofield

Heather Pacheco

Bob White

Massachusetts Teachers on the R/V Knorr Summer 2010

Last night!

2010-07-30T16:11:00.000-07:00

July 31, 2010

Location: Where are we now?

Lat/Lon: 40 ° 09.4234 N / 069 ° 50.4183 W

Air Temp: 20.9 ° C/ 69.620 ° F

Wind Speed: 9.58 Knots

Humidity: 74.5 %

Water Temp: 21.97 ° C/ 71.546 ° F

Salinity: 31.5940 psu

Depth: 97 m (no I'm not kidding)

Last night Cassieopia was bright off the starboard and the Big Dipper was above the bow. We are heading north to home!

You have GOT to watch this video (link written below)!! The talented Tom Lanagan has worked his magic and you'll be delighted with the product!

http://vimeo.com/13683411

*******************************

Today there's mostly "clean up" on the agenda other than a "F&B" (Fire and Boat Drill) at 12:30 today. I was reading Sarah Schulenberg's blog last night and loved that she included info on how many sampling events we've had - so you're getting some of that info here!

In all, there were 53 Sampling Events completed on our journey. They're broken down as:

CDH Long Core: 9 events

Multi-Core: 20 events

Giant Gravity Core: 22 events

Plankton Tow: 1 event

CTD: 1 event

The agenda board has "EAT FRUIT" sprawled across it - you know we can't bring the fruit that was purchased in the Azores into the U.S.! I think I'm on my 5th orange in two days...

In addition to all the talented crew members, technicians, assistants and researchers, we also had a living legend aboard! How many people do you know have their own Wikipedia page?

Meet Ian Nicholas (Nick) McCave. Nick is pictured at the top of this blog entry (middle) with Chief Scientist Lloyd Keigwin (left) and Teacher Liason Frank Scofield (right). Frank and Lloyd were students of Nick's at Brown University in 1965 - small world!

Nick is from the Isle of Guernsey. His eventual focus on the marine environment was influenced by his ocean-side upbringing. Nick's mother, who worked for the airlines, took Nick all over Europe on vacations. So, this well traveled boyscout, lover of the outdoors and talented in the sciences was in the high track in high school. His headmaster suggested that he consider studying geology in college when it became apparent that he had a shot at Oxford. Nick was admitted to Oxford, quite an honor! There he continued to excel.

Nick credits Oxford's student-centered approach and his professor / tutor Dr. Harold Reading for his excellent preparation early on in his . It

seems that Nick carries this approach with him as he loves teaching and mentoring. On board, Nick has been a Pied Piper of sorts. Once he starts talking about a graph or a map, we all just gather round him to listen and learn.

Graduate work brought Nick to Brown University where he met John Allen who introduced the idea of mechanics of sedimentary processes. Until that point Nick had been focused on describing sedimentary features. Now his attention turned to learning about the mechanisms by which these features were made - integration of physics. Upon completion of his PhD program Nick went to Holland for two years as a NATO fellow and began studying the marine sedimentary environment. He followed this post-doc with a faculty position at the, then brand new, University of East Anglia. It was such an exciting time and the team of faculty took on the charge of developing a novel course of study: "Environmental Science" - everything from health to nutrient cycling to geology to meteorology and more! While at East Anglia Nick met WHOI's Charlie Hollister and thus began Nick's relationship with WHOI. For years Nick worked with WHOI and on the R/V Knorr.

Nick moved on to the University of Cambridge and there he became the Woodwardian Professor of Geology until his retirement in 2008. Today, Nick explains, he's got the freedom of a post-doc: he can focus on research. And that's just what he's been doing on our trip!

One night to go - and we've seen some pretty amazing things tonight already! But you'll have to read about that in tomorrow's blog...our last blog!

Do what you want to do!

2010-07-30T12:40:00.001-07:00

July 30, 2010

Location: New England Seamounts

Lat/Lon: 39 ° 04.2103 N / 069 ° 13.3047 W

Air Temp: 22.2 ° C/ 71.960 ° F

Wind Speed: 23.74 Knots

Humidity: 58.3%

Water Temp: 26.04 ° C, 78.872 ° F

Salinity: 32.67 psu

Depth: 2766 m /2.8 km / 1.7 miles

Today we started with a multi-core in the morning and there was one gravity core - there could be one more of each and then we're DONE! Amazing to think that the trip is almost over! It's been such a terrific experience!

We need to check in with WHOI at an "11-hour" point, where the boat is approximately 11 hours away from the dock. We have many miles to cover before we get there so any cores we do tonight will be on the way back.

Chris Moser

Born and raised in the congested Eastern U.S. coring expert Chris Moser couldn’t wait to get away to the west - to freedom. At his first chance, he did and there he has stayed, up in the Pacific Northwest, with a family he cherishes and a career he absolutely loves. What is it about his work that is so terrific? “It’s always full of curiosities and exploration – it’s always new, challenging and exciting!” Chris’ work with the Oregon State University Coring Facility takes him to sea often where he is constantly working with top researchers. Together they work on the frontline, pushing the boundaries of science research and technical capabilities. Box coring, multi-coring, piston coring – you name it! Chris is the man.

Chris has always loved the outdoors – camping, hiking, exploring. During his military high school years in West Virginia his chemistry and physics teachers were great supporters and helped foster Chris’ passion for nature and learning. He went on to Dickinson College, where his grandmother graduated from, to study physics but was quickly turned off by the math. Today Chris is quick to say, “I can now, in retrospect, greatly appreciate the math that was presented to me and how it fits into the research that I now use. But at the time, in college, with that calculus professor and at that time in my life, it was SO dry that it was awful.” Chris switched to geology, as he found that he could earn a degree doing the things he loved: exploring and working in the field! One of his geology professors took Chris’ class on a driving field trip all the way from Pennsylvania to Alaska and they studied the geology all along the way – such an amazing opportunity!

Chris’ professors were pleased with his work and encouraged him to go on to graduate school, so with geology degree in hand, Chris headed west to Oregon State University. The research community at OSU had embraced the burgeoning “Theory of Plate Tectonics”, which Chris had yet to study so he struggled at a bit the start. He took one year off and tried out a degree program in Education but returned to marine sciences, refocused and energized to get back in the game. He studied ocean sediment cores and worked on coring during graduate school and after he completed the degree was recruited to work with sediment traps for the MANOP Project on ocean vessels. The project ended but the sediment trap work continued so Chris stayed with it for the next 15 years.

Funding dried up (funny how it tends to do that!) and in the 1990s, attention in the scientific community started to turn towards climate change. The community needed increased resolution of the variability of our recent climate past in order to better understand the human impact. Ocean coring for paleoclimatology started growing and Chris was there with Pete Kalk who was thinking about retiring. Pete and Chris worked together for years before Pete retired. Chris counts himself lucky to have had the time with Pete! He has been there, now for 15 years and is starting to think about retirement - time to start thinking about passing the torch. I asked him about programs that exist that may help pipeline students into technical positions and he mentioned the MATE program. But for now, Chris has Paul Walczak, pictured right, on his team, and Paul may be just the person to take the torch!

One last note - which is a delightful one to me because two people said this to me today (both Chris Moser and Nick McCave), when I asked them if they have any advice for high school students thinking about what they want to do with their lives. Each of them said, independently, that you should follow your dreams and do what you want to do. Don't let people push you into something you're not passionate about.

Pretty great advice from two tremendously successful people!

Some WHOI History

2010-07-29T05:40:00.000-07:00

July 29, 2010

Location: New England Seamounts

Lat/Lon: 38 ° 25.9820 N / 068 ° 53.3188 W

Air Temp: 27*C / 80.6*F

Wind Speed: 25.05 kts

Humidity: 65.6%

Water Temp: 29.43*C / 85*F

Salinity: 35.2 psu

Depth: 3700 m / 3.7 km / 2.3 miles

Greetings from the New England Seamounts! Yes, we're still here...this morning we've got a multicore and a gravity core is potentially next up.

Today our top-o-the blog photo is from the WHOI Archives. It was taken in 1973 here at the New England Seamounts. WHOI's Jim Broda is in the foreground working on the core and Roger Flood, who was in the WHOI/MIT Joint Program at the time, is looking on.

I'm including the map of the New England Seamounts again so you can see exactly where Broda and Flood were back in 1973. In the photo Broda is checking out the core they took at

Mytilus Seamount. The map is "clickable" - and you can zoom in - see if you can find their location on the map!

The black and white is a terrific piece of WHOI history. It shows Broda's early days of coring. Here's how he explained the photo to me: "...taken at the mytilus seamount with a device that we cobbled together from old core pipe that we welded together on the fantail (we had "lost" all the other coring equipment) for added weight, we filled the barrels with all kinds of scrap rusty steel...shackles, chains, nuts and bolts. It was my first cruise and Charlie Hollister, for whom we named the long core, was the chief scientist."

I talked with Broda today about how he ended up immersed in WHOI's CDH Long Core technology and he explained that it was an evolution. His story wound along his journey to

today: astronomer dream deferred, college for aerospace engineering and then a switch to economic geology and finally a trip to the ocean for the first time. Wanderlust then - sustained by skiing and cooking - followed by a return to the sea, to WHOI. He was hired by Betty Bunce as a research assistant and worked his way up through the ranks at WHOI.

Again and again I hear similar stories from people at WHOI, "I was walking by an open door and someone offered me a job", "I was working on a project and this (world famous) researcher needed some help on a new (completely revolutionary) technology so I helped out", "I was free one summer and ended up on a research cruise where I learned to deploy underwater gliders".

You can read about Broda's remarkable accomplishments here and here too. What I really wanted to know from him was what critical incidents along his path directed him, motivated him, shaped his journey. But for Broda, it all blends; everything is relevant, all the projects served their purpose to challenge, prepare, develop, hone his talent, ideas, skills. From work with Mike Purdy and NOBEL to the spectrum of piston-cores gone-by, from the 100 research cruises to Charlie Hollister, in fresh water and in salt water. For nearly 40 years Broda has worked on land and sea pushing the frontiers of exploration and science.

