charismaticmicrofauna

We’re less than 24 hours away from our sampling site at 9° N in the East Pacific Ocean. The traverse to the site has been unusually long. Originally, we had been scheduled to leave from Panama City, which would have shortened our travel time by days. We left from Newport, Oregon because a research cruise that had been scheduled before ours was cancelled due to lack of funding. The chief scientist for that expedition had private financial backers who pulled their support from the project, so the RV Atlantis’ schedule was interrupted. They would have docked in Panama and we would have met the ship there, but the Atlantis took a job deploying buoys off the coast of Oregon instead. This is how we ended up with a 9 day journey to 9° North.

My research group finished setting up our gear and preparing for the upcoming experiments a couple of days ago. My boss who is one of the chief scientists on the ship has been keeping busy making sure major equipment is working the way it should, organizing information to discuss with the other chief scientist and the ALVIN crew’s chief engineer, and helping our collaborator’s student set up her laboratory where we will incubate deep sea tube worms in high pressure aquaria at 4000 psi. I don’t envy her, but I have a lot of admiration for her determination and work ethic.

The weather is very warm here. We have had 80°F days, and the ocean has been glassy. The only wildlife we have seen have been flying fish, red footed boobies, and blue footed boobies. There were a couple of finches that we picked up off the coast of California, but I have only seen one around since the day before yesterday. Finches stranded on ships don’t often last very long because they eventually drink contaminated water and they dehydrate. We put out a water station and bird food for it. I hope it lives. Last time I sailed on this ship there was a hawk that found us. We were already harboring several egrets, but the hawk hunted them all until there was only one. I’ll never forget the rain of feathers that I would encounter when I stepped out onto the main deck from the lab, as if somebody was shaking out a down pillow.

Tomorrow is our first sampling day and I am scheduled to go down in the ALVIN for our maiden voyage to the deep. The sub will go 2600 feet down to a site around 9° North known as Tikka. Other sites are called P-vent, Sandwich, and Crab spa. We looked at archives of more recent expeditions to find video of where the most tubeworms would likely be in order to maximize our sampling time, and Tikka looked like the best place. So, that is where I will be tomorrow.

In preparation for tomorrow, today I am making a playlist o play on the ALVIN. It will include the FIN., All Them Witches, Nick Waterhouse, Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, and the Beach Boys. There will be an expedition meeting today before bed, and then I will wake up at 7:00 am, put on non-flammable cotton clothes, and get in the sub for the day.

If astronauts go to space then what do we call people who go to the bottom of the ocean?