The first time out at sea, we hold no expectations. Anything could happen. We learn to walk different and sleep, when we can, with the motion of the waves and sounds of machinery. For many of the students on board, this is their first experience at sea on a research expedition.

“Here I am, south of the equator near the Galápagos, looking at volcanoes - my main thing in geology,” Steve Volpe says. “I’m in part of the world I’ve never seen before. It’s all very exciting.” The only hard part was the first day, when Steve was still finding his sea legs.

Ben Grosser knew he didn’t need to worry about getting seasick. At 21, he’s flown airplanes, sailed small boats and traveled around the Outer Banks of North Carolina on 300-foot ferries without any motion sickness, but always within sight of shore. “I was curious what it would be like not to see land,” he says.

So was Jeremy Haney. “I’m from northern Idaho where we have a lot of mountains,” Jeremy says. “Out here, it’s really flat. When we were crossing from Costa Rica to the Galápagos you couldn’t see anything, no land in any direction, it was a lot different. It made me feel kind of small.”

When working on land we are in direct contact with the terrain, and the geology - we can see it, touch it, smell it. The ocean is a different realm.

“On the ocean there are more opportunities for surprises,” Rob Otto says. On land you have aerial photos. On the ocean you’re looking at the same stuff only covered by water.”

To see and touch the submarine rocks is difficult. It takes writing a research proposal, developing a hypothesis to test and, finally, getting the chance to go out to sea. Now, with our round-the-clock dredging, we are holding Galápagos seafloor lava in our hands.

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