During the transit...


A packed house for the finals of the ping pong tournament.
Luan Nguyen squares off against Tim Kane.
Following the successful completion of our program, we are transiting ~3000 km to port in Kodiak, Alaska.   This trip took us back across the date line and along the Aleutian Islands and Alaska Peninsula, where we were treated to glimpses of distant, rugged mountains shrouded in clouds. Our newly collected data has kept us very busy. The long trip enabled us to complete onboard processing of seismic and bathymetric data, discuss initial observations from the data and share our preliminary results with the rest of the Langseth’s crew.  We are seeing all kinds of interesting and unexpected things in the data.  We may even get close to completing the cruise report before we come into port, which would a minor miracle.

Mei Liu and her model OBS
But the transit has also given us a chance for some recreation now that our main data collection duties are finished.  The frequency and intensity of bridge games and dance lessons has picked up.  Some of the science party are learning Chinese. We’re designing a cruise t-shirt.  Some other impressive, recreational projects are underway, including the construction of a miniature model of an OBS using spare OBS parts.  And – we’re having a ping pong tournament.  You might not think that ping pong would be the best game to play at sea.  The ship is rolling, a non-standard table in a cramped space is normally used, and there are a zillion places for a ping pong ball to get lost. However, it is the classic sport aboard ships!  After a week of intense competition, the finals took place tonight.  The match pitted Tim Kane (WHOI), reigning champion from our previous cruise, against newcomer Luan Nguyen (Rice).  It was a hard fought and close match, and Luan was ultimately victorious.   Now that the ping pong tournament is finished, I guess we are ready to come into port.  We should arrive tomorrow afternoon!

Donna Shillington
LDEO

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Emperors among us

Image
The main lab's view of the last seismic reflection data being collected. Overseeing  them are  drawings of Emperor Jimmu and Empress Suiko. Finishing the seismic reflection acquisition part of our experiment, we find ourselves south of Jimmu Guyot and near Suiko Guyot. The term ‘guyot’ refers to a flat top seamount that was first named by Harry Hess, a pioneer in developing our current understanding of plate tectonics. These features have a similar morphology to the plateaus found in the Western United States with both having a flat terrain on top that is raised above with surrounding areas often by steep slopes. The Hawaii-Emperor Seamount Chain is a great example of the formation of guyots along volcanic chains. Active volcanism is found on the youngest in the chain, currently at the Big Island of Hawaii which sits atop the central Hawaiian hotspot, a small spot in the plate that fuels the volcano from great depths. As the Pacific Plate slowly but steadily moves to t...
Read more

Unspooling seismic streamer

Image
Dan Sousa, LDEO, carrying a 'bird,' which is used to control streamer depth. The streamer reel is in the background. Having finished the deployment of 70 OBS on the seafloor, we spent ~20 hours deploying the other key parts of the seismic gear for our project: a seismic “streamer” and a seismic source.   Seismic streamers are long cables filled with closely spaced hydrophones, which detect small pressure changes associated with passing sound waves.   The streamer for our program is ~10 miles long! It is stored on large reels, which unspool the streamer off the back of the ship and into the water. As we deploy the streamer into the ocean, we attach equipment to it that is used to control the depth of the streamer beneath the sea surface and determine its location behind the ship, which is very important for such a long cable.   The depth controllers have wings that can be pivoted to dive the streamer deeper or bring it shallower, so they are affectionately...
Read more

Thank you thank you thank you

Image
On June 1, we arrived in port in Kodiak, Alaska, marking the end of our expedition. Kodiak greeted us with spectacular vistas of mountains and lush green hills. It’s not called the Emerald Isle for nothing!   Views of Kodiak on our way into port Despite a late departure and some rough weather, it was an enormously successful trip. We collected a suite of fabulous datasets that will help us understand the formation of this 6000-km-long chain of volcanos that have formed across the Pacific plate over the last 80 million years.   Many mysteries remain about the water-covered parts of our planet, particularly in remote regions like our study area, despite the fact that they host truly gigantic structures. Jimmu Seamount is nearly as tall as Denali, the tallest mountain in North America, and much more massive!     Comparison of bathymetry across Jimmu Seamount and elevation across Denali Collecting data that enables us to unr...
Read more