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Hi, my name is Ashlee Cushing and I am in seventh grade at Clarke Middle School in Lexington MA, my science teacher, Ms. Sheild, is having us write to you for extra credit. I have one question for you to answer. I was wondering if you keep in touch with what is going around in the world?

Ashlee Cushing

P.s. Thank You for lending Ms. Sheild a piece of a rock from the ocean floor!!

Hi Ashlee- thanks for writing to us and for following Dive and Discover’s Galápagos Expedition.

We do keep in touch with some of the news around the world. We get reports on email of most of the top news events every few days. As you can imagine the horrible news of the past few days is very difficult for everyone. It is hard to be so far away from home when things like this happen.

We also have short-wave radios and sometimes we can pick up Armed Forces Radio, and National Public Radio.

Keep following our expedition and we wish you and your classmates, and Mrs. Shields all the best.

Sincerely,
Dan Fornari

Dear Dr. Kurz and Dr. Fornari,

My name is Dora and I’m a seventh grade student of Miss Sheild’s science class in Lexington, MA. I went to your website and have been following the expeditions. They’re really interesting!

I was wondering- just because you lost the camera, did you lose all the information that it has collected too, or were you able to retrieve that? I mean, it’s disconnected from the ship, but are you still in contact with it? And I know that the main point of this expedition is to explore the volcanic slopes of the Galápagos Islands, but were you able to find out some information about the pilot whales when they were cruising along with you on Saturday? Thanks for all the fun and excitement! I’m following you all the way!

~Dora

Hi Dora-

Thanks for your question and following our Dive and Discover expedition in the Galápagos.

Unfortunately, when we lost the deep sea camera we did lose all the information that it had gathered during that tow. The camera records the images it takes on a computer hard drive that is 4 Gigabytes in size. It can store about 2200 images on each lowering. We had been towing for about 1.5 hours so it had about 350 images on it when it was lost.

We have been seeing lots of whales - mostly blue whales and also pilot whales like the ones we showed pictures of in the slideshow. The whales just keep us company. We don’t want to disturb them as we are working in a Marine Preserve of the Galápagos National Park and we are not authorized to do any research on the marine mammals in this area.

Thanks for your questions and best regards to you and your classmates
and Mrs. Shields.

Dan Fornari

Hello,

I’m Sophie, and I'’m with my friend Kezia. We have a few questions to ask you, Mark Kurz, and your partner Dan Fornari. First of all we want to thank you for lending the volcanic rock to Miss Sheild. It was very interesting to observe. Please try to answer our following questions:

Sophie: How many times a year do you as a scientist go out to sea every year?

Kezia: Where do you mostly find Hydrothermal vents?

Sophie/ Kezia: Was it fun seeing all different sorts of sea creatures, or are you just used to them?

Sophie: Have you ever explored the seafloor near Boston, MA? If so, is the seafloor similar or different then the one in the Galápagos Island? If not is it similar then the one in the Caribbean Islands?

Kezia/Sophie: The volcano that you’re at, did it build up under water and stayed there or did the volcano build up on land and water covered it?

Kezia: Do you see mid-ocean ridges at the Galápagos Islands?

Thank you for taking your time to read our e-mail and please try to answer our questions.

Sincerely,
Sophie and Kezia

Hi Sophie and Kezia-

Thanks for your questions and for following our Galápagos Expedition on Dive and Discover.

I’ll answer your questions in the order you gave them.

Scientists go out to sea usually for a month or two each year. The rest of the time we have to analyze our data and write papers and proposals to do more reserach. We also go to meetings to discuss our science.

If you read the Infomod on Hydrothermal Vents and the one on Mid-Ocean Ridges you’ll learn all about where vents are found and the animals and processes that occur there.

We always love to see the sea creatures, both the ones on the surface and the deep sea ones at vents and elsewhere in the ocean. Have a look through the different expeditions and look at the InfoMod on Vent Biology - you’ll see lots of good pictures and information. There are also lots of movies about vent animals in our Deeper Discovery section.

I have not done research on the ocean floor near Boston. But there are other scientists at Woods Hole and other institutions and universities that have. Check the WHOI website for more information on this (http://www.whoi.edu)

If you read the different daily journals for this expedition you’ll learn a lot about the Galápagos and how these volcanoes are different from the mid-ocean ridge.

Hope you enjoy reading the information in Dive and Discover and that you continue to follow the work we are doing.

Our Best Regards, to you and your classmates and Mrs. Shields.

Dan Fornari

This is really Beryl Manning-Geist, Dennis Geist’s daughter. When you collect the magma samples what processes do you go through to break down the chemical elements in the magma?

Dear Beryl,

The first thing I do is take my daughter into work and pay her to help organize the rocks in my lab. Then, while she takes over my computer to play games on the web, I break the rock into golf ball sized chunks with a hammer. Then I put those chunks in a device called a shatterbox - it’s a round super hard steel box about 6 inches across with a steel hockey puck on the inside. That goes into a machine that looks like R2D2 that shakes the heck out of the rock chunks for about 3 minutes, reducing them to a powder that looks like flour.

For some of the techniques we use to measure the elements in the magma, we just press the powder into a little round cake. For others, you have to dissolve the sample so it is in a solution. For that, we use hydrofluoric acid. It is extremely dangerous. If it dissolves rocks, think what it might do to your body. Also, think what you might store hydrofluoric acid in (teflon, because it dissolves glass bottles).

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