Dark Life II
Expedition to Study Subseafloor Life at Deep-Sea Vents
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Dark Life 2014

Looking Back—and Ahead

Posted by Stefan Sievert 
· Tuesday, November 25th, 2014 
at the dock in Puntarenas

At the dock in Puntarenas, Costa Rica

Here we are, back in port. This time in Puntarenas, Costa Rica. This brings our adventure of studying Dark Life at the depth of the ocean to an end. It has been a very successful and productive cruise, with some downs and many ups.

We have experienced great teamwork, with scientists, crew, SSSG, and the Alvin group all working hand in hand to make things possible. This is my fourth cruise as chief scientist on Atlantis, and I continue to be impressed by the work ethic of the ship’s crew, SSSG, and the Alvin group. Without their hard work and skills, we scientists would not get the samples we need to carry out our research, and this is greatly appreciated.

The expedition science group in front of the Alvin hangar

The expedition science group in front of the Alvin hangar

There are different ways to become part of seagoing research, as reflected in the contributions to the blog by various cruise members. This expedition also brought together people with different backgrounds and from different cultures, and everyone learned from each other. New friendships were forged.

During our time on station we had a total of 14 dives with Alvin, allowing 10 scientists to dive in Alvin for the first time. Many have shared this experience with you on this blog, and their accounts are as different as their backgrounds: Wonderful testaments that give you a glimpse of what it means to see parts of the ocean only few will ever see.

Two of the dives of the dive program were dedicated to exploring for hydrothermal venting off-axis. We did not find it, but that in itself is an important piece of information: We know now that there is no active hydrothermal venting where we might have expected it based on geophysical data. The search continues, and dating of the rocks we collected might still reveal evidence for relatively recent eruptions that have occurred off-axis.

All our dives brought back a treasure trove of samples, most notably hydrothermal fluids for various analyses—including the geochemistry, measurements to determine the activities of microbes, and growing microbes under defined conditions in the lab—as well as a large number of tube worms to study the physiology and biochemistry of the symbionts living inside them. Besides analyzing the tube worms as they came up from the ocean depth, others were re-pressurized on board the ship in a sophisticated experimental set-up to study their response to different environmental conditions.

The Vent-SID group (Nuria Fernandez Gonzalez, Jeremy Rich, Craig Taylor, and Stefan Sievert) in front of the instrument they tested at sea for the first time

The Vent-SID group (Nuria Fernandez Gonzalez, Jeremy Rich, Craig Taylor, and Stefan Sievert) in front of the instrument they tested at sea for the first time

In addition, we successfully deployed and tested the Vent-SID, a major accomplishment. For the first time, we performed incubations to measure rates of chemosynthesis in situ, meaning right at the seafloor and at the temperature of the venting fluids. This represents a major step forward in the way we study these ecosystems, by allowing us to get more realistic estimates of the overall productivity occurring in them, similar to what is routinely done in the sunlit layers of the upper ocean by measuring photosynthesis.

All of us are now eager to return home to be with our families and friends, but also to start processing the samples we obtained on this expedition, and to analyze the resulting data. Much work remains to be done in the coming months. We thank you for following along with us on our cruise and hope that you enjoyed learning about our work.

The Ocean: A Love Story

Posted by Nuria Fernandez Gonzalez 
· Tuesday, November 25th, 2014 
ocean

(courtesy Nuria Fernandez Gonzalez)

I am going to tell you a story—a love story. We are old friends, the kind who have known one another since childhood. Back then, we met only once per year during summer holidays, enough to forge a friendship that has lasted since then.

I have to admit that as I grew up and my interests turned around, our ties become looser and looser until few years ago, when my life made one of it periodic shifts. One of the implications of being a scientist is that you get to travel a lot and change the place you call home quite frequently. After my Ph.D., I moved to the U.S. to work at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, across the street from WHOI, where we reunited, as he was part of the research group I joined.

