FeMO4 Dive Cruise 2009
Report Day 12 -- Monday 12 October 2009 -- Jason and His Crew
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FeMO4 Dive Cruise 2009 |
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As I wake up and look out my cabin window I see Jason has just come on board. The crew is busy working on Jason and Medea. I wonder what they are doing so I decide to go down and check. I meet Will Sellers, one of the Jason pilots. He tells me that they are performing the post-dive inspection. Every time before Jason goes down the crew performs a pre-dive inspection and every time after he comes up they perform a post-dive inspection.
The more I learn about Jason, the more fascinating he becomes. It’s almost like he’s a member of the crew. Will tells me about Jason and all of his mysterious parts.
On the front of his body, Jason has 8 lights, 6 video cameras and 2 electronic still cameras. He also has two large arms with hands and fingers and a big shelf in front called the basket. The scoops, traps, and slurps are stored in the basket.
On the starboard side of Jason’s body is the high powered junction box and the slurp collection chamber. The high powered junction box provides power to Jason’s motor and lights. I am amazed to discover that the junction box is filled not with air, but instead, with mineral oil!
Will says, “Mineral oil is safe, non-reactive with plastic or metal, and it evaporates if spilled. It’s used on eggs to keep them fresh by preventing the gasses inside the shell from escaping and its even used by Lender’s bagels on all of their machinery.”
Below the junction box is the suction sampler which is used to collect microbial mats from the sea floor. The sampler works like a five-chambered vacuum cleaner. Four chambers have sample screens that hold back the mats but let the water go through. Another one is open and used for flushing out the system between collections of different samples.
On the port side Jason has a low-powered junction box – also filled with mineral oil. The low-powered junction box provides power to Jason’s arm movements. Jason is powered with 3,000 volts of electrical power that run on a 400 cycle frequency providing three phases of current.
Next, I ask about Medea. I wonder why every time Jason submerges, he is tethered to Medea and she follows shortly behind him. She hovers over him as he works on the ocean floor. What is her purpose? Will explains that Medea decouples Jason from the motion of the ship. If Medea didn’t hang between Jason and the ship then every time the ship rolled up and down on a wave, Jason would follow. What a challenge that would be trying to pick up rocks, suck water out of holes, and take pictures while being yanked up and down by the waves! So Medea acts like a shock absorber. She also shines lights, takes pictures, and patiently watches Jason as he works.
One last technical question lingers in my mind. I have noticed that every time Jason, Medea, and the elevator descend they have a stack of rusty iron weights attached to them. When they come up, the weights are gone. I know that the weights help them descend to the bottom more quickly, but I am shocked to discover that every time Jason, Medea, and the elevator ascend, the weights are just dropped and left on the ocean floor!!! It seems like littering, not to mention the continual cost of the weights at $500 for a stack of 12. Will reassures me that the weights sink into the ocean floor and are eventually eroded away and that the $500 cost is merely a minute fraction of the overall cost of Jason’s operation. I wonder what he means by that so I ask how much it cost to build Jason.
Will tells me that Jason was built by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (Woods Hole, Massachusetts) in 2002 with funding from Woods Hole and the National Science Foundation (NSF). Woods Hole paid for half of the seven million dollar cost to build Jason and the NSF paid for the other half. The stickers on Jason’s front panel show gratitude to his funders. Will tells me that he and Tito, another Jason pilot on board the Kilo Moana, were two of Jason’s original builders.
Of the seven million dollar cost, three million was spent building Jason and Medea. The four million dollar balance was spent on the Jason control room, tool room, and the winch system. Each of Jason’s arms costs $165,000. As I participate in this expedition, and watch our scientists and Jason crew at work, I gain a greater appreciation for where my tax dollars are going!
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