The topographic chart that's used to chart the progress of the NeMO CTD Cruise.

Teacher Logbook - R/V Wecoma

Missy Holzer 's Sealog:
CTD Cruise Day 7
Weather at 1630 hours PDT: Overcast skies with winds of 12 knots from the Northwest, and visibility of 4 miles. Barometric pressure is 1024.9 mb, and the temperature is 60 degrees Fahrenheit. Ocean swells are 4 feet out of the Northwest, and the seas are 3 feet out of the Northwest.

It's been a busy week on the R/V Wecoma and the NeMO CTD cruise. Our visit to Axial volcano has kept our feet wet and instrumentation running while we gathered more and more data about hydrothermal vents and the behavior of undersea volcanoes. We keep track of our progress by plotting all of our mooring locations, CTD casts, and tow-yo transects on a color-coded topographic map of the Axial volcano region. After a week of plotting, the map is speckled and striped with all kinds of marks.

After taking about 24 hours to transit to our current location, the week started off with the recovery of 5 moorings from around the Axial volcano vicinity. Numerous strategically placed instruments that included Miniature Autonomous Plume Recorders (MAPR's) and Miniature Temperature Recorders (MTR's) were removed from the mooring lines that extended over 300m up the water column from the ocean floor. A year's worth of data from the instruments will be downloaded while at sea, and then the instruments will be set out again on a new mooring for another year. Our quest this week also included the acquisition of real-time data through the use of 5 tow-yo's and 14 CTD casts in the Axial volcano region. The data from the sampled the plumes revealed that there is still some activity from the 1998 eruption of Axial volcano, but it has declined noticeably since that eruption.

Our work last night came to a halt when the winch that raises and lowers the CTD experienced an electrical short in it's motor. Of course this didn't occur while the CTD was on the fantail of the ship, but it occurred when the CTD was almost 1500m below the surface. The crew worked around the clock to find the problem, resolve the problem, and get the CTD back on deck. The resolution to the problem will be to use a different winch for the balance of the cruise while we deploy and recover the CTD. CTD work will resume this evening after the CTD has been hooked up to the new winch.

A busy week it was, and in more ways than one. For those of us on board that don't go on cruises on a regular basis, this was a week of adjusting to life at sea: learning about sea legs, watches, what to do in our spare time, etc. The work and life out here has almost become routine, but like with what occurred with the winch, work and life out at sea can never really routine. Check online tomorrow to discover what the staff and crew do in their spare time while on board.