Although we never worked together then, we spent four summers and three winters side by side, time that allowed us to better know each other. We become close friends. As usually happens, I didn’t realize how much I enjoyed his company until it was too late. A year ago I had to move again, as I was starting a new position at Brown University. Although we are not so far away from each other, I missed our everyday encounters right away.

But who knows if destiny exists because even though now we seldom see each other, we interact indirectly during my work at Brown. This has allowed me to realize that he is full of surprises, and my enthusiasm about him and all his secrets has grown lately. However, it has been during this cruise that I finally have fallen in love with the Ocean.

This cruise is full of first-timers, but I beat them all. For me, this has been the first time I enrolled on a ship, slept on a ship, lost sight of land, and saw only water day after day for weeks. I had to learn how to defeat seasickness while working hard at the same time. I became familiar with the ship’s murmurs and terminology, which is English at Foreign Language level 10000. I have loved it all. But what makes a trip like this so unique is the people on it, from crewmembers to my already familiar colleges. An oceanographic cruise is only possible because of a huge team effort, and it has been great to become part of it.

KT bob nuria

Microbiologist KT Scott, pilot Bob Waters, and postdoctoral researcher Nuria Fernandez Gonzalez in Alvin

Being out here has been an incredible opportunity to better know the Ocean. And for that, there is nothing like a dive in Alvin. The inside of the sphere is quite similar to the Apollo spacecraft you can see in the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, a tiny space full of buttons but without seats.

A ride in Alvin is actually quite peaceful, and the views are spectacular. At first, what shocked me most was how full of life the Ocean is regardless of what I have read about him being mostly a blue dessert. The dive started with an unexpected visit from a manta ray that hung out with us for a little bit. It was impressive to see her flying around the sub over and over with curiosity.

tube worm garden

A garden of tube worms and mussels at a seafloor vent (courtesy Stefan Sievert, ©WHOI)

During the descent, the lights from bioluminescent organisms accompanied us all the way down except at the depths of the oxygen minimum zone, where we were completely surrounded by the dark. But even that cannot prepare you for the explosion of diversity in the vents. I felt like we were entering a subaquatic garden where the dominants colors were white, red and yellow. Later that day, once I was back on Atlantis, I looked at the Ocean with a new awareness of his enormousness and importance for the whole planet. In that very same moment I knew that this was my first but not last cruise, as now my heart has been stolen by the deep blue sea.

Meanwhile, Back in the Labs…

Posted by Jen Barone 
· Monday, November 24th, 2014 

We’ve brought you a lot of the action of Alvin’s launches, dives, and recoveries out on deck and on the seafloor. Now that the sub has made its last dive of the expedition and we’re headed back to shore, it seems like a fitting time to peek in on a few of the projects in the ship’s labs.

jeff

Jeff Seewald prepares to analyze the chemistry of vent fluid from an IGT sampler.

One big push has focused on the analysis of vent fluids and their associated microbes collected in the IGTs, or Isobaric Gas-Tight samplers, developed by geochemist Jeff Seewald. The samplers maintain vent fluids at the immense pressure of the deep sea, so gases remain dissolved in solution. Jeff and research associate Sean Sylva have been analyzing the chemistry of the vent fluids from the IGTs, and graduate students Jesse McNichol, Sayaka Mino, and Stefan Dyksma have been analyzing the microbes in the fluids to determine how active they are.

The IGT team (Camila Negrão Signori, Sean Sylva, Jesse McNichol, Sayaka Mino, Jeff Seewald, and Florian Goetz) with their samplers

donato and fengping

Donato Giovannelli (left) and Fengping Wang collect microbial samples from a vent chimney.

Another arm of the ship’s labwork has focused on processing samples of microbes collected on colonizers deployed at the vents and from the vent chimneys that Alvin has brought back. Postdoc Donato Giovannelli and microbiologist Fengping Wang are among those preserving samples of the microbes for analysis of their genetic material and metabolism back on shore.

tjorven and horst

Tjorven Hinzke (left) and Horst Felbeck dissect a tube worm so they can analyze its symbiotic microbes.

