Day 18 Image Gallery
Samples are piling up as is the
amount of data, DVD's with Jason video and other imagery. All in all
the amount of science being carried by 20+ scientists is overwhelming,
so a good time to enjoy another beautiful sunset. |
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Day 17 Image Gallery
The deep sea elevator was released from the bottom and arrived at the surface shortly after breakfast. Jason was on deck a short time later and there was a scurry of activity to collect and process bacterial, water and rock samples from Pele’s Pit. |
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Day 16 Image Gallery
Several student questions inspired me to ask Terry Anderson, the Chief
Engineer on the R/V Thompson, for a tour of the engineering spaces.
As most other research ships the Thompson has a dynamic positioning ability,
which requires a special set of hardware, very different from the
typical propellers and rudders. |
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Day 15 Image Gallery
One way to tell if bacteria are in a sample is to look for their metabolism.
Jennifer Murphy compares two samples of sea water, one filtered (no bacteria) and one not filtered (bacteria present)
to see if iron II is being converted to iron III. We can also work
with bacterial incubations, which experiment Beth Orcutt assembled on ship with items she had available. Emily
Knowles takes another approach and inoculates a growth chamber
containing some sterile basalt powder and iron oxide in a sealed test tube. She is
inoculating the tube with a culture grown from pulverized Loihi
basalt. |
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Day 14 Image Gallery
Jason operations continue day and
night. Experiments keep getting setup, samples are retrieved and
prepared for analyses on the Thompson or back in the scientists
laboratories. And the Jason keeps diving, we are now at dive J2-372,
while we started 7 dives ago at J2-365 Tons of data is retrieved, a
very productive cruise so far.
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Day 13 Image Gallery
Jason went down early this morning to
map Pele’s pit. The mapping is done using the SM2000 sonar system. To record the data Jason has to zigzag back and forth
(by grid) across the bottom of Pele’s Pit until the whole area of the
map has been covered.
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Day 12 Image Gallery
Work keeps going on, in the bio
labs, in the hydro lab and for the rock guys. Amanda is polishing more electrodes for the ISEA,
while Mark and Jess collect larger rocks. Today ended with dive
J2-369 being completed and the Jason on deck around 8 PM.
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Day 11 Image Gallery
At the base of Mauna Loa where you would expect to see a line of breakers is a darker haze. The haze is created by great clouds of steam boiling into the sky where lava pours from Kilauea into the ocean. |
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Day 10 Image Gallery
Jason’s work day began in Pele’s pit working around the hot water vents that sponsor the growth of so many bacteria, but the second half of dive J2-368 is devoted to exploring the North Rift roughly parallel to a dead submarine cable.
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Day 09 Image Gallery
Jess is recording dive info from the watch logs into an spreadsheet so that samples can be tracked electronically
and are properly archived.
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Day 08 Image Gallery
Clara is looking at Iron oxidizing bacteria through the microscope. The screen shows one form
of bacteria.
Although things didn't go as planned with the elevator, the
scientists are continuously pushing forward because there is much to
do, analyze and study.
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Day 07 Image Gallery
Dive J2-367 starts today with a
detailed 300x300m mapping survey of the Ula Nui area in the plans. The
weather was calm and splendid and thus a good opportunity for Brian
Midson and Shawn Doan to observe the Jason launch with the small boat.
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Day 06 Image Gallery
On deck work seems to go on as
normal. However, today required quite some damage control, because all
"hard hat" yellow floating spheres imploded on Elevator #1. This
required the scientists and the Jason crew to rework the original dive
plan and make the time spent at the ocean floor by Jason worthwhile,
even though the further use and faith of the elevator is still
unknown.
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Day 05 Image Gallery
After about 48 hours the first Jason
dive J2-365 came to an end. Elevator 2 was recovered and shortly after
that the Jason itself was brought back on deck the R/V Thompson.
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Day 04 Image Gallery
Today the first samples came on board
after Elevator 1 from dive J2-365 was retrieved around 9 AM. All
scientists scrambled to get their samples from the bioboxes to the lab
in as short a time as possible. Contamination or heating up of the
samples has to be avoided as much as possible.
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Day 03 Image Gallery
While the Jason makes its first dive today, scientists spent the day setting up their labs and preparing equipment for the arrival of the first samples. The electrochemistry lab techs spent the day performing the detailed work needed to prepare the gold, silver and platinum probes for use in instruments to be sent down with Jason.
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Day 02 Image Gallery
Unexpected things happen when at sea.
Today a change of plan happened as the chief mate fell suddenly ill. The captain stirred the Thompson around and steamed for Kona to get medical treatment for the chief mate. Later today we heard
he is doing well ... |
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Day 01 Image Gallery
Today we started sailing. But first we went through the mandatory fire and abandon ship drills. This entailed mustering in the main lab, trying on our safety rescue suits and getting a full safety debriefing. Even though we are sailing in the tropics, all these exercises are a very sensible thing to do!
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Day 00 Image Gallery
The FeMO2008 cruise is not underway
yet, but all scientists have been unloading gear and busy setting up
their research equipment. The R/V Thomas G. Thompson is our research
vessel this time around. |
