I went to the mall today. Why? my roommate thought it would be a good idea and there were lots of sales. Um, yeah. Bad idea. I have NEVER seen the mall that crowded, ever! It took us forever to find a parking spot and the parking was all the way out to the boonies area where I normally would park when I took a trip to the mall. You know the area, where no one parks..... Needless to say, we walk in, and it is crowded beyond our expectations. Almost like Canal Street during lunch rush hour in Manhattan. Anyway, we pushed through Macy's, which didn't really have a sale. I'm sorry, but a purse originally priced for $300 on sale for $200 is not really a bargain in my mind. We moved on to Banana Republic, where I did find a nice shirt, only $23 (that is a sale!) and then we wandered out towards the door, avoiding the mass crowds. I was disappointed in the fact that the "great sales" were lukewarm at best and some stores didn't have a real sale to save them selves. Really.
As far as the holidays are going, have gone, etc... all is well. I am tired of hearing the Xmas music by this point, and am hoping that this is the LAST day they feel the need to play Jingle Bells. At least for the next 300 some days.... It gets to be a bit much after a while and you just don't want to hear it again. Of course there will always be that house on some street that won't take down their decorations until like February.... Oy....
We did get a chance to relax and go out Xmas eve. A few of us have made it a tradition to go out to dinner somewhere for that night. This year we topped it off with some s'mores! Timothy's of Newark has this on their menu, a huge fav of mine. We enjoyed our dinner and then played with fire at the table, I'm sure our waiter thought we were crazy, but we had fun. :D What else can you do with that much chocolate and marshmallows?
Happy Holidays Everyone, Whichever one you celebrate, or all of them if you so choose, Enjoy!!
No more Xmas music please!
A quick second entry today...
As I was looking at today's entry, and adding to my blog list, I was chatting w/my friend Ms. Kitty. And I realized it's been some time now since our adventure to Northern Ireland. If you haven't yet read it, or are bored and need to pass some time, click on the blog link on the right side of the page that says "Yes, Quite" and read a bit about our trip. Just talking with her brought back lots of memories. :)
The Holidays Have Arrived
So yes, The holidays have arrived. All of them at once, Yule, Hanukkah, Xmas, the whole lot of them. I only did a little shopping this year. I hate feeling compelled to buy things for people but at the same time I feel like I need to do something to let them know that they do indeed mean something to me. I sent off Ms. B's and Mr. B's presents, they got to them on Saturday. Since they were technically Yule presents, I told her she could open them, but she insists on waiting til Xmas... not sure why? Tradition I guess. I opened my Yule/Hanukkah present from Jeboleth Sunday. It was the Firefly DVD collection. A very nice gift. I got him a new pair of sweat pants (his were from his high school days) and some Bacon Salt. He is a bacon fiend so this was a fabulous gift for him. I got some chocolates (sugar free) from Ms. and Mr. B. in the mail today, yummy.
And my roommate got me a bunch of Joie eggie products, yes, I'm an addict now, I must own all the eggie products!!!! I have the Yolky Egg Separator, the Yolky Egg poacher, the L'il Flip Egg Spatula, Kitchen Timer "Mech-Timey," Kitchen Scraper "Scrape-Ease," Mini Fry Pan "Small Fry," Whiskie Egg Whisk, and the Omelet Ease Flip pan. There are more to be had, even some that aren't listed on this web page that I've seen in Marshall's or on Amazon. I *must* have them..... And she cannot complain about this addiction, because she bought me my first eggie item, thus she created this addiction. :) I tell you, I must own them all!!!
Continuing on.... Its cold here, 22F right now. It was 16F this morning. I haven't ventured out, no reason for that today. I stayed in and made a German's Chocolate cake. 
It turned out pretty darn good, but it takes quite a while to make! And there are so many eggs in this recipe! I'm glad I used healthy cholesterol reducing butter and Splenda mixed w/sugar to cut some of the badness to the cake. I'm sure it will still taste yummy! I followed the "original" recipe that I found from the Baker's chocolate website. An interesting note, the cake has been incorrectly called "German Chocolate" cake for years, but it isn't German at all, read Here to find out its history. I like to know a bit of the history about things, my cooking, my science, you name it I'll delve a little deeper to find out why something got named this way or that way just because of my own curiosity.
And yes, in case you're wondering, I did indeed take my camera in for cleaning. It will be out for the next 7 - 10 days getting its CCD chip cleaned and inspected. :( So I just have my little point and shoot, well, also my other non-digital SLR, my underwater one and I think I have anther digital hand-held somewhere around here too.... I was looking online at some new lens, drooling, and also checking out some tripods too. I may be doing some investing after the new year in some new toys to expand my hobby. :) It will be my present to myself!!!