And all those giant tube worms Alvin collected? Some of them made their way to marine biologist Horst Felbeck and graduate student Tjorven Hinzke in the “slice and dice” lab, where the pair have been dissecting the worms and preserving samples of the symbiotic microbes that live inside them. On shore, they’ll analyze the proteins that the microbes produce to determine what kinds of biochemical reactions they use to make food for their hosts through the process of chemosynthesis.

Another batch of the worms ended up in the pressure van, where microbiologist KT Scott, technician Jennifer Delaney, and graduate students Juliana Leonard, Jessica Panzarino, and Jonathan Sanders have been incubating them at high pressure with different environmental conditions. By analyzing water chemistry before seawater enters the worms’ pressure vessels and after it comes out, they’re studying what substances the worms are using and how the animals metabolize them. This will help them understand how the worms adapt to different conditions at the vents.

A tube worm peeks out of a pressure vessel (to the extent that a creature without eyes can peek).

A tube worm peeks out of a pressure vessel (to the extent that a creature without eyes can peek).

Jon Sanders and Juliana Leonard at work in the pressure van, where tube worms are incubated at the high pressure of their deep-sea home.

Jon Sanders and Juliana Leonard at work in the pressure van, where tube worms are incubated at the high pressure of their deep-sea home.

Studying the Sea in Style

Posted by Jen Barone 
· Monday, November 24th, 2014 

I must be honest, readers: Fashion is not my beat. But it’s widely agreed here aboard the Atlantis that our very own Horst Felbeck is currently the best-dressed marine scientist in the eastern Pacific, and possibly the world. His wardrobe celebrates the biological (especially his beloved tube worms), the astronomical, and the plain old psychedelic. I feel it’s my journalistic duty to share it with you.

Feast your eyes upon the many T-shirts of Horst Felbeck:

(For a slideshow, click on the first image and scroll through.)



(with Tjorven Hinzke)


Exploring in Alvin

Posted by Avery Lee 
· Sunday, November 23rd, 2014 
Avery in the sphere during his Alvin dive

Avery Lee in the sphere during his Alvin dive

Since third grade, I aspired to be a geologist. In middle school, I was exposed to hydrothermal vents and the remarkable ecosystems they hosted. From then on I knew what I wanted to focus on. While it was a dream of mine, I never really knew when the time would come that I would have the opportunity study and research them. Fortunately for me I was attending a university with Professor Scott White who not only dedicates his research to marine geology but was willing to let me get in on the action as an undergraduate. Now, instead of going to the local library throughout middle and high school to learn about hydrothermal vents and dedicating every project possible to them, I was working on a research project to further our understanding of the distribution of hydrothermal chimneys. A couple of years later, I am aboard Atlantis on my first cruise, hearing the hatch shut on the Alvin submersible that I had read stories about as a teenager.

pillow basalt

pillow basalt (image ©WHOI)

I did not have much idea of what to expect for my dive, with good reason. No one had ever been to where we were going, nearly 2,700 meters below the surface. This made me nervous, because to do my part I would have to describe things I had never seen or seen only in pictures. From various sources I knew I would see something reminiscent of volcanic activity, likely covered by sediment. As we approached the seafloor I saw pillow basalts (large round tubes of rock shaped like a dollop of toothpaste on a toothbrush) that looked as if they had just been snowed on with sediment. Just as with snow, you could see only what was poking out above the layer of sediment. But as we got closer I saw objects on the basalt and sediment, and some of them were moving! There was a community of organisms slowly going about their business in their surprising pink, orange, red, purple, and white colors.

As all these things sank in, I began to comprehend what I was seeing as time. Fresh basalt would not have had time to accumulate sediment or organisms. What I was seeing was time elapsed from when the lava erupted. In geologic time, eruptions are very brief events with destructive potential. I was seeing not only a snapshot of the aftermath of such an event but its transition to a remote habitat for life. Many features in geology have existed for tens, hundreds, thousands, or millions of times the length of our life spans. In my short time as an undergrad, I have visited numerous sites of geologic features that formed millions of years ago. Despite holding rocks and fossils that represent them, time had never struck me the way it did in the first few moments of seeing the seafloor from Alvin. Maybe it was the mystery of not knowing the date of the flows and having no way of knowing how long it takes for sediment to accumulate.

