The ship has actually been at sea for 6 days picking up scientific recording devices that were set in place on the sea floor 2 years ago. Today we went back to Guam to drop off the scientists involved in that work and pick up new scientists.

I used to live on a boat but that was a long time ago so I was a little worried about sea sickness. I brought sea sickness medication and wristbands that apply pressure on points on the wrists that are said to reduce motion sickness. Fortunately, I haven’t had to use either. Most of the scientists on this trip have been to sea before so there isn’t much sea sickness on board. First trip people are a little woozy, but they will soon have their “sea legs.”

The seas were a bit rocky when we came through the Rota Channel. The Rota Channel is the passage between the islands of Guam and Rota. It’s only about 40 miles wide so when the current is strong the channel can get really rough. The waves broke over the bow of the boat, but it was still easy sailing. Any ship at sea is said to be “sailing” even when they don’t use sails.

We expect to reach the work site between Guam and the Mariana Trench in about 9 hours. Once there, the work will go on 24 hours a day. The scientists work until they drop, sleep a few hours and get right back to work. They love what they do and don’t want to stop for anything. They have been planning this trip for two years or more and don’t want to miss a minute of it by sleeping.

The graduate students and I stand watches in the Jason II control room. We do 4 hours on and 8 off twice a day. After watches the grad students work with the scientists and me to write to you.The Jason crew do watches to handle the piloting, navigation, and computer programs of Jason II and the DSL-120 sonar system. After watches they do the maintenance to keep these high tech machines operating. Most of the ship’s crew work 4 hours on and 8 hours off. If we are doing something that requires crane operation or using the winch, the crew work overtime.

I like standing watches because I learn so much just listening to the people around me. You would not believe how much these people know: ships, navigation, computer systems, deep sea exploration equipment, chemistry, physics, biology—it is mind boggling. I will try to learn a lot and pass it on to you. We left port at 1400 hours. That’s 2:00 P.M. but on the ship every thing is done by the 24 hour-clock.

My job on this research expedition is to give you daily updates. I’m Linda. I teach Marine Biology at George Washington High School in Guam. The other part of my job is to stand watches in the Jason II control van. Time keeping is really important when collecting data and we do it in a special way in the control van. It can get confusing because I want to use Guam time, but the rest of the people on this cruise are from Hawaii or mainland states and they want to use their home dates. The official date recorded is the day of the year. So today is March 23, 2003 in Guam, March 22, 2003 in Hawaii, it’s day 1 for this cruise, but it’s day 81 for record keeping.

Clock time is done using the 24 hour clock and we need to have a standard for that too. We use Greenich Mean Time. Zero longitude (called the Greenich Meridian) runs through Greenich, England and we use that time. We could argue about using Guam time or Hawaii or New York so we keep it simple and standard by using Greenich Mean Time.

Science Summary - Day 1, March 23

By Patricia Fryer

Science Objectives, Day 1:

The first day of the cruise, March 23, after leaving Guam at about 2 PM local time was spent transiting to the site of the first DSL120 side-scan sonar survey. The survey was planned for the summit of South Chamorro Seamount. The summit area is small (about 2 nautical miles in diameter) and about half of it has a relatively flat top covered with the shells of one-celled organisms called foraminifera. These were observed in 1993 with the Shinkai 6500 submersible operated by JAMSTEC. The southern half of the summit of the seamount has a small (170 m high and 2000 m in diameter) mound. This mound is a new eruptive site for the muds that have built the seamount. Dredges in 1981 recovered serpentinized peridotite from the mound and dives with the Shinkai 6500 submersible in 1993 and 1995 permitted us to observe active fluid seep sites and the presence of serpentine mud flows that lack any sediment cover. These unsedimented mud flows must be very recent.

In 2001 the summit of the seamount was drilled on Leg 195 of the Ocean Drilling Program. The scientific results of this drilling can be viewed at http:www-odp.tamu.edu/publications/195_IR/195ir.htm. We want to survey the summit mound with the DSL120 side-scan sonar system in order to understand the geological setting of the mound and its relationship to the structure of the mud volcano as a whole. We can see that the summit and flanks of the seamount have long linear features we interpret to be fault traces cutting through them. The higher resolution mapping with the DSL120 system will give us a much better image of the summit mound and the surrounding seafloor.

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