I'm home
Okay, I've been home for a few days now. But as with many things, writing the blog could wait a few days.
Our last day we waited for the dry ice to show up so we could pack up our samples in the coolers. It seems like everything went so quickly between noon and 2:30, the ice was there, the coolers packed, the labs cleaned, the bags moved to the dock and the hugs goodbye. We said bye to several people, piled into the cars to be driven to the gate to meet the taxis. It is here where we realized Maddhatter's bag was still on the ship. Doh! Luckily one of the crew was still with us, drove him back to the ship, got the bag and got back to the taxis. We loaded up and headed to the airport. One of the people on the ship said it was 10 minutes away. They lied. It was more like 30 - 45 min away. But the ride in the back of the taxi wasn't too bad, I took lots of pictures of the buildings going by and tried to envision the trip home. :)
Arriving at the airport, which was more or less a 2 room building with glass windows everywhere, we took all our bags inside. The desk clerk for the airline we were flying on wasn't the nicest, she charged us $52.00 for one of the bags that was a little over 2 pounds over the 50 pound limit. Really, I kid you not. I got called over to the security screening for my bags, apparently a rock I packed set off the alarm, okay....., and the computer monitor also set off the alarm. Why me? But in my broken Spanish I was able to get the security guy to say okay to my bags and send them on their way. I stepped through the personal security, walked through the doors and sat for another hour. Luckily on the cold marble floor. I realized my iPod battery was low so I sat on the floor, chatting w/Ms. Ed staring out the window while it charged. Mainly to just see when our little plane would arrive. It finally did and we loaded up and headed to Phoenix.
Welcome to Phoenix, the second most unfriendly place to vegetarians next to Texas. After going through customs and immigration (is it really immigration when you are a citizen of the country?) we went hunting for food. I thought, hey a brew pup would be nice. Right? Ehhhhh. I searched the menu for something to eat, when I asked the waiter if they had a veggie option his reply was, "We have nothing vegetarian." Okay.... Well, since the other two with me were in fact ordering, I asked if I could go forage for food and bring it back? Yup, all good. Gee thanx. I went off to search for food. Did I tell you Phoenix sucks for vegetarians? I found a cheese pizza, that's it. I brought it back, ate my pizza, sipped my bloody mary and watched a football game. I have no clue who was playing or what the score was, I'm a hockey fan so this is foreign to me with no ice!
They kicked us out at 9pm, our flight didn't leave until 11:30, but all the stores and restaurants closed at 9. Nice. We moved over to the seating area, and I curled up on the seats and fell asleep. Hard asleep for ~2 hours. They had to physically shake me to get me to wake up to get onto our plane. I like sleep. I feel asleep more, about another 2 hours on the flight back to Phillie. We landed, did all the baggage stuff, got the shuttle home and arrived to the drop spot. I got out of the van and walked briskly over to Jeboleth and hugged him. It was quite possibly the best hug ever. :)
In the last few days I've unpacked, cleaned my room (killer dust bunnies formed while I was gone!), did loads of laundry, slept, went shopping for a new rug in my room, watched lots of TV with Jeboleth, and even stopped into work for a few hours. The cruise is over. It was good for the most part, lots of good samples and science, new friends were made and I got to see more of the bottom of the ocean than most people will ever see. But there is something to be said for being home, and being with those you love. Being able to pick up the phone and call Ms. B., hug Jeboleth, play with Leo, these things are the things I missed. Oh and I cooked already too! I made salmon croquettes with couscous. The recipe is Jeboleth's mom's, and it turned out very yummy! :D Happy to be back in my kitchen!!! Oh, and I noticed something. When I left gas cost $2.39/gallon, it is now $1.69/gallon. Cool!
Science and Alvin crew of the Xtreme 2008 Pacific Cruise
We have arrived in Mexico
This is a day late, but no matter. We arrived in port yesterday to Guaymas, Mexico, around 7:30 am. It was nice to see land so close, and the cactus covered hills and islands were a beautiful sight. I had the unfortunate event of waking up at 4:21 am. Why? Heck if I know! I wasn't even used to waking up that early, so why my body said time to wake up, not a clue! I did force myself to do the fake sleep thing until I gave up around 6:30. I got up, went down to the deck and watched us coming closer to our final port. We cleared off the decks when the ship was getting ready to actually dock. Its safer that way, heavy lines (ropes) are being tossed about and people scurry to help tie the ship up, so its best to not be in the way of anyone.