Come time to start recording what I was seeing, I was at a loss for words and had no idea where to begin. There were all these animals I didn’t know the names for. Majoring in marine science and geology, I found everything about the dive fascinating. I had to remind myself that I was wearing my geology hat and had to focus on describing what I was seeing and any changes in terrain.

Avery (right) gets into Alvin before his launch, with his adviser Scott White close behind

Everything about my dive was spectacular and included all sorts of new experiences. From moving up steep hills of pillow basalts to investigating craters, stumbling upon a lava collapse, and passing over a fissure, too… It was a real adventure. Along with the sediment, the pale, ghost-like, slow moving fish with open-jaw expressions gave the dive a sunken-ship-turned-artificial-reef feel. There was more life than I expected; many of the animals I saw were doing the opposite of what I would anticipate. I saw polychaete worms swimming through the water, a motionless octopus perched in the open sediment, and mostly stationary brittle stars taking off with surprising speed as we took sediment cores. The whole dive was like visiting another world.

I’d like to thank the crew, the Alvin team, and the scientists for an eye-opening experience. A special thanks to Scott White for bringing me along for this unbelievable opportunity.

Geophysicist Scott White, pilot Bruce Strickrott, and Avery Lee during their Alvin dive

Scott White (left), pilot Bruce Strickrott (center), and Avery Lee during their Alvin dive

 

 

 

And Now, a Word From the Bridge

Posted by Max Kantor 
· Sunday, November 23rd, 2014 
the bridge of the Atlantis

The bridge of the Atlantis in daylight (highly recommended for a first-time visit)

Walking onto the bridge of the Atlantis at midnight may be a bit overwhelming at first, particularly if you have not visited during the day or the giant cup of coffee you drink prior to your journey hasn’t taken effect yet. The space is dark and you are liable to run into just about everything if you don’t wait five minutes to allow your eyes to adjust to the lack of light. Once your eyes adjust, shapes of chart tables, engine panels, and the captain’s chair (which I am known for frequently running into) show themselves in dim and now-avoidable outlines. Welcome to the bridge, a place not many frequent apart from the deck crew and the chief scientist, and the occasional visitor who may or may not be lost.

Second mate Max Kantor keeps an eye on deck operations during her morning watch.

Second mate Max Kantor keeps an eye on deck operations during her morning watch.

Generally the ship’s crew works behind the scenes to make a science cruise run smoothly and efficiently. Most people know that Captain Colburn is in charge of the vessel: his is the voice in the sky that comes on and off the radio during Alvin launches and recoveries. But what about the other hours of the day? That’s where the deck officers and able-bodied seamen come in. Apart from the captain’s position, the Atlantis has three licensed officers who are each responsible for different tasks aboard the vessel. The Chief Mate oversees the deck department, the Second Mate (me) is responsible for navigational work and equipment, and the Third Mate maintains the safety and emergency equipment aboard.

During any given time under way, there will be a deck officer on the bridge in charge of “the watch,” accompanied by an able-bodied seaman to assist him or her. In conjunction with our counterparts in the engine room, we drive the vessel to different science stations, keep a lookout for traffic (or sometimes fouled sea turtles), make sure we are ready for instrument or Alvin launches and recoveries, and generally maintain a safe working environment for the vessel at all times. We aim to keep our shipmates safe and sound, 24 hours a day.

The bridge as it appears during Max's night watch (photo courtesy Max Kantor)

The bridge as it appears during Max’s night watch (courtesy Max Kantor)

So what does the bridge look like? When members of the science party wander onto the bridge, we often hear it looks like a spaceship. As I am not an astronaut and have never been aboard a space ship, I cannot confirm or deny this statement, but I understand why someone might suggest this. There are panels and buttons everywhere, and unfamiliar instruments most people see only in movies. The next question I always get is: Where is the steering wheel? (The helm in nautical terminology.) The answer is, the Atlantis doesn’t have one! The vessel is actually steered by turning the ship’s drives (thrusters) and increasing the number of RPMs (rotations per minute) in the direction we want to go.