Meet Amy

Amy Simoneau, of the Shipboard Science Services Group (SSSG), has lived all over the east coast and traveled all around the world! Amy's role is the critical link between the science

team and the R/V Knorr's crew. She's involved in collecting data with and maintaining the ship's scientific equipment as well as acting as the ship's system administrator. So you may think that Amy's academic background is in technology - but it's not. She's naturally tech savvy. Her academic background, work experience and natural talent combine to make Amy an enormously important asset for research aboard the R/V Knorr.

Towards the end of Amy's 12 years in her Catholic school system in New Hampshire, she was selected to participate in the Advanced Studies Program at St. Paul's School in Concord, NH. There Amy joined with her academic equals and spent a summer immersed in college-level courses and field work; her focus was on Ecology. The program was an excellent opportunity for Amy whose passions for social and environmental justice causes had already taken root.

After high school Amy attended UNH for Environmental Studies with a focus in Marine Science and did a Study Abroad Semester at Sea, SEA, then she headed south to Georgia after graduation. She landed a job working as a research technician for a coastal sedimentologist Clark Alexander at Skidaway in Savannah and then made her way back to the Northeast to where she worked for Boston College's Gail Kineke, whom she had met on a research cruise with Alexander. She also worked for the SEA program.

One of very large stumbling blocks for people seeking careers in STEM is simply not knowing what kinds of jobs are out there. By the time Amy got to Massachusetts, she had learned a great deal about research and cruises and, very importantly, about the spectrum of jobs that this kind of research created. Her first year working as an SSSG she spent her longest ship time to date: 5.5 months! - during which the ship traveled to Mauritius, one of her favorite places. (yes - do look for THAT one on a map!) Other favorites include Iceland, Chile and the Seychelles.

She has been an SSSG now for 10 years and loves it. She travels all over the world and she loves the challenges and the variety associated with working on a ship that hosts a broad scope of oceanographic science teams.

Life is good for Jim Broda and Amy Simoneau!

Jeff, Isabelle and Ancient Volcanoes

2010-07-28T07:06:00.000-07:00

July 28, 2010

Location: New England Seamounts

Lat/Lon: 39*33.47'N / 068*16.42'W

Air Temp: 25.8*C /78.44*F

Wind Speed: 12.66 kts

Humidity: 60.2%

Water Temp: 26.29*C /79.30*F

Salinity: 34.53 psu

Depth: 2888 m / 2.9 km / 1.7 miles

(I told Jeff and Isabelle to gaze out

pensively at the sea and

they did their best!)

Hi! Welcome to the New England Seamounts!

WHOI's fabulous Dina Pandya, tech Guru, has added a tool to our blog - "Expedition Updates By Location". It's at the top along the same line as "Home". Check it out!

Here's a youtube video taken by Alvin with footage of the organisms living on these seamounts.

The New England Seamounts were formed from plumes of magma upwelling from the mantle and through the crust called "hot spots". The Hawaiian islands have been formed

through the same process. The New England Seamounts are

the longest seamount chain in the North Atlantic and, though theyare no longer volcanically active, they are still a prominent feature on the Sohm Abyssal Plain extending 1,100 km from Georges Banks to Bermuda Rise.

The hot spot responsible for these dramatic ocean floor features didn't only affect the seafloor. Just as the Atlantic was opening, part of the breakup of Pangea, this hot spot was first under the northwest area of Hudson Bay, and tracked under our North American continent, feeding the magmatic intrusions of our White Mountains. Still the hot spot was active and as the continents spread further apart, the hot spot tracked under the seafloor, forming these New England Seamounts. Amazingly, the mid-Atlantic Ridge also tracked over the hot spot and still it persevered. Evidence of this same hot spot is on the African Plate - the "Great Meteor Tablemount" - a guyot!

See on-board Chemistry teacher Bob White's blog for an explanation for WHY our Chief Scientist is so interested in these seamounts!

The photo at the top of this blog shows Jeff Hood, tannest man on the ship, and Isabelle Gil, who wins the award for being able to speak the most languages. Here's a bit about each of them.

Jeff Hood

Jeff Hood, Cape Cod born, is currently a Lead Mechanic at WHOI where he repairs and fabricates oceanographic equipment when he’s on land. At sea, Jeff is a coring technician who specializes in the amazing CDH Long Core. Jeff, following in his father’s footsteps, joined the Air Force after high school where his mechanics savvy was quickly identified and developed. He was stationed at Castle Air Force Base in California and in addition to learning mechanical skills that would lead him to his current career, he had the chance to travel extensively throughout much of the world. It was a terrific opportunity!

Jeff returned to the Cape after his time in the Air Force and while putting his mechanical skills to use began to add welding to his repertoire. After some time working at various shops on the Cape and a tour during Desert Storm, Jeff was offered a position working at WHOI. Now, happily settled on the Cape with his wife Annette and his 8-year old son George, Jeff loves his work because he gets to work on cutting edge technology with some of the best engineers in the world. When I asked him what he likes the most about being at sea I wasn’t surprised when he said that he loves the challenge of having to “make do” with what you have on the ship. “You can’t run out to the ‘parts’ store when you’re at sea.”

Isabelle Gil

French researcher Isabelle Gil started out her academic life at Pantheon Sorbonne University interested in coastal geomorphology but exposure to the world of research drove her to change direction. For Isabelle, the new path was in the growing field of paleoclimatology. Today Isabelle has a post-doc working jointly for LNEG, the Portuguese National Laboratory for Energy and Geology and WHOI where she studies diatoms present in cored marine sediments from the North Atlantic to gather data about paleoclimates.

Isabelle chose to do her research practical abroad, studying coastal geomorphology in Brazil. Once in Brazil she learned that there was no funding available to analyze beach rocks but the group at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro offered her the opportunity to learn about coring, sampling and studying diatoms from the coastal lagoon (click here for non-satellite map). At that point her education had been preparing her for a vocational degree but she was introduced to the world of academic research and she was hooked! She returned to Europe to continue working on these cores, completed her DEA at University of Bordeaux I and moved on to study and write about diatoms in ocean cores for her Ph.D at Bremen University in Germany. One of the cores she worked on for this degree was from the Laurentian Fan (sound familiar?) sent to her by our Chief Scientist, Lloyd Keigwin! Now Isabelle will return to Lisbon and start digging in to all the samples she has gathered from the Western Atlantic. This paleodata will be used in climate modeling. Her favorite part about being at sea? “It’s great to see how the work is done – it really balances the time you spend behind the microscope and writing up papers. It’s the fun part!”

Sarah, Marti and the Gulf Stream

2010-07-27T11:21:00.001-07:00

July 27, 2010

Location: Sable Island to New England Seamounts

Lat/Lon: 39 ° 23.1690 N/067 ° 00.7036 W

Air Temp: 24.3*C /75.74*F

Wind Speed: 8.89 kts

Humidity: 57.7%

Water Temp: 26.81*C /80.25*F

Salinity: 34.51 psu

Depth: 4138 m /4.1 km /2.57 miles

WOW! Check out that water temp! Anyone care to guess what current we're running?

Today we are seamount hopping, trying to locate the best spot for mud. So today seems like a great day to introduce you to some of our amazing science team members! Meet Marti Jeglinski and Sarah Schulenberg

Sarah Schulenberg, Graduate Student UNH

I stumbled into paleoceanography/paleoclimatology, to be honest. I earned a Bachelor’s degree in chemistry at a small state university and began to realize towards the end of that track that I wasn’t entirely sure what I wanted to do. I had begun to hear about graduate school from professors and teaching assistants. It sounded like a good deal: they pay your tuition and fees and pay you a stipend to teach or do research, all while earning a degree that may earn you more money in the end. At least that is how it translated into my mind.

Around the same time, I had learned about a melding of disciplines known as geochemistry. I began the search for graduate programs in geochemistry, not knowing that was about as ambiguous as saying a degree in chemistry.

I ended up being accepted into the graduate program in the Jackson School of Geosciences at The University of Texas at Austin. I was put under the advisement of a faculty member interested in hydrogeology and geomicrobiology.

I was not enjoying my course work or the possible avenues of research that were being talked about for me. I decided to visit some of the other faculty in the department and find out about their research. I found a faculty member who was interested in paleoceanography and paleoclimatology. When I told her I was not a geologist, she caught me with a line that I remember still, “Oh, I never consider myself a geologist. If I had to classify myself, I would say oceanographer or chemist.” I switched advisors and began to enjoy my courses so much so that I switched from pursuing a Master’s degree to the PhD track.

I am not always convinced that I will be able “to hack it” but I am doing my best to enjoy the education I am receiving. I am also continually meeting people that help me to understand what I am now or may be capable of. I have since followed my advisor from Texas to the University of New Hampshire because I wanted to continue to work under her as I pursue my PhD.

In the fall of 2009, my advisor received an email from her former PhD advisor that extra hands were needed on a marine sediment cruise in the beginning of 2010. I immediately agreed not only due to my lack of field experience but also for the chance to experience the open ocean. A free trip to Bridgetown, Barbados was a nice perk as well.

While out at sea, I threw myself in wholeheartedly, jumping in where- and whenever needed. I wanted to learn and absorb as much as possible. Apparently, I made an impression because they asked me to come back out with them on this leg. It is certainly not all roses and sunshine everyday while out at sea but the work is satisfying to me. So few people see this side of science, the dirty side. A lot of grunt work goes into publishing those pretty, glossy scientific papers and I feel beyond grateful that I have been given the opportunity to experience it.

**************************************************

Marti Jeglinski, Research Assistant WHOI

Have you been to the Azores or Barbados or the Santa Barbara Basin? How about Bahamas, Panama Canal, Bermuda Rise or the Florida Straits? Perhaps Senegal or Iceland - all by ship? It’s time you meet Marti Jeglinski.

Cape Cod born Marti Jeglinski graduated from Salem State with a degree in Earth Sciences in 1977 and was hired by the United States Geological Survey back on the Cape. By 1979 Marti was hired by Charlie Hollister (yes the same one after whom the long core was named!) as a research assistant at WHOI. It was the start of career in scienc

e technology and research at WHOI spanning more than 30 years and still going. In the course of her career Marti married a Merchant Marine Chief Engineer Jim Jeglinski and had two sons who are now in their 20s. Her husband was at sea 6 months a year which made for quite a juggling act.

