Student's Report:
We are Vince Russo and Andy Alvarez. We are two of the Reefdogs selected to cruise on the Ronald Brown with our other four classmates. All of the Reefdogs have been put on a schedule that rotates between departments on the ship.

Today is the second day that we have been working with the science crew and their jobs have been running around the clock for most of the cruise. One of the projects that we have been observing is the recovery of MTR moorings that were moored to the bottom last year. MTR stands for Miniature Temperature Recorder. These recorders are built inside these titanium cylinders that are arranged in a series along the line that is anchored to the bottom. They were placed right in the hydrothermal plume last year and have been recording temperature, current flow rate and direction every 30 minutes since then. Dr. Baker and the ship's crew have been recovering them for the last two days. Each time an old one is recovered, another new one is sent down to spend a lonely year in the Axial Volcano faithfully gathering data for next years discovery. This data is important though. Dr. Baker can use this data to estimate how fast and where the hot water is moving from the vents. It was interesting to see the yellow floats pop up to the surface after they have been down for so long. The floats detach from an anchor (big links of iron chain or old railroad car wheels) after our ship sends a sound message down to an instrument called an acoustic release devise.

Well that is all for today. Tomorrow we will write about our experience with the oceanographers and how they send an 1100 lb. device called a Sea Bird CTD down to the murky depths of the hydrothermal plume.