For the past several days, we have been making our way over an underwater mountain chain called the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, or MAR for short. This ridge, which snakes its way southward from Iceland through the North and South Atlantic, results from the spreading of two tectonic plates and the bubbling up of molten rock to form new sea floor. Of course this is happening at a snail’s pace—the two plates are separating at a rate of only 2.5 centimeters per year on average. Read More→

I’m well aware that there is tremendous variation in the civil rights of people with disabilities from country to country. But I was very surprised to learn yesterday that there is a restriction in the U.K. that would probably prevent me from participating in an oceanographic research cruise on some U.K. research vessels. Read More→

This is our fifth day at sea. The weather is still cool and foggy, but the winds have dropped to almost nothing. Because high winds lead to high seas, we are often most interested in the wind forecast and not so much in the temperature or rain forecasts. Tomorrow we might be near the edge of a low pressure system that will pass from Greenland to Iceland, but conditions are not expected to be too rough.

Mooring deployments are proceeding on schedule. Right now we are at the site we call IC3, where our Dutch colleagues are putting in a current meter and microcat mooring. Like most of the moorings being deployed on this cruise, the instruments attached to IC3 will measure temperature, salinity and the speed and direction of currents from near the sea surface to the sea floor.

Life on board the R/V Knorr is pretty comfortable. The galley department is putting out some fantastic meals like grilled halibut, scallops, beef brisket and roasted duck, with plenty of vegetables and salads for sides. And then there are the scrumptious desserts, like homemade brownies and vanilla ice cream for lunch today. Meals are served three times a day cafeteria-style. Hot dishes are served up on a plate at the galley window. Then one fetches silverware, a napkin and a drink and finds a seat at one of the several tables. There are rotating seats at each table that are fixed to the floor (called a deck on a ship) so they can’t slide around. When it is at all rough, the galley crew put down sticky mats on the tables so plates don’t go a-sliding onto the floor. The table has a small lip around the edge to help prevent the same thing.

While the food is fantabulous, the eating experience is something I sort of dread. Read More→

Pete Liarakos, bosun, guides the sound source over the aft deck as part of the mooring deployment. The mooring is deployed top to bottom, anchor last. This means that the sound source appears upside-down in this picture, but will be oriented 180 degrees from this in the water once the anchor is deployed. This source is located on the western flank of the Reykjanes Ridge, and will insonify the Irminger Basin at a frequency that the floats are programmed to receive.

This morning we woke up early to get ready for the first sound source mooring deployment on this cruise leg. As described in earlier posts, the sound sources will be used to track subsurface floats drifting with the deepest currents in the North Atlantic. Each sound source will transmit an 80-second long acoustic tone once every day. the floats are programmed to listen for those signals and record when it hears them. Knowing when the signal was transmitted, when the float heard it and the speed of sound in water, we can estimate the distance from each sound source to the float. With at least two sound sources, we are able to determine the position of the float every day. Read More→

Today I was recalling a topic that I discussed years ago with a professional personal coach. At the time, I was preparing to go on another research cruise, this time on an unfamiliar research vessel (from Greece) and with many students and scientists I had not met previously. I was quite anxious about the trip. My vision had deteriorated since the last time I had gone to sea. Through discussions with the coach, I discovered that I was not nervous about performing the responsibilities of the chief scientist—I had enough experience and confidence to be pretty sure I was alright on that front. Read More→

Picking up from Part 2 (because I forgot to paste in the text for the whole story)..

The monitoring float heard very clear signals from two of the three sound sources, and a hint of the third one too. The latter sound source is rather far away from where the floats were deployed, and on the other side of the mid-Atlantic ridge (an underwater mountain chain), so there are some reasons why it might not come in as strongly as the other two. Later in the cruise, we will be deploying more monitoring floats nearer to this far-away source so we will have another chance to listen for it. Oddly, the monitoring float heard a fourth “mystery source” very clearly. We have only deployed three, so we are scratching our heads about where this mystery signal is coming from. We have an idea that it might be an old sound source left over from a previous float study we did east of Newfoundland, which is not that far from where the monitoring floats were released. We are digging through some old reports to see if we can solve this mystery. Stand by for more.

University of Miami technician Robert Salom tries on his survival suit in a pre-cruise safety drill.

Right after leaving port this morning, we had a routine safety meeting and drill. As part of this, we were shown how to use short-term oxygen systems (with just enough air to get out of your cabin in the event of a fire). I couldn’t see the demonstration, so I just asked if I could “look” at the apparatus with my hands. No problem. Then came the gymnastics part of the safety drill – donning one of the immersion suits, also called survival suits, or more apropos, gumby suits. These are over sized orange body suits that you would get into if you had to abandon ship, especially in cold water. It’s hard to get into, although I suppose if you were motivated by water rising around your ankles, you could get it on pretty quickly. When it’s completely on, only your eyes and nose are exposed. Everyone had to try getting it on. Luckily it was a fairly tactile exercise, so I didn’t have any more trouble than anyone else. I feel like I’m getting just a little better at making my way around the ship. The more I repeat the same routes, the fewer bumps I get. We were all assigned a number today, that corresponds to our coffee mug in the galley. I’m #2. There is a numeral 2 on my mug, but I can’t see that. So I put some rubber bands on the handle so I can find it easily without help. The same trick is working for the doorknob of my cabin.

This brings me to the first good news for the OSNAP float program. The first three of the 10 OSNAP sound sources were deployed from the Knorr as it made its way from Woods Hole to Reykjavik. At the same time, two “monitoring” RAFOS floats were released with a shortened mission. Their purpose was just to pop up today and let us know if the three sound sources were functioning properly. And the envelope please…

Gang plank pulled, door being secured while motoring out of port.

We finally left Reykjavik today at 0900 as scheduled, under sunny skies. Temps are still chilly – around 50F. But we are steaming downwind so the ship has a rather gentle roll – good for getting those sea legs. We are heading more or less to our first moorings site, which will take about two days to get to. On the way, we will stop to do some instrument testing. First we will lower the CTD (which stands for conductivity-temperature-depth) package to make sure it is working properly.I’ll talk more about it in a future post, but basically it measures salinity (from the amount of electricity conducted by the seawater) and temperature as it is lowered on a wire over the side of the ship. The data is transmitted up the wire to a PC where we see it plotted on the screen in real time.