Cruise diary
Day 3: Wednesday 7 March - Passage to sample area
Position at midnight: 24º20N, 25º29WThe morning watch was quiet with scientists mostly concentrating on setting up computing equipment as well as making records of the ship’s position and speed, and other important readings. At about 02.00GMT depth profile data showed that we were passing over an elevated area, which may have been a submerged volcano, or seamount. The second watch continued with the recordings and observed the XBT deployment, this instrument measures the sound velocity profile, similarly to the SVP we used yesterday. The XBT has the advantage of being used whilst the ship is in motion whereas the SVP requires the ship to stop.
We spent much of the afternoon marvelling and being slightly bemused by the huge media coverage our cruise is attracting from the worlds media. Our three leading scientists Roger, Chris and Bram have been fielding phone calls and interview requests all day, just to mention a few articles…..CNN, Science American.com, Caribbean News, The Times, The Taipei Times, and the list goes on! There appears to have been some crossed wires along the way as to what the science of the cruise is, primarily that there is a gaping hole in the ocean crust, as exciting as that would be, in fact the upper layers of the ocean crust are missing leaving the lower oceanic crust units and mantle rocks exposed at the seafloor. We have also received hundreds of questions through the website so please bear with us as we work through them all, unfortunately we won't be able to answer all of them as much as we would like to. On behalf of all the scientific team we would like to thank everyone who has wished us good luck and a safe journey - so far it seems to be working!
The day ended with some dolphin watching off the aft deck.
Quote of the Day:
Jack to Kay: “Keep us in suspenders until tomorrow!”
Cruise diary
Day 6: Saturday 10 March - Passage to sampling area
Position at midnight: 18º40N, 37º04W
Michelle writes:The main task for this morning was to test the rock drill operated by the British Geological Survey (BGS) team (Dave, Davie, Iain and Mike). This involved stopping the ship and lowering the drill into the water until it was submerged under 20m of water. The BGS team checked that the pumps and the communication system were operating correctly, both of which worked fine. The ship was back on course again within 2 hours.
At our afternoon seminar the issue of the watches was raised and it was suggested that the current system of 12 on - 12 hours off was causing some of the team to miss too many meals. After much discussion we decided to change to a 4hrs on-8hrs off watch pattern with Roger, Chris MacLeod and myself on watch 8-12, Jack, Sam and Chris Mallows on 12-4 and Bram and Kay 4-8.
During the evening the crew hosted a barbeque on the aft deck for everyone on board. Despite Sam being left in charge of the BBQ for 5 minutes and cremating the first batch of burgers, the evening was very enjoyable and made a nice break into the (never-ending?!) passage to the sampling area.
Unluckily for the 12midnight -4am shift the clocks went back again to GMT-3 and they had to endure another hour to their shift!
Lowering the rock drill into the water...Splashdown!
http://www.noc.soton.ac.uk/gg/classroom@sea/JC007/diary/diary_10-03.html