Marti’s interest in the sciences was piqued by a geology professor at Salem State. It was enough to pull her from her Education degree program and she hasn’t looked back since. At USGS and WHOI Marti worked with researchers in paleoclimate, physical oceanography and hard rock marine geology. She has run the mass spectrometer lab, maintained a benthic foraminifera culture lab, constructed and tested floats for physical oceanography studies, worked on mapping of the Kane Fracture Zone, an analyzed cores for forams.

Last year Marti was the recipient of the Linda Morse Porteous Award. I thought that it would be great for you to hear some of the remarks that were written by Marti’s colleagues and shared at the awards night.

“Even after long, hard hours of deck work you can count on her irrepressible spirit to

pick you up and get you through whatever challenge confronts you... she works tirelessly,

looking after everyone, cares passionately about getting all the goals of the cruise done

and done well, and does so with grace and a big smile on her face. As I have always said,

‘I want her in my lifeboat.’ ”

“From laboratory work, tedious at times, to production work, she has made modifications

to equipment, designed tools and fixtures for tasks that have been performed inefficiently

for years. She would tell me, ‘Just because it has always been done like this doesn’t mean

it’s the best way to do it.’ For instance, when she was working in the Float Group there

was a procedure of stretching a rubber bladder and wrestling it onto a pressure case. This

procedure requires tremendous physical strength... after she successfully installed a few

bladders she designed a tool to stretch these. A task that was once dreaded became so

simple that anyone could do it and it doubled the daily output.”

“She always finds the positive side of a difficult situation or person. She always finds

time for those in need, expecting nothing in return. She makes us all comfortable and at

ease in a difficult work environment.”

“She effectively conveys seemingly complicated and complex scientific notions, even to

those without a scientific background. Once while box coring in rough seas, the marine

technicians from Scripps did not understand the importance of recovering deep-sea

sediment samples in stratigraphic order. She used an analogy of ripping pages out of a

book, mixing them up, and then trying to interpret them. They immediately understood

and for the remainder of the trip the technicians were cautious when recovering material.”

When describing experiences with being out to sea with the awardee, one nominator said,

“She’s there for you when you cut yourself, she has remedies for just about whatever is

ailing you, and she will laugh along with you during the most trying times.”

Pretty amazing women, wouldn't you agree?

From Space to the Seafloor

2010-07-25T19:48:00.000-07:00

July 26, 2010

Location: Sable Island to New England Seamounts

Lat/Lon: 41°59.68'N /063°11.83'W

Air Temp: 19.9*C /67.82*F

Wind Speed: 27.45 kts

Humidity: 68%

Water Temp: 21.35*C /70.43*F

Salinity: 32.53 psu

Depth: 2510 m /2.5 km / 1.55 miles

Chief Mate Matt McInteyer on the bridge

Our 8 hour transit ended with a knock on the door at 12:30 am waking us for a gravity core. As it turns out we had a bit of a wait as there was yet some surveying to complete at Sable Island. The gravity was followed by a 2:30 am multicore and a 4 am long core.

One of the most amazing technologies I have come across on this research cruise is "DP" - Dynamic Positioning. Anchors just don't cut it out in the deep ocean. It is this technological marvel that allows the science team to safely and effectively core the ocean floor.

The photo to the right is from earlier in the cruise but I'm using it here to emphasize the importance of the DP technology. The gravity core pictured in this photograph strikes me as so very thin and fragile (of course when you're hefting that core full of mud and your team is working to move it, it doesn't feel quite so fragile!) It is vital that the ship maintain it's position so the coring equipment is not damaged.

Since the launch of Sputnik in 1957 humans have been launching satellites into space for all kinds of reasons. Today there are hundreds of satellites orbiting earth that are used as tools for things such as weather forecasting, monitoring the earth systems, communication and entertainment and navigation. The R/V Knorr uses satellites not only for navigation but also for maintaining position at coring sites.

The picture to the right shows the the controls for the R/V Knorr's three thrusters involved in the DP system: the top for the bow (900 horsepower) and the two sides for the port and starboard thrusters aft (each 1500 horsepower). The central control is the autopilot.

Waves and currents cause the ship to move in distinct ways: heave and yaw, roll and surge, pitch and sway. Sensors monitor and measure the amount of each type of motion and the DP system calculates the forces necessary to maintain a single position. Once the ship arrives at the desired location (for our cruise it's a coring location) the on-ship computer communicates with navigation satellites and identifies this location. After this has been set the on-ship computer constantly checks its location with the satellite and, factoring for the movements of the ship with the wind, waves and currents, adjusts the thrusters as needed to maintain the desired position.

Just amazing!

Chief Mate Matt McInteyer (pictured at the top of today's blog), former ship captain for the American President Lines (APL) which is a top container transport and shipping company in the world, spent time explaining the R/V Knorr's technology and the ins and outs of their daily routines. He explained that there are such differences between the R/V Knorr and the 900+ft barges he sailed for the last 20 years. One of the big differences is the motion of the ship. He said that on those barges there needs to be a LOT of wind and wave action for you to feel any motion on those big ships. Here on the R/V Knorr the constant motion is exhausting. This, of course, made us feel better because we're all ready to lay down and sleep whenever we get the chance!

After several days of listening to the fog horn I was anxious to learn about how they could navigate the boat through the thick fog. The picture to the left shows our ship (brightest spot) and a barge just to the left (the smaller bright spot) on a radar screen. See the picture below for a visual of the same barge - red on the horizon.

This barge may look quite far off to you but to us it looked way too close for comfort after we've spent two weeks at sea with only one other ship sighting!

We're off to the New England Seamounts

Ah! Thanking my lucky stars - it's Sunday!

2010-07-25T08:55:00.000-07:00

July 25, 2010 Sunday Funnies

Location: Somewhere off Canada, eh?

Lat/Lon: about halfway north and mostly west

Air Temp: uh...i thought this cruise was supposed to be warm!

Wind Speed: less than a gale, more than a breeze

Humidity: not that bad, eh?

Water Temp: you wouldn't last long

Salinity: I'll check that out the next time water

splashes over the deck

Depth: 147,677 inches / 3,624,000 mm / 0.75 leagues

I fear a bit of seasickness has struck my innards so I was enormously grateful, as I balanced myself in the shower this morning against the heavily pitching boat, that today's blog is the Sunday Funnies!

(above) It seems that at least one member of the science team has

lost his head in the excitement of the trip!

(above) Secret Lives of Scientists: Arts 'n Crafts Hour

Clear indicators that we are on a

"watch" schedule

(two pictures below)

Working hard? Or hardly working? (above and

below)

We're off to Sable Island - tune in for our next episode of Mud Hunters!

The Laurentian Fan

2010-07-24T06:02:00.000-07:00

July 24, 2010

Location: Laurentian Fan

Lat/Lon: 43*27.87'N / 054*45.34'W

Air Temp: 18*C / 64.4*F

Wind Speed: 18.12 kts

Humidity: 92%

Water Temp: 16.86*C /62.4*F

Salinity: 32 psu

Depth: 3983 m / 4 km / 2.5 miles

Today's afternoon-evening schedule is busy so it's great that we had a full night's rest. This morning we woke up to a clear blue sky with only wisps of cirrus clouds. The water was beautiful green-blue and the air felt crisp "like fall" I kept hearing people say - and I agreed.

Now, in the afternoon, we have more haze on the horizon and some altostratus cloud cover and we have arrived at the "Laurentian Fan" where we will sample on into the night after some initial surveying. Our schedule is detailed on the white board in the picture at the top of this blog entry. There will be a full suite of coring: Gravity, CDH Long Core and Multicore.

The ocean floor in this area is very interesting. We are no longer out in the middle of the ocean. We are close to the land, in the region of the "continental margin". Continental margins have distinct regions labeled here; they are the boundary regions between thick continental crust and thin oceanic crust. Gravity rules so continental margins are covered in sediments that have been eroded from the land and carried downslope to the ocean. Rivers are often the mechanisms that bring sediments from the land to the continental margin but wind and glaciers can also contribute (as well as their icebergs).

I really like this image. It shows the continental margin with a particularly notable east coast submarine canyon carved out by the flow of the Hudson River after the stream enters the ocean. If your geography is pretty good you may be able to pick out Cape Cod & the Islands, Long Island and Chesapeake Bay!

While much of the energy from the river dissipates as it hits the ocean (like when you are sliding down a water slide and hit the pool - you slow WAY down!), there is some energy remaining that carves a path along the continental shelf and down the continental slope and rise called a "submarine canyon". Here is a famous submarine canyon, in California. Note the extension of the river into the ocean.

Submarine canyons are unique biodiversity "hotspots". My dad, a former lobsterman, explained to me that you find the real big lobsters in these canyons. All over the world these canyons habitats teeming with life!

As with most canyons, water flowing through them will erode sediment from the sides and bottom and deposit it at the outlet of the canyon creating a "fan". Check out this image and find the "abyssal fan". You will see the same kind of feature in arid high relief environments subject to flash floods, pictured here. The submarine fan we will be coring is called the "Laurentian Fan". It was fed by the Laurentian Channel, carved by a tongue of the Laurentide Ice Sheet during our last Ice Age.

I can't believe I found images of the area! Click here for a closer look at the map to the right - find site "15". We are currently sampling on the east side of the main channel, just to the right and down the slope of the "15" on the map.

Here is an unlabeled map of the same area. When you open it you are looking at the continental margin of southeastern Canada. The St. Lawrence River enters the image from the far left. Note the Laurentian Channel. Go to your browser menu tray and see if you can find "zoom" to zoom into the region of the map where the Laurentian Channel is continued down the continental slope to the fan on the sea floor. This is where we are sampling!

The sediments that compose the bulk of the Laurentian Fan are glacial. Check out this site for a terrific sequence of images detailing the of events as the Laurentide Ice Sheet was retreating. Note that the website starts with the oldest time at the top and as you scroll down it becomes increasingly more recent.

