Archive of September 10th, 2007

Log for Monday September 10

Today we left the Honolulu Harbor at 8 am.

We had a meeting of everyone aboard the ship. Brian led us through all the safety features and rules for the ship. We talked about the signals to abandon ship, fire and other emergencies that could happen. Then we practiced putting on immersion suits. These suits are very funny to wear. They are really tall and I am really short, so I looked a lot like the Michelin tire man but bright orange. They sometimes call these gumby suits as a nickname. They told me to keep my shoes with me because if I really was floating around on the sea I would want my shoes when I finally got somewhere.

The Jason 2 cable was not fixed by today. This boat is very expensive to rent and there are many research tasks it can do. We decided the best use of our time and money given the circumstances was to go out and map the ocean floor around Ka'ula. I learned how to log data in the Computer lab today.

Science Update by Garrett Apuzen-Ito

The surveys we are doing are multibeam bathymetry, side scan sonar, gravity and magnetics (See Science Overview for description). So far only some of our area of interest has already been surveyed. The goal is to fill in the areas of where we lack data so we can get a complete picture of the seafloor around of Kauai, Ni'ihau, and Ka'ula. Such surveys are need to learn about the structure and to pick out target sites for our rock sampling part of the cruise (which we hope will happen soon).

Presented by the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology at the University of Hawaii, with financial support from the National Science Foundation.