For most of the rest of the day, we packed up the remaining parts of the labs to get ready. Strawberry Shortcake and Mookie had a potentially bad issue arise. Their flight out was scheduled for the 30th, but when the immigration officials came to the ship, they forgot the stamp, and said, "see you tomorrow" as they left. Hmmmm. Problem!!! Luckily some swift moving people were able to round up the immigration people, get the problem resolved and they were able to leave Mexico as scheduled. Not before we took a group science picture though. I'll have to post all the pics later, I seemed to be an eager packer yesterday and packed all my cables to transfer my photos from my camera to the computer. Ooops. It was very sad to see them go, we had gotten so used to having the group of us hang out together that it seemed extra quiet after they had gone. Even Maddhatter had a hard time looking up from his computer and not seeing Mookie sitting across from him. We miss you guys!
We got all of the equipment from the wet lab moved down to the computer room. Made up some ice bricks (okay I filled bags with water and stuck them in the freezer!) for samples. I scrubbed clean the wet lab, soap and water washing all the benches, sweeping and mopping the floor and making sure we didn't leave anything important behind. It looks very clean in there now, quite a difference a little hot water and soap can make! We have all the stuff now in here, the computer room. Which for some reason, when its packed doesn't seem like a lot. We'll move all the boxes into the cargo hold today.
The rest of the time we waited. Waited to find out what to do next. Waited to find out where the after-cruise party would be and just waited. I chatted with Jeboleth online, played with my Facebook page and took a few more pictures. We had lunch and dinner on the ship, then around 5:45 pm we disembarked from the ship, piled into cars, and went into the town to find the party. It was quite a nice place. It had a hut style roof, was circular in structure and had a little water garden outside in an atrium style area. It was breezy, cool and beautiful for the evening. The crescent moon was out with 2 very bright stars near it (some were arguing they were planets, others said stars... it was pretty nonetheless).
The margaritas here weren't nearly as good as the ones in Manzanillo. In fact I think the bartender was making them with lemon/lime soda versus real lime juice. We had some tortilla chips, salsa and guacamole with some cheese quesadillas for snacking on. It wasn't too bad of a party, a few got a little more liquor in them than the rest, and I was falling asleep. It was 9:00 pm and because I had been technically awake since 4:21 am, I was ready to fall over. I hopped a ride back to the ship shortly thereafter with some folks heading back. It was a much shorter ride this time since our cab driver knew where the heck he was going!
Back on the ship, I took my shower, cleaned up my room and decided to pack up a little. Of course, when I say "a little" that means my OCD kicked in and I packed and cleaned everything. I left out my clothes for today and had everything, including the shrunken cups, t-shirts and a chimney pieces all nicely packed and secured away. Luckily, I had thought ahead to use my vacuum packing bags, and since there are vacuums on board, I was amble to pack up everything in a small space. Too bad shoes can't vacuum down too! After all that fun, I went to bed around 10:30 pm, and slept soundly on my last night on the ship.
This morning, I thankfully did not wake up until 6:15 am. Thank you!! Breakfast was great, fresh fruit!!! And we moved the ice bags to the -80 freezers to get a little colder. Quite a few of us are leaving today, heading home. Those who live on the west coast will be home later tonight, those of us who live on the east coast will be home early tomorrow morning. No matter, we'll all be there soon. Since most of the rest of the day will be either moving stuff into the cargo hold or traveling, the next post will be possibly tomorrow or the following day. I'll post more pictures of the area, one of the whole science party and any others I've forgotton. I'll also post those video tours I did of the ship early on out here. Until then, Ciao!!
Last Dive Day
Yup, that's right, Alvin went into the water for the last time for this cruise this morning at 9:00 am. We had a 1 hour delay because we've been experiencing high winds, a little less than the 25 knot cut off, but still rather high. I missed the women getting into the sub this morning because I was setting up my last induction (did ya hear that, the LAST one!!). But I watched the launch off the A frame and managed to take a few photos of Alvin going into the abyss. I have to say, I'm really glad this was not my dive day. The water was choppy, wavy and I'm sure the sphere occupants had an extra bumpy time on the surface, both this morning and this evening during retrieval. Its been a wavy day. Not nearly as bad as it was back at 9 North when we had the 10 foot swells, but still a bit on the loopy side for even walking down the passageway.