An earthquake can cause the sediments deposited in a submarine canyon to shake loose and tumble down the continental slope (slope failure), churning all the way down. These churned up sediments come to rest on the ocean floor. Researchers like Keigwin are not interested in these deposits, called "turbidites", because they no longer preserve the chronological rock record of the ocean floor. So it's not the actual glacial sediments that are of interest to this science team.

Instead, this science team is interested in the deposits that sit on top of these turbidites made up of the glacial sediments. The Deep Western Boundary Current, known as the "Western Boundary Undercurrent" in the Atlantic Ocean, flows north to south along the western edge of the North Atlantic. It carries and deposits marine sediments (including the very foraminifera plankton we've been gathering from the ocean floor since the Azores) . Note that it flows in the opposite direction as the Gulf Stream. This powerful undercurrent is responsible for a remarkably high deposition rate at the Laurentian Fan. If you recall, the average deposition rate for the North Atlantic deep ocean is ~ 3-4 cm/1000 years. On the continental margin the deposition rates are higher - there are rivers draining the land, depositing sediments all along the continental margin. So the average deposition rate along these continental margins is ~ 10 cm/1000 years.

The deposition for this particular section of the continental margin, the Laurentian Fan, is

get ready for this -

40 cm / 1000 years

No kidding.

Dead serious!

No wonder Keigwin is interested in this location! There's TONS of mud!

Okay - I've totally bombarded you with geology! So the last thing I'm offering you here is an image of ice. Here's an image of North America during our last Ice Age. Note the solid white line marking the furthest extent of the Laurentide Ice Sheet - on the east coast, it extended all the way down to Long Island! That island is a "terminal moraine" - a strip of rocks and sediments left behind as the ice sheet melted ("retreated"). The Laurentide Ice Sheet is thought to have drained south along the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico, east through the Hudson and St. Lawrence Rivers to the Atlantic Ocean and north through the MacKenzie River to the Arctic Ocean. Look carefully at the image. You can see the river called the "Mackenzie" draining north to the Arctic Sea.

The end.

A long day

2010-07-23T12:03:00.001-07:00

July 23, 2010

Location: Heading towards the Laurentian Fan

Lat/Lon: 42*38.42'N / 051*12.18'W

Air Temp: 17.6*C / 63.6*FWind Speed: 20.31 kts

Humidity: 83.7%

Water Temp: 15.29*C /59.54*F

Salinity: 31.84 psu

Depth: 2033 m / ~2 km / 1.24 miles

From left to right: Tom, Chris, Sarah, Marti and Frank

All dressed in buoyant and highly visible clothing, the second-watch crew braved the rain, the wind and the enormous waves to complete gravity cores today. A multi core was done once the weather calmed down a bit and a long core was also completed.

Ah - do forgive the brevity of this blog entry. It has been a long day of coring, balancing and waiting.

The day started out cold, foggy and rainy. I have to share that my grasp of temperatures in degrees celsius has vastly improved given that the blog reports temperature in both

units and our European researchers need it in celsius in conversation. The water temperature listed above is literally 10*F warmer than it was for the entire day. It was so foggy you could see very little in any direction. Several times throughout the day the sky cleared and the sun warmed our faces. But for the most part it has been cold, raw and difficult to stand, for the waves.

We saw more pilot whales! Up to four dorsal fins making their appearance at once. They stayed clear of the R/V Knorr but the hung around riding the huge

swells for quite some time. They were just amazing to watch!

Sarah and Tom are pictured to the right in the "man-basket" feeding bullets down the long core to push the core liner out way at the other end of the boat. I wish you could understand what a feat their nerves allowed them to accomplish. They were hanging way out there in all this weather and in all those waves. After waves pass under the

boat, Sarah and Tom had their feet pretty much in the water!

The segment of the gravity core driven the deepest into the sediment is referred to as "Section 1". When Section 1 was opened today - peeeeeyouuuu! the stink! All kinds of jokes were made - but the bottom line is that all that stink came from the breakdown of lots of life. This is a distinctly different biological environment than the ones we have been in to date.

The picture below is terrific! It shows segments of the long core with red tops that are stretched to their limit with gases in the sediment! They're nearly bursting!

Expert Nick McCave told us not to hang out around these cores -they could burst out of the casing! As it is the chief scientist had to go around to each of them stabbing holes to relieve some of the pressure. If you look closely at the picture to the right you'll see mud oozing out of the middle red-topped core - messy, smelly work!

Right now the boat is heave-ho-ing. More than one person has squeaked a "good night"

before crawling to bed. Everything has been tied down, the doors are dogged and we have an 18 hour steam ahead of us. That means a good, long rest for this tired crew!

Western Atlantic - Hello Labrador Current!

2010-07-22T10:38:00.000-07:00

July 22, 2010

Location: West Newfoundland Basin

Lat/Lon: 42* 57.0595 / 048* 10.9752'

Air Temp: 18.6*C / 65.5*F

Wind Speed: 12.58 kts

Humidity: 94.1%

Water Temp: 14.86*C / 58.75*F

Depth: 3285m /~ 3.3 km / 2.05 miles

It is CHILLY!!! Visibility is low, obscured by low clouds. The water temperature dropped 6 degrees in the course of one hour! Long sleeve shirts and raincoats are in order. Hello Labrador

Current!

With the fog horn sounding, we continue steaming north.

During the 5:30 am multicore drop the science team spotted a pod of beautiful pilot w hales! We've also been seeing Leach's Storm Petrels flying and landing on the boat here and there. (As an aside, the site linked for the Leach's Storm Petrel seems to be a really terrific bird ID website.)

Here is another map that gives you a better idea of where we are located. Open the map and find, "Northwest Atlantic Mid-Ocean Canyon". We are located approximately just south and west of the "O" in "Ocean", in the Newfoundland Basin. When we begin our return home along the east coast of North America it is the Labrador Current that we will be riding home.

Right now we're in a cycle of steam northwest-multicore-steam again-multicore. There are some gravity cores in there too. We've stopped the formal 2-watches and we're now going to have a posted schedule and be sure that all coring events will be adequately staffed.

Yesterday the blog covered the logistics of sampling and processing the muds from the cores. In addition to that process, the cores are run through the "Geotek Logger". I love their logo: "If it's worth coring, it's worth logging..."

The science team uses the Geotek Logger to gather two parameters: "Gamma attenuation"

and "Magnetic susceptibility". In the picture to the right I am standing next to the Geotek Logger with Ricardo, Sarah and Kathryn. You can see two white PVC sections (core segments) full of mud on the track. We're running Long Core segments here. The top of each core has a red cap and the bottom has a black cap. Both are sealed with electric tape to prevent the mud from dripping out.

Look carefully at the image. Between the two core lengths there is a yellow "radioactive" sticker on a lead container in which the chunk of radioactive Cesium-137 is housed. Gamma rays are sent through each mud core sample and detected on the other side. Because gamma radiation is extremely damaging to human tissue the direction of the beam is to the outside of the boat where there is no walkway so no one will be hit with the radiation; it is an important precaution.

The Geotek Logger is a very useful tool to have on the ship. It is a unique data gathering tool because it is "non-destructive". Once the cores are brought to the WHOI labs they will be cut in half (lengthwise) into the "working" and "archive" halves. At that point the researcher and his/her team dig into the "working" side. The archived half is sent to the archive repository and will serve as the record of findings. After months / years of investigating the core, the "working" side has been really picked over so the core has, essentially, been destroyed.

The gamma attenuation is used to measure the density of the mud in the cores. Gamma emitted from the source (Cesium-137) passes through the mud in the core and a portion of the gamma ray are scattered. The gamma rays that were not scattered pass through the core sample to the detector on the other side. Higher density materials in the core segment increase the scattering of the gamma rays, thereby decreasing the amount of gamma reaching the detector. Gamma ray scattering is lower when the density of the core materials is lower allowing more gamma rays to reach the detector.

Take another look at the picture at the top of this blog entry. Gamma attenuation is in yellow on the left. Look carefully - do you see "spikes"on the graph? They were created by the plastic covers and air between two core segments.

The other parameter measured with the Geotek Logger is "Magnetic susceptibility". This is represented by the green line on the picture at the top of this blog entry. As the core segment is pushed down the track, it first encounters the gamma rays and then a magnetic field. In the Geotek logger picture above, notice the white rectangle with a round opening for the core to pass through. It has a red support strap holding it in place. A magnetic field is generated in the ring. If the material within the core is non-magnetic the sensor will detect a weakening of the magnetic field. If the core material passing through is magnetic - even only somewhat - a strengthening of the magnetic field is detected.

So why are some of these muds magnetic and others not?

This question is remarkably complex. The basic sources of magnetic materials are from volcanic materials and land materials. Volcanoes emit varying degrees of iron-rich matter which can flow or be blown over the ocean, settling to the sea floor and adding to the sequence of sediment there.

Land materials are introduced via rivers, wind and icebergs. The icebergs are particularly relevant for this research cruise as they are particularly climate dependent. When there is a great deal of ice on the planet, icebergs, laden with mineral fragments from the land, drift with the ocean currents, melting and dropping the small rocks

into deep ocean water. Climate scientists refer to these as "IRD"s: Ice Rafted Debris, . They are distinctly different than other deep ocean sediments because they tend to be larger and angular. Once free from the ice the rock fragments settle to the sea floor atop other marine sediments and are buried by more marine sediments.

The marine sediments that the chief scientist is looking for are the remains of tiny organisms that once lived in the upper regions of the ocean. So while he's not particularly interested in the sediments from the land, they do contribute to our understanding of Earth's climate past.

The picture to the right shows a pile of cores that were generated from only one Long Core sampling event! They're strapped down to prevent them from getting too carried away with the motion of the ocean! Right now with our coring and transit schedule, much of the logging on the Geotek will be done while we are underway so we need to be extra careful that the cores are tied down!

