Hello and welcome from the Pacific Ocean! We have been underway for less than 24 hours aboard the University of Hawaii vessel the Kilo Moana. You may or may not be able to track where we are at http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/UMC/KiloMoana.htm. Right now there is little excitement, calm seas and just transiting. We will be cruising for about 9 days before we reach our first recovery location.
For those of you who don't know why I am out here, this is a research cruise I am doing for my graduate studies. I just took my preliminary examinations a week and a half ago, so I can officially call myself a Ph.D. candidate! Hopefully the results from this cruise will turn into my dissertation. Last year I was on the first leg of this cruise. We ported out of Taiwan, transited for 8 days or so, sent 16 ocean bottom seismometers (OBSes) down ~6 km to the ocean floor where they have resided for the past 11 months, and sailed back into Guam. These seismometers measure ground motion from earthquakes all around the world. I will be using this information to learn about the structure of the upper mantle (more precisely, the thickness of the lithosphere) in this region. That's probably enough of the science for most of you!
The ship we are on this year is slightly smaller than the one we were on last year (the R/V Roger Revelle). But the rooms are much nicer. There are TV screens in every room where you can look at channels that show our location, feed from the deck webcams, and they even broadcast movies from the lounge. Unfortunately there aren't nice chairs on deck like last year, but being on the open ocean is still fascinating.
Food wise, this ship is going to have big shoes to fill. I had two marvelous chefs on board last year, but so far so good! We had chicken fajitas for lunch yesterday and grilled Mahi and breaded pork chops with some mashed potatoes, green beans, and butternut squash for dinner. And in the fashion of last years cruise, there is no shortage of sweets. So far I've seen pecan pie and pinapple upside down cake for our desserts yesterday, not to mention a freezer FULL of Eddy's ice cream (I am in so much trouble), and a whole bunch of dry snacks (M&Ms, candy bars, oreos, Reese's cups...). I am going to have to make a lot of use of the exercise equipment with all these temptations. This ship has an elliptical trainer, stationary bike, and weight machine which I hope to hop on this afternoon.
So, right now it is 2:50 am local time. I have the unfortunate duty of working the 12-4 shift for watch (which means noon to 4 pm and midnight to 4 am). Basically, we work 4 hours on and 8 hours off, and work consists of checking some huge monitors to make sure the equipment is working and writing down our location every 15 minutes or so. How did I get stuck with this? Well, the options for the shifts are 12-4, 4-8, and 8-12 am and pm. Our authorities (my advisor and the co-primary investigator on this project) are splitting up the 4-8 (my advisor taking the am and Dayanthie taking the pm) which leaves me and Cristo (one of Dayanthie's students) as the only other people who have done this kind of thing before. So they wanted to make sure at least one person on watch had experience. I will be working the 12-4 for the first half of the cruise, and then Cristo and I will switch and I can take the slightly less terrible 8-12 (8 am to noon and 8 pm to midnight). Last year I worked the 4-8 and I like that much more. I still haven't quite figured out when I am going to sleep, seeing as breakfast and dinner are served in the middle of my off time (7:15-8:15 am and 5:00-6:00 pm respectively). I guess it will be lots of short periods of sleep for now.
But I can't complain too much. I just spent the last week vacationing in Hawaii (4 days on the big island and 3 on Oahu) which was a marvelous adventure with one of my friends/fellow graduate students McCall. Great geology, excellent food, and good company. What more can you ask for?
No comments:
Post a Comment