We are now beginning to pack up the labs, process the last of the samples and get things ready to go home. With that thought, I realized I hadn't posted any pictures of our work spaces. I've been talking about the wet lab and the computer room, but you guys haven't seen them. So, I'm taking a moment for a picture page and showing you where we've been working for the last 3.5 weeks.
Computer Room
And...
Wet Lab
We were going to have everything packed up and head to port right after the Alvin recovery, but we realized we needed one more sample, an off axis control for the deep-sea vents we just sampled here. Oops. So we are doing an impromptu CTD cast out there right now. It takes about one hour for the rosette to go to the bottom of the ocean, and one hour to come back. Of course there's a short time in between when the bottles are being fired off and collecting water. We are only getting 50 liters of water, so hopefully it won't be an excruciatingly late evening. Cross your fingers.
And I finally got a beautiful sunrise! This morning it looked like it would be yet another disappointment. The sky was full of clouds, the sun was merely peaking through and I was sure it would not be good. I had taken my camera back inside and started to do some work. Then I peaked around the corner and there it was! This was my morning sunrise on the Pacific finally worth taking the picture for! Only a short time now, Tuesday morning I'll be home!
Last Friday on the ship!!
Yup, its the last Friday I will spend on the ship. You might think I'd wax nostalgic about this and that, the incredible sunrises and sunsets, the warm weather, and the like. However, although these things are nice, nothing compares to being home, cooking in my own kitchen, sleeping in my own bed and having Jeboleth in person rather than existing as a few lines on the IM chat window. Yup, I'm ready to go home. Its been good out here, we've accomplished a lot, and I mean a LOT of work. We will have sampled 11 hydrothermal vents and taken 6 CTD casts, that is a whole lotta water. Not to mention the worms, sediment and chimney pieces. I feel like we've collected enough samples for a decade worth of data and analysis. Mookie, Maddhatter and Strawberry Shortcake broke down one of the LVWSs today, while the last sampler went over this morning. We'll get that one tomorrow, process the water, I'll set up my last induction and then we'll break that one down too. Work will be done.
For those of you who've asked, yes, we did have a good Thanksgiving dinner. The kitchen crew decided to play a little trick on the scientists and crew. The menu white board tricked us at first, as you can read from the picture, we were expecting a rather unique meal of some icky food (in my opinion at least). 
Luckily the real meal wasn't the case. We were served the traditional foods of veggies, mashed potatoes, turkey, stuffing and pumpkin pie. I also got some asparagus! One of the cooks posed a plate for me to prove to everyone that no spam or grilled liver was actually served to the poor scientists and crew. And even though I'm ready for a potato strike (for at least a few weeks), I did have some mashed potatoes and they were quite tasty. Yet, I will have to forgo potatoes for a while when I get back, because I am looking forward to December 27th's homemade latke's from Jeboleth's mom. I really like those so I want to be "potato ready" by then!
For us out here, we have one more dive tomorrow, that will be the last sub dive. As soon as Alvin is on deck we will kick the ship into high gear, chugging at 14 knots and haul butt back to land! We can see land, but haven't stepped on land since November 9th when I walked from the hotel in Manzanillo to the ship. We're coming into port to Guaymas, and I've already told you about the fun fun fun of that little town with the one-legged man.... Sigh. Most of the rest of these days we're trying to get the last bits of work done, aside from beginning to pack, and take our sleep when we can get it. I realized I haven't had a solid straight 8 - 10 hours of sleep in one session since I left the US. We have been sleeping in little pockets of time. Four hours here, three hours there, maybe up to 5.5 hours if we're lucky. I think my body is completely out of whack with this schedule. The other day I was given the wonderful opportunity to sleep in... I didn't have to wake up until 6 am (I know, gettin' crazy here!). But my body, which is now so used to waking at 4:45 am, decided to wake up , at 4:45 am. I had to force myself back to sleep, but it was one of those sleeps where you're pretending to sleep to say that you're sleeping rather than actually sleeping. Eh. I hope my sleep schedule gets back on track when I get home, I really don't want to continue to wake up at 4:45 am. :( Ah, sleep, sweet sleep....
Okay, time to go. Things get busy out here from 5:30 pm on these last few nights, hence the earlier post. I finally got a beautiful sunrise this morning, not a complete since there were still clouds in the way, but its the best so far. It was a pretty awesome sight this morning. It was a nice gift from the ocean. :D
Thanksgiving Day
The entry tonight is the one I wrote for the ship's website (with a few edits). Since its been a long day, and I'm tired, I didn't really feel like writing two separate posts for two different websites for tonight. I hope you enjoy it and I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving Day!