Lab Rats

2010-07-21T01:09:00.001-07:00

July 21, 2010

Location: Southern Tail of Grand Banks

Lat/Lon: 40* 18.006'N / 48*27.9988'W

Air Temp: 23.9*C / 75.02*F

Wind Speed: 15.85 kts

Humidity: 87.1%

Water Temp: 24.71*C / 76.50*F

Salinity: 34.8 psu

Depth: 3835 m

Day 2 of working with 2-shifts of watches. It looks like the CDH Long Core is going to go down today! Hurrah! The gravity core went in on our shift just after 3 am and when it was time to bring it back in the boat we were delighted to see not only large chunks of floating seaweed but a big school of fish - each fish measuring about a foot long. There was lots of activity. Some fish were skittering above the crowd, just at the surface. We figured that we weren't the only ones watching the school...

Today I thought we could move inside the R/V Knorr to start covering all that goes on in the labs.

When each of the cores are brought to the surface and then into the boat, samples of the mud are gathered from each cut segment of the cores. In the picture below you see some of the sampling bags. Preparation for sampling is crucial because it can hold up the entire process of

cutting, capping, sealing and moving the cores if the sampling tools are not ready. Each sample bag is named for the cruise, the leg, the core type, the sampling event and the location of the sample relative to the entire core:

- KNR 197-10 (R/V Knorr Cruise 197, Leg 10)

- CDH 2 (CDH Long Core, Sampling Event #2)

- BOT 2 (bottom of the second section of the core)

I know I mentioned this in an earlier blog entry but it's relevant here too - in the gravity core you'll have about 4 sections of core and in the long core you could end up with up to 26 sections of core. Each segment is about 1.5 meters (~5 feet).

At the top of this blog you see Isabelle Gil, French researcher working in Portugal. Her research is focused on different fossils organisms than those the chief scientist is interested in - however, those she studies, called "diatoms", are found in the very same cores in which Keigwin finds his foraminifera. Gil is pictured at the top sampling the bottom of a segment of the long core. In her hand you can see the labeled sample bag and a spatula. She has to be careful how much mud she scrapes from the core because, if you recall, several centimeters represents hundreds of years - even

over one thousand years depending on the particular site. Gil samples for chief scientist Keigwin and for her own research.

In deep marine environments the size of particles that land on the ocean floor tends to be very small. For this reason, a very fine sieve (63 microns), pictured right, is used to separate forams and diatoms from the fine muds. The fine muds from the samples "washed" on the ship are captured in a bucket and tossed overboard. When the samples are washed at Woods Hole the muds are kept and studied to provide information about settling rates. This gives researchers a better idea of how fast / slow sediments are settling on the bottom. This kind of data is vital because it provides a framework for how much time is associated with a set thickness of sediment. The average rate of seafloor deposition in the North Atlantic is 3-4 cm/year. The North Pacific is significantly less. Check out this image of the thicknesses of ocean floor

sediments. I LOVE maps! And this one is particularly cool! Look carefully at it - find the scale.

Why do you think certain areas have significantly more sediment than others?

The bags pictured left give you an idea of what the mud samples look like before they are washed.

After "washing" the muds, all that is left is the forams and some diatoms, pictured right in filter paper.

They are then dried in the lab oven and poured into carefully labeled

vials. Paola Moffa Sanchez, PhD researcher, is pictured to the right "picking" forams. Marti, Kathryn, Sarah and Isabelle all work with Paola to pick the forams.

Notice that she has a gridded black tray. She has poured the dried sediments from one vial onto the black tray so she can study them. The grids facilitate the process of identifying and counting the forams. Quantity and identity of the foraminifera can tell researchers a great deal about the history of the ocean and climate!

More to follow on R/V Knorr labwork!

First morning on Second Watch

2010-07-19T08:36:00.001-07:00

July 20, 2010

Location: Tail of Grand Banks

Lat/Lon: 40 ° 25.5815 N / 047 ° 15.6313 W

Air Temp: 24.5*C /76.10*F

Wind Speed: 14.48 kts

Humidity: 85.6%

Water Temp: 42.12*C / 75.416*F

Depth: 3683 m / 3.7 km /2.3 miles

Today we rose at 12:15 am.

Waking in your stateroom you have no sense of day or night, of the temperature outside - no sense for whether the sun is brightly shining or if it's covered by clouds - no sense of anything other than the cool constancy of your room. Even the sound doesn't really change - loud, pulsing and also constant.

The decision was made to switch us to 12 hours shifts midday yesterday so the 1pm to 1am first-watch started up right away and we, the second-watch, headed to bed last night earlier than normal but too late, we knew, to be genuinely functional at the start of our shift. Or the middle of our shift. Perhaps not even towards the end of our shift!

A hot shower revives you some (if you rise early enough to hop in) and you don your muddy clothes from yesterday (from several hours ago), shuffle down the hall and climb up one flight of stairs. You survey the lab. People are about but solitary in their seats; first-watch people have been sitting for several hours willing themselves to stay awake and second-watch people can merely blink in the bright lights of the lab. The boat rocks forcefully. You look to the portholes for some sense of the horizon but only inky blackness is visible, for it is the

middle of the night and we are steaming ahead.

Our first site is reached within an hour of our shift start and suddenly nearly everyone on shift is dressed in hard hats and bright orange flotation vests.

Tasks are welcome.

Lines are in hands, someone has climbed up into the crane. Sarah thought she saw a bird but then perhaps it was the white cap of a wave looming high enough to be mistaken for something in the sky. Time to launch the multicore. The log has "Tip of Grand Banks" written on the LOCATION line, so that's where we must be. I think of fishermen hundreds of years ago rowing, rowing away from larger boats, fishing the Banks, returning with their boats full of cod, some not returning at all. If the R/V Knorr is pitching in these waves, what must it have been for them?

Back in the lab we turn our computers on, we all check our emails and Facebook pages and laugh at ourselves realizing that we only logged out of them four hours earlier. I begin searching for the time of sunrise on the Internet, as it is the sunrise that everyone reminds you of when they see you're on second watch: "Oh - that's hard! But you get to see the sunrise!" It's surprisingly difficult to find as my primary point of reference is the Mid Atlantic Ridge.

Ah - Greenland! No data. Ah! Brazil! Ah - forget it. We'll see it when it rises.

Several quiet hours pass and it is time for the multicore to surface. We step out onto the deck into a sunrise obscured by haze and clouds. A bird is on the deck, hobbling away from us as we try to help it (help it to do what? we weren't sure). One foot was webbed, the other...I think it was gone. The multicore is brought up from the sea, the second-watch team pulls it apart and we set up for archiving and sampling the small cores.

By the time we are working with the mud, the sun is visible, a bright luminous

sphere, burning above the strip of haze along the horizon.

The day has begun.

Flying Fish and 12 Hours Shifts

2010-07-13T03:52:00.000-07:00

July 17, 2010

Location: Mid-Atlantic

Lat/Lon: 40*10.6007'N / 46*35.4171'W

Air Temp: 24.80*C / 76.64*F

Wind Speed: 11.6 kts

Humidity: 88.1%

Water Temp: 24.74*C / 76.53*F

Salinity: 35.25 psu

Depth: 3969 m

My-oh-my the boat has been pitching today! It's better now but walking through interior, windowless hallways is an activity that's pretty low on my wish list.

We're heading north now and the ocean depths will be shallower. Frank commented that the path of the boat (see the link at the top) looks like an outline of the bottom of a sucker-fish - a really really expensive sucker-fish!

Starting today and for the next several days we are transitioning to a 2-watch schedule. The watches will be 1am - 1pm and 1pm - 1am. I start my first shift tomorrow morning at 1 am - youch! We'll do just fine!

Unfortunately even Betty's energy couldn't get the CDH long core winch up and running. It's unclear whether or not we'll be able to long coring again - but they're working on it! We'll be intensively gravity and multi-coring for the next few days as the sampling sites are geographically close together and the water is shallower so the trips down and up for the corers will be shorter.

Jim Broda and Kathryn Rose, pictured right, will be the Watch Leaders for the two shifts.

As we were getting ready for yoga-lates on the fly deck we started spotting flying fish! They are amazing to watch! The science and tech team members told me about their cruise near Barbados where a flying fish literally flew right into someone. He caught it and threw it back! Check out this video of flying fish!

And at last - we got to make cups! We decorated styrofoam cups and sent them down with the multicorer when it was plunging to depths near 5000m. This picture, to the right, was taken by Sarah before the cups went down. The top picture on today's blog shows the "after" (Note the hard hat for scale).

The deep ocean environment is quite hostile - prohibitive - for surface life. The pressure at 5000m depth is enormous - nearly 500 times the pressure at the surface. And it is very cold. I am always reminded of this when we are processing the muds that come up. The temperature of the deep ocean where we were sampling is about 2*C / 35.6*F.

As I mentioned before with the plankton tow, this cruise is not a marine biology expedition. However, we are inevitably passing through regions of life as we send cores down. Here is a clip from the the BBC series about the oceans (scroll down 3/4 of the page). My favorite narrator, David Attenborough talks you through the details of these amazing organisms.

R/V Knorr Sunday Funnies

2010-07-13T03:50:00.002-07:00

It's Sunday, so (OF COURSE!) we have a few Sunday Funnies! But before we get into them we need to cover the status of coring.

Right now the winch that lowers and raises the CDH Long Core is not working. The long core was sent down yesterday but an electronics gremlin is squatting in the winch.

Desperate times call for desperate measures so

today Jim Broda and Kathryn Rose brought out the big guns: Betty Bunce's hard hat ("B2"). Betty was the first American woman to serve as Chief Scientist on an oceanographic expeditions.

Today Research Assistant Marti Jeglinski, who worked with Betty, uses

the B2 hard hat, taking Betty's spirit with her on all her sea voyages. Betty's hard hat and spirit has gotten the Knorr back on track before - let's

hope she can do it again!

Back to the mini funnies...

July 18, 2010

Location: Middle of Nowhere

Lat/Lon: 38*24.2674'N / 48* 32.3969'W

Air Temp: stinkin' hot

Wind Speed: enough

to tangle your hair

Humidity: plain old sweaty

Water Temp: bath water

Salinity: nuthin' compared to the pepper

Depth: wicked deep!

