Events of the past couple of days have kept us very busy and unable to post, for reasons that will become clear shortly. Finally, at last, I am writing again, and for the final time before heading home. Get ready...
March 2009 Archives
The lab breakdown is nearly complete, the boxes are packed, the cruise report nearly done. Almost there! The weather has been so good that we have made unusually excellent time. Consequently, we have had to slow down the ship for...
Yet another birthday among our science party today! We toasted Nina Knab, a postdoctoral researcher in my group, at midnight last night before turning in for the day. When you do seagoing research, it is inevitable that you will be...
We are at the end of our 3rd day of transit to Dakar. This transit is much smoother than our last (two) by far -- we have remarkably calm seas, and many of us are getting our first decent sleep...
After one round-the-pond final tour for final multibeam data (NOT seismics as I wrote the other day with a fried brain -- I'll include an image of multibeam data to show what this looks like) we left the pond and...
I sit covered in mud. Changing clothes has begun to appear futile -- fresh clothes appear to stay so about 15 minutes. I should have brought a jump suit to wear like the deck crew use. None of the science...
Four cores in one day! This is our record, and not likely to be repeated. Tomorrow, we must finish operations at 7 p.m. to begin our transit back. So we are in the final haul to collect as many samples...
Today we continue our coring operations, following a night and an extra morning of heat flow measurements. Heiner Villinger, our chief scientist from Bremen, who doubles as the heat flow guru of our group, has been very patient with us...
I take only a few minutes here to jot down notes -- remember that great sampling I was talking about yesterday? As the data rolled in, things went from great to greater. We have evidence to support the hypothesis...
As of now, everything else we get is gravy. We hit basement in a warm zone! Woo hoo! Top that off with a T-bone steak for lunch. Life is good! Seriously, I do hope that we find more warm spots...
They aren't really that high. Mainly because of the fact that since we are done steaming at full speed, the boat is comparatively stable. I won't complain about that! This morning I write briefly before going to help retrieve core...