Sea Team
Land Team
Today was Thanksgiving Day. That great US holiday where we stuff ourselves with mashed potatoes, turkey and pumpkin pie. The football game is turned on and people relax in a comfy spot and let the day just go by. But when you are on a research vessel, doing vital scientific work and have deadlines to meet, the holiday relaxation doesn’t happen. We were very lucky that our kitchen staff made fabulous mashed potatoes (yeah, more potatoes), turkey and yes, even pumpkin pie for dinner. But there was no time for football, fun and relaxation. Yet today, sixteen of us out here also took time for a very special event that was taking place in two locations for one cause.
Each year I participate in the annual Thanksgiving Day Run/Walk for Multiple Sclerosis. I also serve as the Team Captain for a team for the annual MS Walk earlier in the year. But the Thanksgiving Day walk was just me, it was my private time to walk for my friend Ms B. Ms B. and I have been friends for countless years, and for much of this time I had known she had MS, but had never seen the full effects. One winter holiday I went to stay with her and her husband for a few weeks. It was during that time that I saw Ms. B get pretty sick. It was painful to watch, and even worse, I felt utterly useless and helpless to stop the pain she was experiencing. When I got back to Delaware, I searched for something, someway to make me feel like I could help. That's when I started participating in the walks. I’ve now been doing this for over five years, every year.
But this year's Thanksgiving Day walk was going to be a big problem for me. Since I was scheduled to embark on the cruise during November this year, no Thanksgiving Day walk was going to be possible for me. During a conversation with Jeboleth, he simply said, "Why don't you just walk on the ship?" And that's when things began to come together. I really wanted to do this so I called the local chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society and asked if they minded if I walked out here instead. They were quite thrilled with the idea and I decided to go ahead and form up the team again. I even got one of my former team members (and former cruise participant) Dirt Doc to design our t-shirt backs. We divided up the team into the Land Team and the Sea Team. We had three official members on Land and four official members on the Sea Team. We were ready!
Once I got to the ship, I thought I’d ask if anyone would like to join us for the walk day. It would be difficult since science is the priority out here and it would require a bit of time away from that work. I put out the request that anyone who wanted to walk with us show up at the bow of the ship one night for our team/group photo. I was so touched, and really moved when I saw not just my little team of four people on the bow, but 16 people, all willing to sacrifice some of their day to help me in this walk event. I was truly moved and am thankful to each one of them.
And so today, Thanksgiving Day, my Land Team stepped off and walked in cold and dreary temperatures while here on the ship, the Sea Team stepped off next to the Alvin hanger in a crispy and sunny day. We walked up stairs, around exhaust fans, up more stairs, around a paint locker, and up even more stairs. We navigated around chains, around people working, around the zodiac boat and back around to do it all again. We walked around the steel decks of the ship, 4 decks, 15 times for a total time of 1 hour and 6 minutes. I know that typically it takes about 1 hour to walk a 5K, so that’s what I decided to do since we didn’t have a pedometer or measuring tape, and that we did.
It was a very good day, the sun was shinning, it was cool, the water was calm and very blue. Some people jumped into the walk part way, others had to duck out due to work obligations. But we still walked, and kept it going for the whole time. One walker told me that she had only planned on walking for about 3 laps, but was so getting into it that she decided to keep going with me. She even did a 16th lap with me to go collect and remove all of my arrows for the walk path. You have no idea how much that meant to me.
When we finished our final lap and came to the end at the Alvin hanger there were several crew, and scientists standing around. They were actually waiting for Alvin to come on deck with their samples, but when they saw us completing the walk, they cheered and clapped for us. Making it feel like an appreciated end to the walk.
So what do I hope to have gained from all this? My biggest hope from all of this is to spread awareness about Multiple Sclerosis. I’m always surprised by the number of people I speak with who know someone or have a family member with MS. It is my prime goal to have as many people know and become aware of MS, and of course raise donations to help the research efforts to find a cure.
Thank you all for any and all support, you made Thanksgiving Day one of more thanks than you could have thought possible for many, many people.
Quick morning post
This is the Sea of Cortés yesterday morning. The sun is still ducking behind clouds and preventing me from getting the shot I want. Its still pretty. Sorry there was no post last night, I was up very late, down in the lab working until 11:00 pm. It really wasn't my choice, but it needed to be done. I do not remotely intend on doing a repeat performance tonight. I've had a little over 4 hours of sleep, and its 6:00 am right now, obviously not a good start. I'll probably have to take a nap as soon as I set up the morning's experiment so that I'll be ready for the ship walk today around 3:30 pm (5:30 EST). I'll do a post later today after the walk to tell you all about it, and hopefully about a better day.
