The scientists are working very hard both day and night. Some of them, doing florescence studies and sediment testing, actually did not stop working until 4:00 AM. I look forward to seeing the sea glow on the next go round. Just to give you an idea how were are traveling, we started at station #3 at 6:00 AM moved to station #4 around lunch, and we are now moving back to station #6. That was not the original plan, but changes were made reflecting adjustments in the scientific needs : when samples need to be taken, either in the daytime or nighttime, in relation to the precise deepsea map readings which we have recorded. Part of the preparation for the cruise consisted in registering the various stations where we would be sampling and in requesting permission to take the samples from the proper authorities. There is also a safety concern here; it is like filing a flight plan. The coast guard needs to keep track of us and also steer other ships around our path. They must be doing a very good job, as I have not seen anything except water. In speaking with Angelo Barca, the captain, he told me that the smaller seas (or "subseas" as certain physicists would say) within the Mediterranean are defined byland mass, surrounding channels and straits. During our chat he was called away to re-position the ship on the other side of an instrument deployed to collect glowing plankton.

CTD Coming Up

Last night I discovered another lab, loaded with computers and screens. This is where the multi-beam mapping takes place. They have special sensing devices, which are connected to the computers and give you some visuals of where the boat is heading in line with our anticipated stations, a moving graph recording the depth, which was around 3,400 3,600 meters at that time. We had just passed by an underwater volcano, and the 3-dimentional pictures that were recorded were extraordinary.

Box Corer with Deck Hand

Late last night the “box corer” was lowered to a depth of 3500 meters to take a sample from a shelf of the extinct volcano. The box corer looks like a huge metal claw and is weighted down. It will extract approximately 20 cm of sediment. The device which holds the 15 cylinders for water samples, does have a pet name, it is “Rosa”, from Rosetta. It is a carousel affair, which has the regular 1-meter cylinders, or the smaller cylinders for pressurized collection. This is called a CTD collection device, which records currents, depth levels, salinity, temperature, acoustic soundings, and includes a Doppler device, an oxygen sensor, and finally an altimeter. All the data are tracked on a computer. The collection cylinders are programmed by the computer to open or close at different depth levels. I saw this being retrieved this morning and it was a mad scramble by everyone to get his or her own sample for analysis. One of our scientists said, it was like children let loose in a candy store, “Sea Candy”. While I was watching the trends on the computer, it seems the device was detecting lots of phytoplankton at around 80 meters close to the thermocline level. That was an interesting insight because earlier, our zooplankton expert set his plankton nets at about 200 and 220 meters, and found that there was very little plankton, which means very little food for fish.