The Atlantis has three thrusters: two stern and one bow. We can move the ship by moving thrusters individually or by tying the three thrusters together into an integrated system known as joystick mode (like Atari or other old fashioned video games) or in an autopilot setting. The Atlantis is capable of what is known as dynamic positioning (DP). DP allows the ship to move or maintain position within meters of our target at very slow speeds. It also will hold the ship in an exact position and adjust thruster direction and RPMs to counter any wind or current that would otherwise move the ship. All these steering options make the Atlantis highly maneuverable, which is essential for deploying and recovering instruments like the CTD rosette, the Vent-SID, the Large Volume Pump, and of course, Alvin.

the chart table

The chart table

Other things you will find on the bridge include the radars, which use radio waves to detect traffic and land around the vessel; an electronic chart system (similar to MapQuest but for ships); and a Global Positioning System (GPS), telling us where the vessel is at any given time. The Atlantis uses paper charts (large ocean maps) for official navigation purposes, and as the second mate I am responsible for plotting our voyage plans and science stations on these charts.

Traditionally vessels move cargo, anything from televisions to oil, from point A to point B. The Atlantis is unusual because we do not carry traditional cargo. Instead we we move personnel,

Max plots the ship's position during a night watch (courtesy Max Kantor)

Max plots the ship’s course during a night watch (courtesy Max Kantor)

instruments and the vessel to different spots on the globe to establish data and samples for a number of scientific missions and goals. The deck and engine departments attempt to work seamlessly to put the ship where it needs to be daily, so that all the science party needs to worry about—apart from those lucky few who are assigned to night operations like myself—is rolling out of bed after a peaceful night’s rest for Alvin dive prep. And if that is too deluded a dream for our scientists (who tend to work around the clock whilst aboard), I will have fresh coffee available for all at 06:00, when my day is almost over and the waking world is beginning to stir.

A Dream Fulfilled

Posted by Sayaka Mino 
· Saturday, November 22nd, 2014 
Sayaka Mino in the pilot seat of Alvin (with Stefan Sievert peeking from behind)

Sayaka Mino in the pilot seat of Alvin (with Stefan Sievert)

A few days ago, one of my dreams came true. Ever since I started studying microbes living in deep-sea hydrothermal environments, I have wished I could dive to the deep sea and see the vent communities with my own eyes. This desire became my motivation to push forward with my Ph.D. study. Before this cruise, I had opportunities to join the Japanese scientific cruises and see the deep-sea vents through video. But I have never had a dive in Shinkai 6500 (the Japanese sub), because students are not allowed to dive (in contrast to Alvin, there are two pilots and only one scientific observer in Shinkai 6500). So I was excited and could not sleep well the day before my Alvin dive.

After Alvin started descending, the motions I had felt at the surface stopped. It was completely dark when we passed a depth of around 300 meters. No motions, no lights, no sounds… we would not know where we were without the GPS, depth gauges, and some electronic devices. Also beautiful bioluminescent organisms reminded me that we were going down, because they appeared to be going up slowly.

a tube worm colony

A Riftia colony supported by hydrogen sulfide contained in the hydrothermal fluids emanating through cracks in the seafloor (courtesy chief scientist Stefan Sievert, ©WHOI)

The first view after we arrived at the bottom was the shiny black basalt. I saw delicate submarine formations; some parts were crumbled, and others were wall-like structures. We looked for the Vent-SID, which had been sent down earlier, and moved it to a site near thriving Riftia (giant tube worm) colonies. I could not believe their lives are completely supported by the activities of tiny microbes.