Too many potatoes
I realized today that one of the main staples that the cook seems to make for vegetarians, frequently (let me restate that.... FREQUENTLY...), are potatoes. Potato salad, french fries, potato soup, potato wedges, mashed potatoes, potato and onions.... You get the picture. I think I'm going to have to avoid potatoes for about 6 months when I get back. Really, I'm going on a potato strike. I don't even want to see potatoes on Thursday for Thanksgiving, I'm all potatoed out! But, I did manage to have a delicious pear for dinner tonight, well not *for* dinner, but my treat. Mexican pears are very tasty! The bowl of plums is still sitting there, taunting me, but I know, they have no flavour. I miss plums. And now my green grapes are all gone. :( At least I have the pear for now.
As I was beginning this post tonight, thinking hmmm, what shall I write about. Today was a bit boring, not much to say. Then the ship's alarm went off. I left my IM with Jeboleth and headed to the main lab. It isn't a good sign when the ship's alarm goes off at 8:30 at night. They usually don't do surprise drills this late at night. And at first I thought it was a drill. No one was moving fast, and the scientists were all chatting. Then two deck crew men swiftly walked through the main lab and rushed out the door. Another came in to take roll call to make sure we were all there. I had to run wake up Strawberry Shortcake and Mookie since they went to bed early tonight. It was a fire. There was a fire in the galley, something about the refrigerator heating coil or something like that. The fire was reaching the ventilation but was quickly stopped by the alertness and quickness of the crew. However, they still needed to alarm the ship so that we could account for everyone. They also told us to stay off the mess/galley deck for a while, because the smoke was rather stinky. I can smell some of the burnt smell in the ventilation, it isn't too horrible but it is rather smelly. We are all safe and well, just a small little kitchen fire to wake up your senses and keep you on your toes out here! :D
What else did I do today? I finished last night's experiment and started the next experiment on the new sample. I was rather tired today, so I went to take a nap. My intentions, and what I told Mookie, was to take a one hour nap and I would be okay. Three hours later I woke up. Doh! I had missed the science meeting and my sampling time point would be nearly one hour late. Arghhhh. And what did my lovely co-workers say to my oversleeping episode, "you probably needed it..." Sheesh. Now its 9:30 at night, they've all been in bed for at least 1 hour and I'm still awake. I'll have to force myself to sleep by 10:30 though, since I need to be up again early. I appreciate that they all love me enough to sense that a much needed nap took place, but I feel awful for not being available for three hours. :( But then again, since we got most of the stuff done and processed pretty well today, we took a few moments to enjoy checking emails, surfing the web (at a snails pace), and listening to Istanbul (Not Constantinople) by They Might Be Giants. Strawberry Shortcake, who must have lived under a rock for that last 20-odd years, had never heard this song. Maddhatter and I rushed to our music stashes and found the song to play for her. I'm not sure she liked it, but its a cult classic man, I love it!
Aside from the marathon nap, we got a nasty mess for a sampler today. It came up from the depth covered in oily slime. Even the interior Tedlar bags were saturated with gunk, and Mookie looks oh so happy about having to empty the bags! The smell is still atrocious. So far we have only one entry in the name that smell contest, I think it was something like "potty pee-u" or something. We'll see if anyone else wants to test the skills of the nose! Even after I had taken my small sample this morning, vortexed it for 30 minutes and divided it up into its sample tubes, the smell nearly knocked me over. Just like intense fuel oil. Yuk. Strawberry Shortcake said she was gagging from the smell while trying to remove the large filters from the sampler this morning. And oh joy, we have three more samples to collect! Yay for us?
Okay, its time for sleepy now. Ill leave you with a sunrise from this morning. I haven't had the perfect sunrise or sunset yet out here, so bear with me until I get it perfected and mother nature helps me out.
5 Dives Left.....
I was so disappointed in the sunrise this morning. It started out so beautiful (as the picture shows), bright orange and red colours coming over the dark blue water, then a cloud moved into the way and blocked the rest of the rise. :( I also realized something this morning when I was out on the deck at 5:30 am-ish. As I was standing there, taking pictures of the water, I had my sweatshirt on, and had to pop up the hood and then started to shiver some. It took me a second, and then I smiled, it was cold this morning! Ms. Ed came out to take photos too and was all decked out in a sweatshirt too. A nice breeze was blowing off the water just enough to chill me, of course I was also wearing shorts so that probably didn't help any, but it was definitely cooler. Which made me kinda happy, actually all day long. Amazing what a temperature change can do for one's daily outlook.
