Archive of September 28th, 2007

Teacher at Sea log for September 28, 2007 by Linda Sciaroni

The children of Kauai were involved in an experiment involving the bottom of the sea and foam art. We have bundled their cups and wig heads in net bags and put them in milk crates strapped onto the Jason 2. This art has gone down to the ocean floor at 4000+ meters of depth and been crushed by the pressure of 400 atmospheres. This tremendous pressure has reduced the foam volume to the difference you see in these photos. We have been discussing how to try to imagine this amount of pressure. Mr. Sasan's class wants to know if we send it down again will it get even smaller. Stay tuned.. science is fun!

Science Update September 28 by Garrett Ito

(click on images to see larger versions)

Today we are headed to an area North of Kauai that shows interesting but extremely puzzling bathymetric structure. The most prominent feature in the area is a long and narrow ridge, extending northwest from the banks of Kauai. There are numerous irregular mounds and seamounts to the north west of the ridge. There are also large angular blocks further north, that appear to be massive chunks of landslide debris, much like those seen offshore Oahu and Molokai. In the past, prior to such high quality bathymetry data, this whole area north of Kauai was thought to be a large landslide area. But what appears to be missing are large embayments (indentations) of Kauai's coast or its near coastal plateau from which the landslide came. That is, if there was a landslide, where is the evacuated scarp if slid from? An alternative hypothesis is that the north Kauai ridge and seamounts are volcanically constructed. Our aim is to test this hypothesis hypothesis and see if volcanism of Kauai extended as far north as it may have to the south.

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