------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Some personal comments and impressions of the chief scientist, Francesca Budillon
(Original text)
"My personal outcome was to manage in dealing with people with different vocational and way of working. During the very first part of the leg we had to know, adapt and rely each other in the time span of few hours. Another aspect was to understand and support the needs and inclinations of everyone …. At the same time a big result was even the involvement of people in problems of acquisition and in the philosophy of the cruise … at the end of the cruise I realized that many of us managed to run the chirp and the navigation by themselves! And that is not bad considering that we had only four days for working at full capacity. All these aspects were easily reached thanks to the large disposability, efforts and kindness from the large part of the team.
The most important professional outcome was to have the opportunity to work with people whom I have a lot of things to learn from, and to face different geological aspects (the deep environment and the geological evolution of the central Mediterranean Sea) that are topics on which I never dealt with before. I had to update regarding this issue and I hope for the future to go on possibly collaborating with whoever likes.
Obviously the biggest difficulty was the adverse weather condition, that long knackers anybody and demotivates. My regret is to have not acquired enough data that could be self–sufficient to develop an aspect of the area nor to increment substantially the bathymetry previously acquired. We will try obviously to draw out the best (maybe beginning from the processing of geophysical data and from the cores sedimentology and stratigraphy compared to Chirp) but results will be necessary punctual and not enlargeable to the regional scale (from the geological point of view, maybe could be different regarding the biological aspects).
It is to underline how the life onboard can be tough for scientists (all the same they stay on board shortly and are strongly motivated) and for the crew (who suffer long periods far from home and are obliged to be on duty even with rough sea). My personal appreciation goes to this people that during those days gave us all the support. Finally I’d like to underline that even if the research has not a direct outcome in subjects that have grip over the public, it is very important as well because the “knowledge” is made even by small steps, even if sometimes apparently it does not make any sense. "
|