Today was an induction day, I poisoned some bacteria with an antibiotic to force them to produce bacteriophage. The experiment will be complete at 9:15 am tomorrow. I'll start another one just before then from another vent. The vent system here is Guaymas is stinky. No kidding. The water is foul smelling, like deisel fuel and sewer plant ripe in the midday sun mixed in with some rotten eggs. Nasty! We even have a contest going on for the best description of the smell, the winner will get something like a candy bar. It is really revolting, the smell, and I can only handle it for so long. The reason the water is so nasty is the natural oil production around the vents, and it just gunks up everything around, the sub comes out stinky and oily too. I'm sure the swimmers have to take 12 showers to get the smell off their skin. This is also why I spent two days sewing 4 filters for the vent water....
Today was also Mookie's first dive.... another initiation!!! Yes, we brought the last of our group into the fold of ALVIN divers today. Now, Mookie had been egging us on for the whole time out here, saying if he dove he wanted it cold, the colder the better... yeah, cold man! Uh huh. Well, be careful what you ask for. He only had one pair of shoes, but we found a means to take care of them w/o stuffing them with some food things. After he left this morning, we got one of the ALVIN dudes to get his shoes out of the blue tarp bag at the top of the walkway. We took them into the freezer and left them in there, all day, in the freezer. :D We also filled two buckets with water, put them in the cold room to sit for a while. Then right as the sub was coming up, we grabbed the shoes, stuffed them with ice, dumped more ice into the water (it was more ice than water at this point) and waited for Mookie to emerge from the sub. He took it well, even put on the iced shoes and sat for his ice bath. Although after two buckets, he cringed when someone said there was one more bucket. There wasn't, lucky for him. But he did get a nice cold bath. And as before with Maddhatter, we had the towel waiting for him to dry off. With this dive, that means every one of us in the group got to have a dive in ALVIN, which can be a rare event out here. I'm glad we all got to go, and see different things and experience life at the bottom of the ocean.
For dinner tonight, we had a cook-out on the fan tail. The cook brought out a grill and tons of food. There was some good veggie stuff, potato salad, cole slaw, roasted zucchini, and some regular salad. There was also stuff for the meat-people. It was nice to have it outside, they set up some benches, and people all mixed and mingled. We ate our food by the LVWS, we got a little crazy too. One of us, not naming names but she has red hair, can't seem to sit still for a picture. Hence, I had the volunteer photographer put the camera on the Sports mode and just take 20 - 30 pictures in succession so that eventually we'd get a good picture. We did too! So here we are, 4/5 of the motley crew of the LVWS team, K-Dude was off chatting on the other side of the ship so he missed out on the "family picture." But we made a shrunken cup for him earlier so I don't think he'll mind. Aren't we just adorable? Crazy more like it!
I also managed to clean most of the big spots off my camera sensor today. There are still some spots on there and I'll try to get all those off tomorrow. If not, I'll deal with it and take care of a professional cleaning when I get home. At least the 3 huge blotches are gone now! So here is a good shot from tonight's sunset. It, much like it's morning counter part, decided to go hide behind a cloud, so there was no final sunset moment available. Ciao Babes!
Sewing Day
Today started early, the alarm went off at 4:45 am. I actually woke up and got out of bed within a few minutes of the alarm going off. A very rare event indeed for anyone who knows me. I got up and headed down to the deck, where I found only Maddhatter busily with the LVWS. He asked me to go wake up the others, apparently I was the 2nd one awake today, another rare event. I got them all awake, and then proceeded to cut out my filter patterns. Then I sewed, and sewed, and broke a needle (a hand needle, not a sewing machine needle), got a new needle and continued to sew more. I got both filters done by 1:30 pm, with one break for a bit of breakfast and one for lunch. Yes, it took me that long, but then again it was another case of the need for small stitches and some annoying filter fabric. The 80 micron mesh was making the thread curl up on itself when I drew it through, causing me to have to slow down for each stitch. The joy.
