Just after breakfast, Jason and Medea were lowered for the first time over the stern of the KM for an engineering test and rock-collecting dive. The operation to lower both bodies into the water without colliding with each other and the ship is one of ballerina precision on the part of the tag team on the quarterdeck, the Jason crane, the A-frame and the ship. Every swell made me nervous that Jason would be pushed right under the hull as Medea, attached to Jason by an electrical umbilical cord, was being lowered towards him. Everyone performed their pirouettes gracefully and Jason and Medea were soon on their descent to Ka’ena Ridge.
In the morning, Roger explained to all of us in the lab a phenomenon which HOT cruises have observed at Station Aloha involving unexpected changes in temperature and current at the bottom of the ocean, which they call cold events. Water coming from the South Pacific traveling north passes around the east side of the Big Island and follows the contour of the Hawaiian Islands to Oahu. Before this water mass reaches Station Aloha, it fills two depressions in the sea floor called the Maui and Kauai Deep. The cold events occur when enough cold water has built up in the Maui Deep to spill over the sill to the northwest into the Kauai Deep. As a result of this bathymetry, one can periodically see cold water and increased current at the bottom of the ocean at Station Aloha, which is exactly what the cabled observatory intends to observe.
Later in the morning and most of the afternoon, I helped Dave to make a second protective cover for the ADP. Jefrey designed this cover, an upside-down trash can, to remain attached to the platform while the observatory is descending but be able to be released by Jason once the observatory is in place. To enable this, he strung two bungee cords through the trashcan with loops at the ends that a metal bar held together under the platform. With this setup, Jason can tug on the loop at the end of the metal bar to release the bungees, then pull off the trashcan by the handle at the top. All the plastic parts will either remain on the observatory or be carried up by Jason.
When not making small edits to the observatory, I spent a lot of time in the lab watching the live feed of Jason’s HD pilot camera on the big screen television. I found it as engaging as some people do televised sports games, staring at the manipulation arm as it searches for the geologists’ favorite rocks. It took several attempts to grab a rather stubborn specimen and the whole room cheered as Jason dislodged it and placed it into his basket. Along the survey line over Ka’ena Ridge, Jason skims over the largely rocky bottom happening upon sponges, whip corals, mysteriously mobile white fluffs and the occasional scuttling red shrimp or crab. As Dave described it, it is like watching the Discovery Channel except unedited and live.
At about 2100, Jason was done collecting rocks and swam back to the KM to rest for the night. Similar to the process by which Jason and Medea were lowered over the stern this morning, they were brought up one by one and Jason’s baskets were unloaded of their rocks. Donning gloves, I helped the geologists place their samples in their labeled positions in the lab. As a reward, they let me kept the tiny white echinoderm caught in the basket of sample number twelve.
M&M tally: half a bag of peanut ones. I was doing so well, about to reach for an apple, when Justin opened up a bag of peanut M&M’s to share with the table. Later Dave, who I thought was on my side, tricked me into eating the last two M&M’s in his bag. Tomorrow is a purely apples day.
No comments:
Post a Comment