(above) Steel Beach! Sun bathing,

yoga-lates, sunset watching

and dozing in hammocks...

(Left) Isabelle and Paola

modeling new Teletubby fashion

(Right) Kathryn and Marti

"mmmmm! mud!"

(left) Sarah has captured our yoga-lates

in hieroglyphics

Frank is READY!

(below) Jeff and Lloyd, making sure

all that sun doesn't go to waste

Hotel Foraminifera

(to the tune of Hotel California, by Eagles)

by A. Dorsk

On a deep abyssal plain, tow net in the drink

foul smell of dead plankton, and they sure stink

on the screen in the main lab, I saw a shimmering light

My max tension rose on the winch monitor

and my line went tight

There she stood on the fan tail

in the waves and the dips

And I was thinking to myself

'this could be WHOI or this could be Scripps'

then she lit up a flashlight and she showed me the way

there were voices in the squawk box

I thought I heard them say...

Welcome to the hotel Fo'manif'ra

Such a lovely place

such a lovely carapace

Plenty of bugs at the hotel fo'manif'ra

Any time of year, you can find them here

Her lab is stocked to the ceiling, she got the Zeiss pipettes

she got a lot of pretty pretty bugs that she calls data sets

How she picks at the lab bench, to observe and collect

Some pick to remember, some pick to forget.

So I called up the captain,

'please bring me my wine'

He said, "we haven't had that spirit here since UNOLS

imposed a fine"

And still those voices are calling from far away

wake you up in the middle of the night

Just to hear them say...

Welcome to the hotel fo'manif'ra

such a lovely place

such a lovely carapace

They pickin' it up at the hotel fo'manif'ra

Bring your CTG, and your ATP

Petris on the scope

Cibicidoides on ice

and she said "we are all just scientists here, of our own device"

And at the Jersey margin, they gathered sediment

They stab it with their multi-cores,

But they just can't make a dent

Last thing I remember, I was running for the boat

I had to find a passage back

to my hat and gumby coat

'Relax' said the night watch

We are programmed to DP

You can change course any time you like,

But you can never leave!

Rolling Seas and the Multi

2010-07-13T03:50:00.001-07:00

July 17, 2010

Location: Mid-Atlantic

Lat/Lon: 38*24.2674'N / 48* 32.3969'W

Air Temp: 26.10*C / 78.98*F

Wind Speed: 0.96 kts

Humidity: 82.9%

Water Temp: 25.84*C / 78.51*F

Salinity: 36.04 psu

Depth: 5011 m / 5 km / 3.1 miles!

A squall caught us in the middle of bringing up the long core yesterday evening! Researcher Paola and teacher Bob bravely stuck it out in the man basket, shooting "bullets" down the long core to extrude the liner. As the core was extruded, long cracks along the PVC were exposed - one section was completely sheared off. Slippery and heavy with mud, the core was removed, cut, juggled, taped, labeled and lugged into the lab. Towards the end a rainbow made its appearance and the sea calmed...some.

As night came upon us and the multi core was on it's way back the ship, the wind whipped up and the waves followed suit. Last night we had the roughest seas to date on the trip! It was difficult to simply stand and work, let alone try to walk down the hall or stairs! We worked until early morning on the deck processing samples from the multi core and the boat lights illuminated the rolling white caps, giving you glimpses of the waves. "Wave heights" is what I should be calling them - but they felt and looked more like "wave depths". We gritted out teeth to hold back the sickness brewing in our stomaches. Descending to our staterooms we grabbed for patches, pills and pillows to sooth our rolling innards.

So what WERE we doing on the deck so late? Ah - today we'll go over the "multicore".

This coring apparatus is designed to sample the upper portion of the seafloor sediments with careful attention to maintaining the structure of these fragile sediments. Both the long core and the gravity cores can mangle and lose the top sediments. The multicore captures them carefully. There are sites for 8 rigged plastic tubes on the multicore. In the photo to the right Susan is

working the crane, carefully lowering it to the deck while Pete climbs up to help free the rig from the crane hook. Look carefully at the plastic tubes. That day only four were sent down. You can see the short sequences of sediment at the bottom of each. The gravity core also helps to inform the coring team about whether or not a multicore is appropriate, how many tubes should be sent down and how much weight should be included. If the sediment is very soft they do not want to use too much weight.

When the multicore has been brought up the science team quickly removes each of the tube sets, hangs them on wall mountings and begins to visually assess them. Decisions are made about what each will be used for; some are used for archiving, some for sampling. This is a great picture of multicore processing. Isabelle, in the blue jumpsuit, is gathering samples of each layer that will be preserved with seawater. Marti, her back is to us, is getting the next core from the rack. Kathryn, in the teal tank, is controlling the extrusion of the core. Sarah, in yellow, is preparing to collect samples that will be further processed for study in the R/V Knorr Lab. Paola, in green to the right, is removing the edges of the core layer before plopping it into the water-filled sample jar.

These sample jars will have "rose bengal" dye applied to them which will stain the foraminifera that were alive at the point of collection. This gives the researchers a real snapshot of productivity at the sampling site. The forams cannot survive long after they have been brought to the surface so this sampling and treatment must be done quickly. Here is Paola swirling the rose bengal in the hood in the second floor lab.

So this is what we were doing last night so late. And it's what we'll be doing again tonight, so late! The word right now (16:35 GMT-2) is that there is trouble with the winch so if it's fixed, the long core will be sent down and return about 5 hours later. Then the multicore will be sent down and it will likely take about 5 hours to return. Both cores must be extruded and processed. After the multi, there may be a short transit to a new site where a CDT will be done. This will bring us clear until daybreak tomorrow. So the word is: get sleep while you can!

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly in the world of ocean sediment coring...

2010-07-13T03:46:00.000-07:00

July 16, 2010

Location: Mid-Atlantic

Coordinates Lat / Lon: 36* 39.0991'N/ 46*11.1667' W

Air Temp: 25.60*C / 78.08*F

Humidity: 82%

Sea Surface Temp (SST): 25.84*C / 78.51*F

Salinity: 35.96 psu

Depth: 4985 m / 4.985 km / 3.097 miles

Our two-day transit has ended and the team started with a gravity core.

"We'll be flirting with 5000m, " says coring and dredging specialist Chris Moser. Very cool! Chris says this core will take about four hours because this water is so

deep.

The plan was NOT to do a long core today but the gravity core came back so beautifully that they're going for it! It will take hours to reach the bottom and to return. After it is pulled up and processed, the multicore will go down. The team is in for a late night!

Let's talk about the long core:

After the long cor e is brought to the surface and onto to the boat the team jumps into action.

The long core components are enormous. Bob White and Frank Scofield

are pictured here in the "man basket" located at the

stern of the R/V Knorr. It swings around from

stern to side to allow people to access the long core for the "extruding process". This link shows a picture of Cheryl Manning of Evergreen High School, Colorado working in the man basket. She is currently a teacher of Earth and Environmental Science and she sailed on the R/V Knorr for the Armada Project in the winter of 2009.

People in the man basket are located at the top of the core and they send plastic "bullets" down the core shaft that result in the extrusion of (hopefully) mud-filled segments of PVC from the bottom of the core. At the tip of the core, the sharp core cutter and the core catcher are removed. To the right WHOI lead mechanic Jeff Hood is cutting the PVC into manageable lengths as it is extruded.

A limitation of this technology is that if the sediment is too watery, the core catcher doesn't capture it. The sediment with the most water is the top section of the seafloor, where the ocean water meets the ocean floor. The long core can miss meters of top sediment. The average rate of deposition in the North Atlantic is 3-4 cm/1000 years. Keigwin believes that the rates of deposition for the sites he has selected to sample are possible 2-3 times higher than the average.

So what? This is important to know because missing a few meters of sediment in the core means that you're missing thousands of years of ocean history.

Ideally a core has effectively sampled the subsurface of the ocean floor. To the right there's a image of a fairly desirable core. This sediment is thick and continuous.

This image to the left shows a dreaded sight.

Look carefully at the open end of the PVC. Sediment laden water is pouring out from the long corer. We could be either losing thousands of years of ocean floor history or ending up with a disrupted sequence of sediments. As the core is pulled out, suction can cause water to flow in between layers.

This (left) is the extremely sharp core cutter - it came up bent the other day! What did it? People speculated and it's entirely possible that when they cut the core open back at WHOI they'll find the culprit but they may not. One of Jeff's many skills is reshaping this custom cutter!

The picture at the top of the blog shows Sarah Schulenberg holding a mangled core catcher that was just pulled out of a long core. Jim Broda will work his magic to get that catcher back and ready for more!

The combination of "decision making on the fly" and the reality of utilizing a tool for which there really are no "stock" parts, reminds me of our Space Program. This team of scientists is working on a project with its own remarkable challenges and it takes talent and ingenuity to rise to meet it!

Steaming westward in the Atlantic

2010-07-13T03:36:00.002-07:00

July 15, 2010

Location: Mid-Atlantic

Coordinates Lat / Lon: 36*48.4384'N/ 43* 49.5150' W

Air Temp: 23.80*C /74.84*F

Humidity: 80.8%

Sea Surface Temp (SST): 24.92*C / 76.86*F

Salinity: 35.62 psu

Depth: 4465 m / 4.5 km / 2.8 miles

Today was our second day in transit so, while we had downtime, samples are still being processed. Paola Sanchez, PhD researcher, is pictured at the top "picking" samples for foraminifera.

We started our day off in a new time zone (GMT--2). It was nice to have the extra hour. Daylight is an interesting factor when you are on either edge of a time zone. Last night we were still in GMT-1 (http://www.worldtimezone.com/). On the map find the correct column and note that the zone “bumps out” around the Azores. We were at the far western edge of the time zone – this is an interesting place to be because while our length of daylight is the same as all other locations on the same line of latitude around the world, the clock hours of sunlight are shifted.

Huh? Consider the US Midwest today, July 15. Here are three cities within the same time zone that have very similar latitude. The cities are listed from their locations east to west across the US. They are ALL in the same Central Time (Daylight Savings) Zone.

