Toss the bucket list overboard; I’ve no need for it anymore. I’m fairly certain that nothing on that list could match manipulating Jason’s left arm. As of 0630 this morning that experience has been checked off the list. While passing over a particularly bland patch of seafloor on the geology survey Akel, the pilot, asked if anyone one would like to try their hand at running Jason’s hand. A little shocked that this was even an option, I didn’t respond so Deb, a geologist who shares my watch, went first. Anxiously, I waited at my DVD labeling station until it was my turn. “Does anyone else want to try?” Yes. The controller for the arm is a mini replica of the arm itself that the pilot holds with two hands. One hand operates the shoulders and elbow, the other controls the wrists – that’s right, Jason has not one but two wrists – the claw, and the on/off switch. It was harder than I had thought – possibly because of the two wrists but more likely because of the millions of M&M’s worth of titanium resting in my hand. At first I just swung the arm back and forth out in front of Jason, trying to stay away from anything I could break. I attempted to make him dance but the disco takes more coordination than I could muster and doing the robot meant, well, just being himself. Then I tried the more daring move of picking something up from the basket. I went for the color palette, which Akel assured me was already broken so I couldn’t harm it further. Like a blind contour drawing, you have to trust that your hand is doing the right thing as you stare at three different camera angles trying to calculate the depth field. My first try: a swing and a miss. My second try: a success. I inched the palette out of basket and quickly put it back down. Having performed this task without breaking Jason’s arm, I decided to quit before I did. I stowed the arm in defensive position and handed it back over the guys who rip rocks out of the seafloor, stow them in labeled baskets, unscrew shackles and plug in connectors, grasp small loops of twine with expensive equipment dangling from them all while controlling the rest of the vehicle too. Maybe someday they’ll learn to disco.
After my stint at the helm of Jason’s left arm, the seafloor became rocky again and the geologists became excited. From standing watch with them, I have come to understand why geologists are so picky. To me, all the lumpy mounds at the bottom of the ocean appear the same. Why not just pick one up every few hundred meters and call it a survey? Because picking up any old rock and analyzing it doesn’t guarantee that those rock characteristics originated in that location. Rocks can be relocated by current or come tumbling down the side of the ridge by gravity. So the geologists look for outcroppings on the ridge of rock solidly connected to the topography. Of course, this makes it harder for Jason to collect these unwilling rock samples but it guarantees for the geologists the original location of the rock. We picked up several rocks and almost got a spiny pair of crabs as the ridge became shallower. The dive ended at 0730 and Jason and Medea arrived on deck shortly after. With several pounds of rocks to unload from Jason’s baskets, the geologists employed my assistance again, and again rewarded me for my efforts. This time I received two pieces of sponge from the side of Ka’ena Ridge.
In the rock lab, once the rocks were all laid out and drying under heat lamps, the rock team began their processing. This started with measuring and describing the samples, then came “The Slinging Mud Show” in which Doug sawed the rocks in half to reveal their insides. Water and rock particles abounded so he wore an apron. During the many years that these rocks have spent at the bottom of the ocean, manganese has built up on their exterior making each rock look like the same coarse black blob in different shapes and sizes. In reality, each rock is slightly, or in some cases wildly, different. “Like truffles,” Doug says, slicing them in half shows you the true flavor of the rock. In most cases you can see a difference in color immediately from the black manganese to the green or brown or grey insides. What the geologists hope to find on the inside of the rock are glass chards because they offer a quick form of analysis. Analyzing the samples that they collect on this cruise in full will last them a couple years.
Over lunch, John was explaining to me his hypothesis for Ka’ena Ridge’s formation and the purpose for his research on this cruise. Ka’ena Ridge juts off of the northwest point of Oahu about 1000 m under the sea at its peak. Many have considered it to be a distal extension of the Waianae volcano on Oahu but John says that there are reasons to believe otherwise – to believe that it was a volcano all of its own. From the research conducted on this cruise John and his team hope to find evidence pointing one way or the other. When I asked him if it was too early to tell, he said it would take a lot more age and composition analysis of the rocks to determine whether they’re related to Waianae or not. So the geology dives will continue while things are straightened out for ACO at Makaha.
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