Dispatches from Sea >>
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| March 2007 |  Laura Preston, educator, UNH/Salem High School, Salem, NH. |
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| April 2007 | |||||||
March 31 – April 1, 2007
This floating laboratory rocks 24/7!
We go north, then we turn and come south, then north, and turn, and come south again (kind of like mowing the lawn)! We are making a grid of data lines that will eventually make a map of the seafloor. Since the sonar is mapping away, today was spent in a variety of ways for each of us.
 Jim Varnum “drives” the sonar. |
 Steve Gegg navigates. |
 Scott White is watch director. |
 Chico and Scott Hansen drive together. |
 Annie Zaino logs data. |
Jess Mason and I got our certificate for the “Rock Sawing for Beginners” course, and took a pet rock with us! We all are learning this fine art, because when the Jason ROV is launched in a few days and samples start coming to the surface, many rocks will need to be cut into more manageable sizes for analysis in the lab.
 The mighty rock saw! |
 Learning to cut. |
 Jess shows off her sample. |
 “The rocks are our friends, class.” |
Dorsey Wanless and Allison Fundis made benckmark markers that will be placed at the northern EPR for future reference.
 Working on the site markers. |
After a sonar watch, Annie Zaino created superb dinosaur models from the surf wax leftover from coring the other night! Wow Annie, perhaps something to fall back on if this geology thing doesn’t work out?
 Annie Zaino and her pet dinos. |
During our science meeting, Liz Goehring gave an excellent presentation on the FLEXE project, an education outreach program for the Ridge 2000 research program. FLEXE stands for From Local to Extreme Environments (http://flexe.psu.edu/) and is one of four new projects of the GLOBE web-based science education program (http://www.glove.gov). Members of our science party are working with the FLEXE team during this pilot to help middle school students understand deep-sea temperature data.
 Liz fields questions from Adam Soule and Emily Klein, chief scientist. |
 Todd Ericksen and Liz discuss the thermocline. |
And….remember those MAPR’s? Check out Sarah Carmichael in the lab retrieving data from the fluids near the ocean bottom. These data include temperature, pressure, and optical (particulate matter) measures in the water column. The measures can indicate the location of plumes from vents, and are key to finding new hydrothermal vents, which is what Dr. Karen Von Damm hopes we will find!
 Sarah retrieves MAPR data. |
The pictures from the Tow Cam are interesting. I’ve never seen anything like them before.
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 Dan Fornari and Emily Klein confer over recent data acquisition. |
 Another beautiful sunset. |
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