NeMO July 27, 2001

Logbook: July 27, 2001

Brown: Instruments everywhere
Wecoma: Mapping the plumes of Cleft
Teacher logbooks: Elevators and engines
Perspective today: Susan Merle, Research Assistant

Science News | Teacher At Sea | Participant Perspective

Cruise Calendar

July-August 2001

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Science News

NOAA Ship Ron Brown - ROV Cruise

image of crab & traps, click for full story

ROPOS dive 629 involved extensive use of the elevator mooring to get equipment and samples down to the seafloor and back up again. Most of the elevator cargo was larval traps and settling arrays, which are both tools used to investigate how vent animals colonize new sites. Larval traps collect animal larvae that is floating by in the water, whereas the setting arrays collect larvae after they have settled out of the water, attach themselves to a substrate, and start to grow into juveniles. More...

R/V Wecoma - CTD Cruise

Even flying over an ocean basin drained and dry you might not recognize the largest volcano on the planet. Some volcanic features would be instantly recognizable--the cone-shaped Hawaiian volcanoes rise from the Pacific Ocean floor to thousands of meters above the level of our vanished sea surface. But volcanoes that look like volcanoes account for only a small fraction of the total amount of lava erupted each year from deep below the earth's crust. More...

Teacher Logbooks

NOAA Ship Ron Brown - Jeff Goodrich

Deploying and recovering instruments from the ocean floor is no easy task. It takes many skilled people and a lot of ingenuity. The science party brought along two PMEL engineers, Chris Meinig and Nick Delich, who perform a multitude of tasks while on board and in the office (where they design and test the instruments needed for research cruises). The engineers are assisted by Bruce Cowden, the chief bosun, and the ROPOS crew while preparing the instruments for deployment and recovery. Their biggest challenge thus far was to overload an aluminum-rail elevator three times its maximum load, deploy it, sink it, unload it, load it back up, release it from the bottom, and recover it all during daylight hours.
More...

R/V Wecoma - Missy Holzer

Staying on your toes (figuratively!) is one of the requirements of being out at sea: aware of your surroundings on board as well as in the ocean. Lately if it weren't for an alert crew, the "fish" and all it's instruments would have jettisoned to the depths numerous times due to a problematic winch. The engineers and deck crew are responsible for maintaining the performance of the equipment on board the R/V Wecoma, where troubleshooting during a crisis is in their realm of expertise. More...

Participant Perspective

Interview with Susan Merle
Geological Research Assistant - Oregon State University/NOAA

Jeff G: Haven't you been going to sea for quite some time now?

Susan: I've been out of school for ten years and over that time period I've been on close to 30 cruises. I've spent about two of the last ten years of my life at sea. Only about ten of those cruises were for research. The rest were with private industry where I was cruised all over the world doing side-scan sonar and bathymetry surveys, mainly to provide information needed to lay fiber-optic cables. One of the first times I went to sea we were offshore Guam looking at the shoreline and palm trees. I turned to one of the other data processors and said, "Oh my god, isn't this just so beautiful." He turned to me and said, "It's an island. All islands look the same from a boat." It kind of gets that way after a while. I'm a little tired from the four cruises this summer. We did the first survey in early June. I just want to go home and see my garden, sip wine with my good friend David and pet my cat, Big Handsome Boy. More...