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A Day at Sea

Posted on May 29, 2018
by Kristen Fauria
Image_1 IMG_0477 Image_2 20180517_171509
We wave good-bye to Mark Kurz as he boards Alvin on the first dive while Adam Soule waits his turn to board the sub. (photo by Kristin. Fauria)
Sentry launch is always supervised by the ship’s Bosun, Patrick Hennessy, (photo by Mark Kurz)
Harry Brodsky, Emma McCully, Sarah Ashby, and Emmanuel Codillo examine a rock brought up by Alvin. (photo by Kristin. Fauria)
Swimmers Ryan Dahlberg and Drew Bewley talk with the Alvin pilot from outside the sub during recovery while Carl Wood, Amy Biddle, and Jim McGill stand by in the small boat. (photo by Kristin Fauria)

It has been almost two weeks since we left port in Bermuda. For me, it took about a week (the entire transit), to adjust to life at sea. Four days after being on the ship I would still wake up in the morning, get out bed, and fall over, caught off guard by the rocking motion.

Now that we are on-site and are diving Alvin and Sentry every day, ship life has become routine—at least as routine as sending a human-occupied submarine and a robotic underwater vehicle 2.5 miles below the ocean surface each day can be.

The mornings begin with Alvin launch. At 8:00 a.m., Alvin goes in the water with a pilot and two science observers. We watch as our friends climb into the sub, are craned overboard, untethered from the ship, and bob in the water for several minutes before starting their descent to the bottom.

After launch, the remaining science team gets busy. We process the rocks and sediment from the previous day’s dive, edit photos and video from the sub, plot Sentry maps, and plan and discuss the next day’s dive. It takes the whole team to make the science possible.

Alvin returns to the surface around 5:00 p.m. each day. The recovery is as impressive as the launch and we welcome our colleagues back on board with handshakes, smiles, and questions about what they found. Alvin brings back treasures, too—a basket full of rocks and sediment. We treat the rocks with care because they are key to testing hypotheses about the origin and extent of “popping rocks” and, perhaps, to understanding how much carbon dioxide is in Earth’s mantle.

Sentry, an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) that creates high-resolution maps of the seafloor, is launched around 6:30 p.m. During the night, Sentry cruises close to the seafloor as it sends and receives acoustic pings that allow it to determine precise distances to the bottom. Shortly after dawn each morning, Sentry is brought back on the ship and delivers its payload—unmatched measurements of seafloor bathymetry and topography.

Breakfast marks the completion of a 24-hour cycle and our routine begins again. Alvin goes back in the water. Sentry data becomes a map that allows us to identify previously unknown hills, ridges, basins, and craters. Rocks collected the previous day pop (or don’t).

Our routine is exciting because each day we make discoveries. In the evenings, the day’s Alvin observers share what they found and we debate where to go next. As a result of our daily cycle, the science becomes dynamic. We plan each dive, in part, based on what was revealed in the previous one. And, two by two, we get to personally visit the seafloor.

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About this expedition: Popping rocks revisited

We will be using the research vessel Atlantis, the submersible Alvin, and the autonomous underwater vehicle Sentry, to find and collect samples of “popping rocks”—basaltic seafloor lavas that contain large amounts of carbon dioxide and other gases trapped in high-pressure bubbles that pop when the rocks are brought to the surface. We intend to use these rocks to understanding the composition and origin of gases in the deep earth. This project began with an expedition in 2016 that was cut short due to mechanical problems. You can still see blog posts from the first trip here, and we will continue adding to them during the 2018 expedition.

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