Location: Sunrise / Sunset

- Chicago, IL: 5:29 am / 8:24 pm (eastern most)

- Davenport, IA: 5:42 am / 8:34 pm

- Des Moines, IA: 5:53 am / 8:47 pm

- Omaha, NE: 6:04 am / 8:55 pm (western most)

So our sunrise and sunset times have been shifting each day throughout our journey westward from the Azores – later sunrise, later sunset. Still, yesterday when it was announced that the nighttime plankton tow would be done at 10 pm, we did not think twice about it. But when 10 pm rolled around it was still light out! So in the fading light, the tow was done and it was dark by the time they were finished.

What did they find? The science team aboard the R/V Knorr is focused on ocean floor sediments, specifically fossils that indicate the relative temperature of the ocean water when they were alive. This cruise is focused on paleoceanography. They are not focused on biology of living organisms. So the first plankton tow resulted in the capture of lots of “things”. Some were “freaky” looking, all were smelly! The ones that were definitively identified were shrimp and foraminifera. If they do another plankton tow, I'll pin down some specifics for you! For now I can tell you that the organisms we saw were largely transparent and difficult to see when they were still. Luckily some wiggled and others zoomed through the field of vision.

We did not see all of the organisms in this image but it gives you an idea of what we were looking at.

(Right) Sean Guss is pictured holding the plankton net he pulled in at the

end of the tow.

(Above left) Marti Jeglinski and Kathryn Rose are emptying the net of its catch - smelly!

(Bottom right) Petri dish with the organisms caught in the tow. They looked like a brown-green cloud in the water.

Last night we saw a dolphin hopping the waves and heard that some people had seen flying fish!

Tonight, on our way up to the top deck for sunset yoga and pilates I noticed a brown blob in the water...and then another...and another! Seaweed...

...and I realized where we are...

Starting a long transit....

2010-07-13T03:36:00.001-07:00

July 14, 2010

Location: West of the Azores

Coordinates Lat / Lon: 37* 13.949'N / 37* 27.0753' W

Air Temp: 22.9*C /73.40*F

Humidity: 81.2%

Sea Surface Temp (SST): 24.81*C / 76.66*F

Salinity: 30.07 psu

Depth: 3435 m / 3.4 km / 1.34 miles

We were told today that we will be steaming westward for two days and then surveying in the new location. The hiatus in sampling allows the science team to spend time looking at the data, talking and planning. The picture at the top right shows (clockwise from top) retired MA teacher Frank Scofield, OSU faculty research assistant Paul Walczak, OSU senior faculty research assistant Chris Moser, Spanish PhD researcher-living- in-Wales Paola Sanchez, French researcher Isabelle Gil, British marine geochemist Nick McCave, Chilean paleoceanographer Ricardo De Pol-Holz, and Ameican chief scientist for the cruise, WHOI's Lloyd Keigwin. They had crowded around Nick as he explained the subsurface imagery he was looking at on his computer.

So where to now? Check out this map. We're transiting to Deep Sea Drilling Project site #606 ("DSDP 606"). As you look at the map remember which ocean we're currently in the middle of! If you were a researcher, where would YOU want to go to do some coring? You can click on the image to zoom a little. You are looking for "606" and I'll give you a hint: it's in red font.

It is very interesting yet seemingly impossible to me that every little detail of the research cruise is not set in stone. There are, of course, locations to which Keigwin plans to travel as we make our way across the ocean; these are largely based on data

from the few research coring cruises and many mapping cruises in the area. Keigwin's team was deliberately assembled to have experts in the sciences and technologies included in this effort. But sampling decisions are made daily, based on remote sensing surveys, gravity cores, and weather. We have been lucky enough to have good weather to date (kindly knock on wood

wherever you are!). The picture to the right shows the fruits of WHOI research specialist Steve Swift's labor - high resolution imagery of the sea floor.

At each sampling site a gravity core is done first. This gives the team an idea of the nature of the sea floor and subsurface. While it is a standard method for sampling ocean floor it is also a key tool for researchers to use to determine whether or not it makes sense to drop the long core down. The giant gravity corer, in essence, acts as a scout for the long piston core. This may not be the case in all cruises, of course.

Keigwin's team is coring low relief (relatively flat) regions along the Mid Atlantic Ridge. Others in the oceanography community have chosen to ignore these areas, asserting that there are only volcanic materials there. (recall that this cruise is focused on gathering sediments/muds from the ocean, not lava). "How do you know there are only volcanics there?" he has asked them. And, as he received no satisfying answers, he decided to go forward with the investigation.

It's a good thing he is too - for these regions could potentially be excellent locations to gather marine sediments. For Keigwin and his team, it's not just about the "what" they are gathering, it's also about the "where" and the "how".

This map (starting in top left corner, count 4 from left and go down to the second from the top to find Azores) is clickable so you can REALLY zoom in. As long as your mouse cursor shows you a magnifying glass with a "+" sign, you can zoom in more! Keep in mind that new volcanic material is being ejected out from parts of the Mid Atlantic and that the Azores are volcanic.

The corrosive saltwater and air keep the R/V Knorr's crew busy! Joe and John, pictured to the right, are always on the go! They just tested all kinds of things in the lab that will need to be tested again but not for three months! Both Joe and John are new to the R/V Knorr crew. John is will be on WHOI's ship R/V Atlantis.

A plankton tow has been scheduled for tonight. I've never seen one or the results from one so I'm pretty excited to take a look at what comes in! I'll take a picture to show you what we find! Why do you think they tow for them at night? Here's a little video clip of a plankton tow in the Gulf Stream from Wilderness Classroom July 2008.

In the course of a conversation about the plankton tow, French researcher Isabelle Gil asked me if I'd ever heard of "Paul the Octopus" in Germany. So, while the World Cup is over, I can't help but share the youtube video researcher Isabelle Gil shared with me this morning. Have you ever heard of Paul the Psychic Cephalopod? You've gotta see this!

Hurrah for Marine Sediments!

2010-07-12T17:49:00.001-07:00

July 13, 2010

Location: West of the Azores / West Flank of the Mid Atlantic Ridge

Coordinates Lat / Lon: 37* 14.4029'N / 30* 41.7697' W

Air Temp: 22.50*C / 72.5*F

Humidity: 77.7%

Sea Surface Temp (SST): 23.642*C / 72.5*F

Salinity: 35.7 psu

Depth: 2800 m / 2.8 km / 1.74 miles

Hurrah for marine sediments! It was a very successful sampling day on the R/V Knorr. In the gray morning with lightly spitting rain the team completed a gravity core (no breaks!). The horizon was a smudge of gray, blurred by the rain. And the air felt different today. Obviously it feels humid but the air has a distinctly marine-air dampness to it.

The cores were completed in relatively rapid succession. I say "relatively" because coring the ocean floor more than a mile beneath you inevitably takes time. All cores require careful preparation before they are lowered. A gravity core at this depth takes about 1.5 hours from the time it is lowered into the water to the time it is brought back to the ship. We have been getting back 2-3 sections of PVC full of ocean floor sediment that measure about 1.5 m (~5 feet) in length each. The multi core, which samples only the top portion of the seabed, takes about 2 hours to make the trek down to the seafloor and back up with sediment cores. I tell you this so you have a frame of reference to understand how impressive the CDH Long Core actually is.

With a successful CDH long core we get back more than 20 sections of PVC full of ocean sediment, also 1.5m long each. Today we ended up with 22 sections (three were less than 1.5m). The trip down and back up take ~ 3 hrs however the preparation for lowering significantly adds to that time. Look carefully at the image to the right. The long core is visible as a the orange "pipe" extending along the length of the boat visible in this image.

If you missed the animation of WHOI's long coring system watch it here - it's a really nice overview. The scale of this corer is just unreal! Find Bob White and Paul Walczak in the picture at the top of this page. They are moving the super heavy core clamps after the long core has been released into the water.

WHOI's CDH Long core is an exciting development in oceanography. It is a very long core that is driven into the seabed by a piston. It is a type of gravity core. It's terrific because a great deal of sediment, which reflects the history of the ocean and climate, can be gathered at once and kept neatly in chronological order (oldest at the bottom). Click here to see a great image of the R/V Knorr CDH Long core.

More to follow on the long core...

A last note for today's blog. My bunkmate Sarah and I were talking today about how being out on the ocean in a ship this far from a continent shifts one's perspective. The ocean sprawls out before you with seemingly endless stretches of water in all directions. You get the feeling that you are remarkably tiny. I have been thinking a great deal about people throughout human-time who have crossed expansive waters to migrate to new lands, to search for resources, to engage in battle. The sailing ships, the rowing ships, refugee vessels, military, pioneers, canoes, and colonists all facing the wide sea and going forward. Such remarkable spirit, drive, motivation and curiosity they must have had. And here I am, crossing the Atlantic with people passionate about increasing our understanding of our world. And in them I find remarkable spirit, drive, motivation and curiosity.

Monday, Monday...

2010-07-11T15:09:00.001-07:00

July 12, 2010

Location: West of the Azores

Coordinates Lat / Lon: 36* 56.69879' N / 32* 49.5315' W

Air Temp: 22.6*C / 72.68*F

Humidity: 82%

Sea Surface Temp (SST): 23.22*C /73.80*F

Salinity: 35.74 psu

Depth: 2068 m / >2 km / 1.28 miles

It was a humid day today making the normally hard workday for R/V

Knorr's Team all the sweatier. Clouds hung in for much of the day, darkening the ocean water from a brilliant, almost unbelievable shade of azure blue to a cold gray-blue. Frank Scofield, pictured above, is the retired Massachusetts science teacher who was instrumental in connecting Bob White and me with Dr. Keigwin and this voyage. Frank is always working hard - and always wearing that smile!

Today coring started early with the Giant Gravity Core (GGC) and fell short of the team's expectations. They managed to recover only about 234 cm (10.6 feet) of sediment

from a 15 foot-long piece of PVC. The picture to the right, taken Sunday, shows a 17-foot gravity core. It retrieved a fantastic sequence of sediments! When it was pulled up it was streaked with mud, all the way to the top, just as everyone was hoping! Mud all the way up the core shaft generally means that the corer successfully penetrated the seafloor to it's maximum extent.

