Interviews: Chief Scientist Jim Cochran

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A freshly doused Hans Schouten discusses his dive trip with co-chief scientists Jim Cochran and Dan Fornari.

Question:
What lead up to your carrying out the research you are doing on this cruise?

Jim:
Last year, Dan Fornari and I co-wrote a proposal to the National Science Foundation to combine the capabilities of Alvin, with Dan’s geology experience on the East Pacific Rise and my knowledge of geophysics and gravity to explore the processes at a fast-spreading mid-ocean ridge. Based on the proposal we were awarded a grant from NSF’s Marine Geology and Geophysics Program to come out here and do the geophysical experiments using Alvin.

Jim inspects the grab sampler as it is being prepared for a quick trip down to the bottom of the ocean.
Question:
What do you expect to discover?

Jim:
We are doing research to establish a new technique to take continuous gravity measurement on Alvin while it moves slowly above the seafloor. This is hard to do because when Alvin moves, it accelerates; this affects our gravity measurements. So we have to measure the way the sub moves (up, down and sideways) very accurately and subtract those movements from the gravity measurements we record. We did some early experiments with this technique about 6 years ago using Alvin which gave us very good confidence that it would work and that you could find out important facts about the shallow structure of mid-ocean ridge and processes which form the ocean crust. We want to know if dikes (cooled lava that has filled cracks in the crust) occur only under the spreading center, or if they also occur further away from the axis where the crust has pulled apart and cracked. Since dikes are more dense than lava flows on the seafloor, changes in the pattern of gravity anomalies can help us visualize the structure below the ocean floor.

Question:
What do you like most about your work?

Jim:
I like being independent and being able to work on geophysical research projects that I find interesting. I love discovering new things about the oceans and how plate tectonics works.

Question:
What do you like least about your work?

Jim:
Writing proposals and raising money to do my work. It takes a lot of time away from creative processes and thinking about science. It can be quite frustrating.

Question:
How often do you go to sea?

Jim:
It varies from year to year, but it works out to about once per year, and usually I’m at sea for about a month or so.

Question:
What do you do to have fun?

Jim:
We live in Tappan, not far from New York City. My wife and I like to go there to see the ballet or attend concerts at Carnegie Hall. I am also a Mets fan and get to several baseball games each year. We like to travel and sometimes I can tie this into the work I do by going to foreign countries or fun cities in the US with my wife and family.