The pilot, Bob Waters, took us to a vent called P-vent and showed me more black smokers. I had tears in my eyes (though I was looking out through the small window, so I hope nobody saw…). The height of the chimney was over 10 meters. I have no idea how long it takes to grow such a huge structure, but I felt the beating of the earth with the continuous emitting of vent fluids, and that was the thing I really wanted to observe with my own eyes. We finished collecting high-temperature fluids and chimneys at P-vent, then headed to the Crab Spa, and successfully collected a couple of IGTs (vent fluid samples) and rock samples.

Collecting fluids from a black smoker at P-vent

Collecting fluids from a black smoker at P-vent (courtesy chief scientist Stefan Sievert, ©WHOI)

The hydrothermal activity was never boring to watch. I wished I could have stayed there longer, but we had to leave the bottom of the ocean and go back to the real world. The dive was like a dream (of course there were tube worms in my dreams after the dive!). But I am sure we saw the energy-filled dark life, which we cannot feel from watching videos.

I would like to express great thanks to chief scientist Stefan Sievert, who provided me with this wonderful experience. Also I appreciate the Atlantis and Alvin crews for supporting safe cruises and dives, and the scientists for sharing the good times and preparing a great initiation for me. I’ve promised myself that I will work hard to hopefully get another opportunity to dive to the seafloor again someday.

Stefan Sievert, Bob Waters, and Sayaka Mino during their Alvin dive

Stefan Sievert, Bob Waters, and Sayaka Mino during their Alvin dive

A Dive to the Unknown

Posted by Florian Götz 
· Saturday, November 22nd, 2014 
scott bruce florian

Scott White (left), Bruce Strickrott (center), and Florian Goetz during their Alvin dive

I am a master’s student from Germany and have been working on my thesis in the laboratory of Stefan Sievert since the beginning of April 2014. Together with Jesse McNichol, I worked on a model microorganism called Sulfurimonas denitrificans to aid in the understanding of a bacterial group that appears in high numbers in hydrothermal vent fluids.

If anyone had told me at the beginning of April that I would go diving with the Alvin submarine to an unknown place at the bottom of the ocean at 2700 meters, I would have never believed it. But on Wednesday, November 20, 2014, I did it. Together with Scott White, a professor from the University of South Carolina, and Bruce Strickrott, an experienced Alvin pilot, I went down to the bottom of the ocean with the aim of finding new hydrothermal vent sites off-axis to the East Pacific Rise.

Florian gets a chance to drive Alvin

Florian gets a chance to drive Alvin

I have done a lot of recreational diving, and the first thing I noticed when the Alvin dive started was that the light reached down to a depth of almost 200 meters. There were stripes of weak green; it was not fully dark. But afterwards our surroundings turned deep black. We shut down the lights to save energy during the descent, and when you looked out one of the five windows you could see little organisms passing by creating a green light through the process of bioluminescence. For me it looked like flying through the galaxy.

After more than an hour, we came close to the bottom and turned on the lights. I could not believe my eyes when the bottom appeared out of the deep blue and came closer and closer. We landed on a flat sediment area and it was amazing to see so much life in this habitat in the first glimpse I had. Big fish were hovering head down in the dark. They had a big white head and a thin long tail. Others looked like white eels. The whole surface of the seafloor seemed to move: sea stars of all kinds, shrimps, and crabs were moving in every direction trying to hide from the light. For them it probably was the first light they have ever seen.

We started towards an area 1 to 2 kilometers above a magma chamber to look for hydrothermal vent activity. For the first few minutes we were flying over the sediment bottom and took also a sediment core sample. After a short time, the first structures appeared out of the sediment. Rocks covered in sediment became numerous. Some of these rocks were home to deep purple anemones, white sponges, white corals, and sea cucumbers in many different forms and colors.

a dumbo octopus

A dumbo octopus (courtesy chief scientist Stefan Sievert, ©WHOI)