Today's core didn't look like this picture when it returned from the seafloor. It was partially muddy and very broken! It did not cut deeply enough into the seabed. A section of the top of the core was left sticking out above the seabed. Look carefully at this image to the right - notice the large cone-shaped weight at the top. The top weight serves to push the core as deep as possible into the sediment. The corer is made of PVC piping which is very strong - but it has its limits. Today, when the core was lowered to the seafloor, the PVC portion left sticking out was overcome by the overhead weight which came down on the exposed end of the PVC, bending and breaking the core.

Luckily the sediment that was successfully gathered from the seabeds AND all of the equipment made it back to the boat!

A long core was completed, also with results that did not meet the hopes of the research

party. It, too, followed an extremely successful (long) core collected on Sunday. I'll discuss long coring in upcoming entries. The R/V Knorr has an long core icon aboard!

The team had a successful day with the multicorer - a high point! I will also discuss multi corers in upcoming entries. I find them very interesting because they are so small yet they play an extremely important role in ocean floor coring as they can capture sediments at or just below the ocean floor surface. With the larger gravity and piston corers you inevitably have loss of detail for sediments gathered near the surface. Yes, that's hook! Aren't you curious about multicorers now?

With all this mud being pulled up from the deep, the team must inevitably deal with managing it on the boat. When the corers are brought to the surface after gathering their load, the PVC containing the sediments is cut into sections that generally run

~ 150cm (~5 feet), capped and taped. These heavy sections are then brought into the lab where we measure them and gather some additional data before they are taken up to the deck above for cold storage.

Marti Jeglinski and Kathryn Rose, pictured here, and Sarah Schulenberg have been patient teachers for us "newbies", running through methods for anything they think we can handle on the ship. I have spent most of my time here in the lab (pictured above) running the sections of the cores through a somewhat finicky machine that measures the amount of metals and density of the samples.

From what I can tell and what I have heard, food on the R/V Knorr is great! Tonight our amazing cooks treated us to a terrific dinner of red snapper with black beans and spicy sesame noodles (among other delicacies). I figured the snapper must have been purchased in the Azores - but Bobbie and Erskine clarified that the snappers came from Barbados where they had sailed from on their last cruise. International dining on the high seas was a terrific way to close a long day!

Bugs, Muds and Fishing line

2010-07-11T08:02:00.001-07:00

July 11, 2010 Sunday

Location: West of the Azores

Coordinates Lat / Lon: 37*50.9975' / 30*17.5978

Air Temp: 22*C / 71.6*F

Humidity: 73%

Sea Surface Temp (SST): 22.95*C /73.31*F

Salinity: 35.69 psu

Depth: 2032 m

BUGS:

It is with very dry hands that I sit down to create today's blog . Why? They're dry from touching all kinds of sediment pulled up in cores from beneath the ocean floor. With each sample, there were "oohs" and "aaahs" and comments like this one from Dr. Ricardo De Pol-Holz of Univ of CA Irvine,"This sediment is amazing stuff! It's perfect pelagic ooze!".

Chief Scientist, Lloyd Keigwin, is pictured above with some of the "bug"(foram)-filled ooze. The coring crews were excited as the cores were executed beautifully. We smoothed the sediments between our fingers and thumbs, feeling for forams. Yes you can really feel them! They feel, well, like grit - and sometimes you can see them!

MUDS:

Collecting core samples from the ocean floor is a very expensive and challenging endeavor. Technologies, such as sonar and satellites, that allow for remote sensing of the ocean floor are improving all the time. But at this point, researchers still need to have the sediments from the bottom of the ocean brought up to the surface to study them thoroughly. The concept of "coring" is pretty simple. Coring apparatuses are long tubes that are dropped from the research ship down to the ocean floor. They range in length, diameter and material and are designed to meet the sampling needs of particular disciplines within the ocean sciences.

Keigwin and his team of scientists are using three main coring technologies: Long Core, Giant Gravity Core, and Multi Core. While the coring tools vary in their specifics, they each function like a drinking straw.

Have you ever put a drinking straw into a cup of liquid then placed your finger on top of the straw, covering the hole and then pulled the straw out of the liquid? The straw stays full of the liquid as long as you keep your finger pressed firmly over the top opening. I think it's my favorite way to drink chocolate milk. If you haven't tried it - give it a go! And you'll be modeling ocean coring.

Each corer is released from the research boat and allowed fall (rate is controlled by hugely powerful winches, pictured right). As the corer nears the seabed, the coring crew can let the corer fall faster, to increase the chances of it making the deepest, most complete core possible. The corer cuts into the seafloor, jamming ocean floor sediments into the corer pipe. Each corer has a device that acts like a finger on a drinking straw so that when the core is

brought back up after having been filled with ocean

floor sediment, it brings all the sediments along with it. The corer is then brought onto the ship where the plastic liners full of sediment are carefully removed, as you see Chris Moser and Paul Walczak, both from OSU, doing here. After removal, core segments are labeled and sent to the onboard lab for initial testing.

Fishing Line:

In the midst of the coring activities the captain announced that a fishing line was caught in one of the propellers. All kinds of ideas

were offered but it wasn't until an underwater camera was attached to a stick and lowered into the water that we had a clear idea of just how tangled the line was. It was decided a diver with flippers and snorkel would be necessary to untangle the knot. However, waste food had just been dumped from the

kitchen. It "chummed" the water - and guess w ho would be attracted to all that food! So we steamed a mile away and brave crewmen dove in and untangled the prop - never a

dull moment at sea!

Here's Joe Bastoni, Third Engineer, with the knot!

Prepping for Research!

2010-07-10T13:20:00.001-07:00

July 10, 2010 Saturday (evening)

Location: Eastern Atlantic Ocean, off the Azores

Lat: 37*55.0494' Lon: 27* 11.7293'

Traveling: 12.3 knots Sea Surface Temp: 21.33*C / 70.39*F

Salinity: 35.55 psu Depth: ~2000 m

Morning came early today! The delicious breakfast was followed by waving goodbye to Sao Miguel from the top deck of the R/V Knorr. We steamed northwestward around and out from the island at about 11 knots for two hours. With Sao Miguel still clearly in view we stopped so the coring crew could begin testing the “Dog Dish”. They were able to do this test so close to land because the ocean floor is more than three km below the surface there, with Sao Miguel still in view! Yup! You read right: more than 3km- 3000m - more than 1.6 miles deep.

No kidding! The apparatus was not sent all the way to the seafloor; it stopped at about 2800 m.

At 9 am we were given an overview talk about ship safety and logistics and midday this was followed up by a fire drill. Up the stairs with our life jackets and life saving suits we came to hear instructions and to try on the thick red suits with hoods that would greatly increase our chances of survival in the event that we need to abandon ship. Then we mustered on deck for an explanation of life boats and tracking technology.

Testing the dog dish took about three hours and while the coring crew worked on that, the science crew prepared for tomorrow's work. They labeled the liner for the long core - this is an enormously important step! Liner for the long core is thick, heavy PVC - essentially sewer pipe - and it sits inside the steel shell of the corer. The liner is composed of a series of PVC segments with threaded ends that are glued and screwed together. After the sediment has been gathered and the long corer brought back to the surface, the liner will be cut into segments as it is pulled out of the steel shell. Each segment is then quickly capped so it will maintain its structural integrity. Phew!

Later the cores are cut into halves, lengthwise. One half goes to the chief scientist and the other half goes to the the WHOI archives where they are available to other researchers.

Check out the video on the equipment page to see how the long core works!

We wrapped up the day with dinner on the deck!

As I take my leave from you and head to bed, we are a mere 8:36 hrs away from our first coring site, 112 nautical miles. On deck for 7 am!

The Azores - the perfect departure point!

2010-07-09T11:09:00.000-07:00

June 9, 2010 Friday

Location: Ponta Delgada, Sao Miguel, Azores

39°30 ′49″N 31°12′24″W

Today we arrived in lovely Ponta Delgada, the starting point for our research cruise on the R/V Knorr. It was cloudy and only in the high 60s, making it much cooler than we expected. After dropping off our gear at the research ship we briefly toured around the countryside of this volcanic island. The geology of the Azores is rather complex as they are situated on a microplate, which should make them a "hot spot" like Hawaii. However they are also along the Mid Atlantic Ridge, like Iceland.

The Azores archipelago got its volcanic start about 7 million years ago. The youngest of the nine islands, Pico, is a mere 300,000 years old, formed during the Pleistocene Epoch - our most recent Ice Age. The Azores seem to have had a relative short history with humans. The most clearly documented evidence of humans starts in the early 1400s by the notably talented sailors, the Portuguese.

Why the Azores?

I keep getting this question from people - it's a great question! Chief Scientist, Dr. Lloyd Keigwin of WHOI proposed this research trek across the Atlantic starting at Ponta Delgada for two main reasons:

1.) A remarkably good core was gathered by a team of French scientists in a region of low relief along the mid-ocean ridge south and west of the Azores. What makes the core so "remarkably good"? The core contained relatively undisturbed sequences of ocean sediments that Keigwin needs in order to learn about Earth's climate and ocean history.

2.) The Azores are also an excellent location because the ocean floor near them has been extensively mapped starting with the 1970s French-American collaborative Project FAMOUS. While little coring has been done in the region, high resolution ocean floor mapping gives researchers like Keigwin a very clear picture of the ocean floor. He is theorizing about the types of ocean floor topography that will lead to the best preserved sediments to maximize the chances of gathering useful samples. Keigwin, along with research funders, want to get the most bang for the buck!

But there's more!

Keigwin just learned several days ago that a German team of scientists also cored in another low relief region along the ridge northeast of the French site, near the Azores. Now scientists are wondering if these regions of low relief are consistently great places to get excellent cores - or if the French and German teams just got lucky.

Check out the "About the Expedition" page for information about the research!

And stay tuned - we depart tomorrow morning!