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Daily Updates: February |
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TODAY'S WEATHER
Broken
Clouds
80°F (26.7°C) Latitude:
9 deg 49N
Longitude: 104 deg 17W
Wind Direction: NE
Wind Speed: 14 Knots
Sea
State: 3Swell(s)
Height: 9 Feet
Sea
Temperature: 81°F (27.2°C)
Barometric
Pressure: 1012.0 MB
Visibility: 12 Nautical Miles
Breakfast
Scrambled eggs
Bacon, sausages
Banana muffins
Pancakes
Fresh fruit
Cream of Wheat
Lunch
Battered fish
Buffalo wings
Macaroni and cheese
Chicken and vegetable soup
Salad bar
Seafood pasta
Dinner
Burrito Buffet
Chicken, shrimp, beef
beans, rice, cheese,
tomato, onion, salsa, olives,
chili's, sour cream, lettuce, guacamole
Jell-O with fruit
Daily Update: Dive 3527
February 2, 2000
By Dr. Dan Fornari and Sam Dean
The morning dawned with gray puffy clouds lining
the horizon and a sliver of new moon high in the sky. With Alvins penetrator
repaired (see yesterday's dive for more on what happened) and
all the pre-dive checks completed, Gary Comer and Bob James followed
BLee Williams, the pilot, into Alvin so that they could
dive to the hydrothermal vents near 9° 50N Latitude.
They will continue to collect data for several scientists who
have programs that involve vent mapping and fluid sampling, as
well as digital imaging of different volcanic and vent features
in this area. BLee, Bob and Gary will also recover some temperature
probes that have been measuring the temperature at the black
smoker vents since May of 1999. The plan is to recover these
probes and then redeploy them on the last dive of this cruise.
The Towed Camera Sled was hauled on board at 0430 hours this morning. Even after
charging the batteries on the Sled for 11 hours, though, it still ran out of
power after 7 hours. It seems that some more tweaking may be needed in order
to draw more juice out of the batteries. This is only a minor setback.
With the digital camera on the Sled returning between 1600-1800 crystal-clear
pictures of the ocean bottom each night, Jenny, Greg, Margo and Del have plenty
of images to compile and archive every day, including one photo of an animal
with lots of legs that you may recognize!
And now for the ping pong tournament update! The
entire first round has been played, and most of the second round
as well. With strong play all-around, Captain George Silva and
Paul Vinitsky have both moved into the semifinals. Stay tuned
to find out who fills in the other two spots left in the semifinal
bracket!
After the sub got back on deck at 1715 hours, and Bob and Gary
were given a thorough hosing down for being new divers, the ship
steamed down to 9° 37N Latitude to continue the Towed
Camera surveys. Tow #5 is planned for tonight.
Before putting the Camera Sled over the side, Dan
Fornari tried to recover a sample of the lava on the seafloor using
a spring loaded grab sampler. A picture of the grab is shown in
today's slide show. The way it works is that the grab is cocked
open, and then lowered over the side of the ship using the hydrographic
winch which has a 5/16 inch steel wire that attaches to the grab.
When the grab hits the ocean bottom it is designed to snap shut
and grab a sample. Although normally used to pick
up soft sediment, Dan was testing this device for use on an upcoming
cruise (Cruise #3 in Dive and Discover!) to sample the rocks and
biology on the East Pacific Rise crest. After its test run, though,
the grab was brought on board and we found out that the jaws didnt
snap shut. In science, as in life, not everything works perfectly
on its first try. Dan and the ships crew have some ideas
on what happened, or rather didnt happen, and well
see if they can work out the kinks and have better success with
the grab in a few days.
Dive Summary
On Bottom: 0924 hours
Off Bottom: 1537 hours
Maximum Depth: 2508 meters
BLee, Bob, and Gary worked at three high temperature hydrothermal vents and one
low temperature vent. Starting at the south end of the Bio-Geo Transect, a line
of seafloor markers that extends for about 1500 meters in the axial trough, they
went to Tubeworm Pillar, Marker 141 (a low temperature
vent), Io, Ty. At the vents they were able to see
underwater communities teeming with life! They took some samples of hydrothermal
vent fluids at the Tubeworm Pillar using gas-tight bottles for Dr. Marvin Lilley
at the University of Washington and Prof. Karen Von Damm, a geochemist at the
University of New Hampshire. Marv
and Karen have been studying these vents since the 1991 eruption. They also recovered
the temperature probe and a sulfide sample. When we got the probe back we noticed
that there were baby Tevnia tubeworms growing on the handle of the probe!
One surprise in todays dive was that one of
the high temperature vents, Ty, had tumbled over. BLee was able
to locate the temperature probe in the rubble. We will download
the data tomorrow and find out when the chimney fell over.
In addition to taking spectacular digital photos and videos of the vents and
communities of animals around them, they were able to recover some great samples
from the area. They were able to collect some samples of the giant Riftia tubeworms,
mussels, and crabs. They also collected a couple more lava samples, including
a lava pillar just north of the Marker 141 area from a region of sheet flow lava
adjacent to the west wall of the axial trough. All in all a terrific dive and
a great collection of samples!
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