We flew over a more rocky area. Suddenly a big white shadow appeared to the left of the submarine that nobody else could see. When it came closer to the sub the  shape looked like a white turtle swimming slowly away. I said to the  pilot: “There is a white turtle swimming away on the left side of the sub.” We turned and drove closer to it. The “white turtle” was a huge dumbo octopus. On its body two white wings (shaped like shark fins) enabled the octopus to swim calmly through the water. An hour later as we were sampling a rock and two sediment cores, another white shadow was laying in the sand in front of us. We sneaked towards it and saw a big white sting ray lying in the sand. When we came too close, it swam towards the sub and passed underneath.

a deep-sea ray

A deep-sea ray (courtesy chief scientist Stefan Sievert, ©WHOI)

We continued to sample rocks and sediment cores along the dive route. We flew back towards the East Pacific Rise axis. We flew over old pillow lava, sheet lava, and lava channels. These formations looked a bit like the fingers of a giant coming out of the sand. We approached the edges and dove down steps several meters tall. Finally we moved upslope toward the East Pacific Rise axis where we also took some samples until we had to finish the dive.

We did not find new hydrothermal vents or diffuse flows, although we explored many rocks and many cracks in the seafloor. We brought up nice rock samples, whose age still has to be determined, and sediment cores that will be investigated for microbial diversity. We drove a distance of more than 3 kilometers at depths from more than 2700 meters up to 2500 meters. When we ascended, the bioluminescence looked like green rain pouring onto the sub.

It was an adventure I will never forget in my entire life. I want to thank Stefan Sievert, Scott White, and Bruce Strickrott for giving me this once-in-a-lifetime experience!


Editor’s note: Among his lab-mates in Woods Hole, Florian is famous for his spirited karaoke performances. When he returned from his dive, he was handed his favorite neon green safety goggles and a prop mike. With fabulous backup from Fengping Wang and Camila Negrão Signori, he treated us to a modified rendition of his favorite song, Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Under the Bridge,” before being doused with iced seawater for his Alvin initiation.


 

The Vent-SID Returns

Posted by Jen Barone 
· Friday, November 21st, 2014 
A ray circled Atlantis and saw Alvin off during Wednesday's launch.

A ray circled Atlantis and saw Alvin off during Wednesday’s launch.

On Wednesday, pilot Bob Waters, microbiologist KT Scott, and postdoc Nuria Fernandez Gonzalez headed down to the vents to find the Vent-SID microbial incubator that we’d deployed the day before. A large ray swung by to wish them a successful dive, and they watched it swim around the sub through the viewports before starting their descent.

At the bottom, the divers sent the Vent-SID back to the surface and collected several samples of vent fluids, some tube worms, and chunks of a black-smoker vent structure. A hydraulic line on one of Alvin’s manipulator arms got nicked at the black smoker, so the sub surfaced a little earlier than planned, but the Alvin group got everything into shape for the next day’s dive.

Craig Taylor rinses the Vent-SID with fresh water after recovery from the seafloor.

The Vent-SID’s final deployment was our most successful yet. It returned to the surface full of samples that had incubated on the seafloor. The instrument is designed to measure the rates at which microbes perform certain biochemical processes under the conditions of their natural environments at the vents. Microbes are the base of the food chain at hydrothermal vents, so understanding how they work is an important part of understanding the whole vent ecosystem.

The Vent-SID, the latest version of the SID family of instruments developed by Craig Taylor and engineers at WHOI, works by pulling vent fluids rich with microbes into its insulated glass incubation chambers and keeping them at the temperature of the vent, something that has never been done before. At regular intervals over the next few hours, the instrument takes samples of the fluid in the chamber and preserves them, so the researchers can determine what microbes are present and what their activities are. These measurements will tell the scientists how productive vent ecosystems are and help them get a better idea of their importance for biogeochemical cycling in the ocean.

First-time Alvin diver Nuria has been hard at work throughout the cruise preparing the Vent-SID for its deployments and processing samples. When she returned to the ship after her dive, she was crowned the Vent-SID Queen with a garland of sample bags and a tubing necklace before she received her ice-bucket initiation.


