FeMO3 Dive Cruise 2008
Image Galleries

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 ...

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!

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.
JASON Dive J2-373 Image Gallery
Another mopping up dive, this time on Loihi's summit. It starts out at Marker 57 at the Pohaku Vents. Then the Jason visits Hiolo, the West Pit rim and ends at Pisces Peak where the elevator awaits to offload Jason's acquired payload. 

JASON Dive J2-372 Image Gallery
This is the mopping up dive on Ula Nui at FeMO Deep. The last experiments are retrieved for this year and we do another photo mosaic. The transponders are retrieved as soon as the Jason and Medea have left the Pacific and onboard the R/V Thompson. 

JASON Dive J2-371 Image Gallery
In this dive we use SM2000 across the Hiolo and Tower Vents area in Pele's Pit in order to map the region north of M36 and south of M34. If time permits, we might expand to the area around Jet Vents (M10/11) up to Lohiau (M2/5). Finally, we will start to make a photo mosaic with the bottom-aimed camera to better document the M36/39, M34/38 and M31/48 areas. 

JASON Dive J2-369 Image Gallery
This dive is devoted to finding "old" Marker 2007 established during a previous Pisces dive. Rock samples are taken and many biological experiments are planted until FeMO2009. SM2000 mapping is planned and this dive ends at Pisces Peak. 

JASON Dive J2-368 Image Gallery
Dive location of J2-368 are the Pohaku Vents and M27 at 1196 mbsl. Our dive objectives for this dive are experiment deployments and recoveries at Pohaku and beyond, and more fluid and mat sampling. 

JASON Dive J2-367 Image Gallery
This again was a long dive, starting at Ula Nui at 5 km water depth, but ending high up on the southern volcanic rift of Loihi after extensive sampling of pillows for noble gas geochemistry and biological experiments.

JASON Dive J2-366 Image Gallery
Dive J2-366 is aimed at the FeMO Deep site and Ula Nui, at about 5,000 m water depth. As we learned during this dive, operating under such extreme water pressures is not always without problems. Even though the yellow glass spheres imploded on the elevator, making it too damaged to be used in our operations, the dive continued successfully for another 24 hours. 

JASON Dive J2-365 Image Gallery
This is the first dive library for the FeMO3 expedition. More than 70 still camera images from the JASON have been brought together here with the event numbers from the JASON Virtual Van. Overall this gallery will give you a good overview of what all happened during this 58 hour long to the Loihi seafloor.

 


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