In local sports news: The all-hands ping-pong tournament has been heating up over the last few days. Alas, the two top-performing scientists on board, Jeff Seewald and Stefan Sievert, were eliminated in the semifinals. They now join those of us (ahem) battling for third place overall in the consolation bracket. Tomorrow morning, ordinary seaman Ronnie Whims faces bosun Patrick Hennessy in the championship match.

A Roundabout Path to Alvin

Posted by Jefferson Grau 
· Thursday, November 20th, 2014 
Alvin technician and pilot-in-training Jefferson Grau attaches the sub to the A-frame before launch.

Alvin technician and pilot-in-training Jefferson Grau attaches the sub to the A-frame before a launch.

One of the questions that we in the Alvin operations group get asked, perhaps more than any other, is “How did you get this job?” And the thing is, each one of us, technicians and pilots, has a very different answer, both in terms of practical career choices and in terms of the motivations that brought us to this strange life aboard the good ship Atlantis. Some of us have, in a past life, worked with underwater technologies related to submersibles, and all of us have some sort of mechanical or electrical background, but the common denominator among us all seems to be that there is no common denominator.

When the question is presented to me, a lot of times I flash back to the submarines my friend Dave and I built when we were ten years old. I can’t honestly say they were particularly functional, in the traditional sense, as they were constructed of two high-back wooden chairs with a quilt draped over the top. We stocked them with broken car radios my mom gave to us so we would have lots of buttons to push, but the only communications we’d reliably pick up were whale songs from a floppy record that we found in an old issue of National Geographic. Excursions from the personnel sphere were periodically required to turn the record over.

At work on Alvin in the hangar

At work on Alvin in the hangar

I remained fascinated with both the ocean and space sciences in the intervening years (to me they were two faces of the same beast), but I didn’t consciously pursue deep submergence as I approached college. Had anyone suggested working with a manned research submersible, I would’ve found it about as reasonable, as professional goals go, as a career on Titan. Instead I worked for a small aerospace company for a couple of years, but found (as many of my Alvin colleagues today will attest) that days of computer design behind a desk was becoming increasingly untenable in the face of… well, something else. But what, exactly, I didn’t know, though I suspected it would take me back towards the blue outer spaces here on our own planet.

A new stint as a bartender & bike courier in Boston afforded in flexibility what it perhaps lacked in compensation, and I was able to volunteer each Friday at the New England Aquarium. Spending all day with the Dive Department and their Giant Ocean Tank reignited my interest in the ocean, in just spending time underwater. I eventually found myself enrolled in an eight-month full-time commercial diving program, but as with many of the “career” moves I’d made thus far, I hadn’t really figured out how I would tie this to work with the science community or ocean exploration.

Loading weights onto Alvin before a dive

Loading weights onto the sub before a dive

While I was working with an offshore dive operation in the Gulf of Mexico, a new scientist friend mentioned his descents in Alvin, and something snapped in me when I realized that mere mortals might, under the right circumstances, find themselves ten thousand feet down in its cold metal sphere. I moved on to working dive operations in nuclear power plants around the Northeast, which enabled me to focus more aggressively on the possibility of working with the Alvin group.

It turned out that, after all of the tangents & turns I’d taken in my working life, I had ended up with a backstory that combined the technical and the practical, and was sufficiently broad & unorthodox as to make me a decent bet. After a period of borderline-pathological persistence on my part, I’m glad the Alvin group took an interest in me. They did not, however, take an interest in my broken car radios.

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About this expedition

From April 24 – May 14, 2017, a team of scientists, technicians, and engineers from different research institutions will use the deep-sea submersible Alvin to obtain new insights into the functioning of deep-sea hydrothermal vent ecosystems. Read more »

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Funding

nsfThe Dark Life expedition is a collaborative effort funded by the National Science Foundation.

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Dive & Discover: Dark Life at Deep-Sea Vents

Oceanus article on Jesse McNichol’s work (previous graduate student in Sievert Lab)

The SID family of instruments

The history of the SID

Stefan Sievert’s Lab

Jeremy Rich’s Lab

Horst Felbeck’s Lab

Thomas Schweder’s Lab

 

 

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