Once I was done, Strawberry Shortcake rescued me and we donned our swim suits and hit the pool. Yes, we have a pool. Of course the word "pool" is more kind than what the contraption really is. It is a tarp lining held together with nylon straps and wood. It is used for measuring flotation for objects and of course, for us to dip into. But the pool was a bit on the dirty (more like gross bottom dirt) and cold side today. While we sat there, a few of the ALVIN guys and an Atlantis guy stopped by. We chatted for a bit about past cruises, life and such; it was a nice casual down-time that I hadn't had out here in a while. Strawberry Shortcake and I talked the guys into cleaning the pool and they rigged up a hose for some fresh, warm water to fill it with and dropped in some chlorine tablets. I think by tomorrow it will be perfect to take a real dip in. I'm hoping to steal a few min tomorrow and take a dip again. The weather isn't that hot, so I can tolerate the outdoors now. :D
Today was also Maddhatter's dive, his first dive, ever. So you know what that means? Initiation!!! We lovingly stuffed his shoes with coffee grinds and red jello, dumped two pails of chilled water and one pail of water mixed with V8 juice onto him. He took it quite well, and we even had a towel waiting for him to dry off from the rinsing process. He told us that it was rather murky, and you could see the natural oil droplets being formed in the depths. And apparently fewer crabs and dimmer biolumincesce than at 9N. Darn, it was so pretty there, I had hoped he's see the pretty pretty light show like Strawberry Shortcake and I did. On the upside, Mookie dives tomorrow. We have to come up with some ideas for his "initiation" and make it awesome! Although he has said his shoes are off limits since he only has one pair. Fair enough.
I tried to add a countdown clock to the blog tonight, but it was too difficult to figure out. So this is the countdown in words: Saturday, November 29th is our last dive day. When ALVIN comes on board at 5:00 pm, we will kick the ship into high gear and head to port. We should be in port by very late that night or early Sunday morning. Our flight doesn't leave until Dec 1st at 4:30 pm. Guaymas is a very small town, and only one airline serves it. Only one flight per day flies in and out. We'll go to Phoenix and by 11:30 pm, board the flight home, arriving at the airport at 6:00 am. It will be a long flight home, but one we're all looking forward to. Our dives have already begun here, the LVWS is at the bottom of the basin right now pumping water. We'll bring it up in the morning and drop the second one right after. I found out today that the basin is about 2000 meters deep, so a bit more shallow than 9 N, which is making for faster drops and longer bottom times for the sub. Although the sub reeked of natural oil when it came up. Ewww. It was icky, and smelly.
Anyway, not too much more thrilling stuff happened today. While I was sewing I watched Office Space and Das Boot. I wanted to watch Das Boot in German with English subtitles but was outvoted by the crowd, hence we watched the English dubbed version. :( I think its better the other way, but I caved. How sad is that? They have Pan's Labyrinth too, although I think I would be the only person watching it.
Another sunset to close. I realized that there are some spots on my lens inside the camera. It isn't on the exchangeable lens, because I'm getting them on the smaller lenses too. So you'll see a smudge or two on the pics unfortunately. I might try to clean the interior of the camera out here, or wait to have it done at a shop at home. I'll try to photoshop the pics I have when I get home and send my camera in for a deep cleaning. I'm not sure where the smudges are, but they are deep inside. :( With that, this is the awesome sunset from tonight. Buenos noches.
Last day of transit
Today was our last day of transit to the new location. Tomorrow we wake up way too early again and drop the LVWS into the water. It is shallower here, so it should take less time for it to drop and retrieve. We'll see. I still have a day of sewing for the filters tomorrow, a second set has been requested. No problem, I now know exactly what I want to do so the "pattern" is easier. More happy sewing tomorrow. :D
Last night we had a presentation by the PI of the protist group out here. He gave a talk about how harmful algal blooms (HAB) affect fish, sea animals, and humans. An interesting factoid was that in 1961, in LA, a probable HAB infected numerous birds. These infections were neurological and caused the birds to fall to the ground in mass deaths, fling themselves against the sides of houses and basically scare the crap out of a group of local residents. The addendum to the news article from 1961, was that a Hollywood producer by the name of Alfred Hitchcock had called the paper to get the full story. Not too long later, "The Birds" movie was produced. So even Hollywood is inspired by microbiology! :D Tonight's talk was by K-Dude on the meaning of viruses to the environment and how our work has progressed so far. I've seen much of it before, and the group seemed very interested and asked lots of questions.
And another wonderful thing happened today..... We saw land!! After 2 weeks of nothing but water, ocean and more water, land appeared off our port side. An island off of Baja California was visible, rather more close that I thought we would see, but there it was! I ran out on deck to take some pictures as soon as I could. You can see it from this picture of how close we are to land now. And the temperature has dropped. When we were out watching the sunset, a nice sweatshirt would have been appreciated. A few of us are snow bunnies and were happy that it was colder and started talking about how much we were missing the snow and can't wait to get home to see cold weather and snow flakes. Others were saying, no no no, they missed the hot 95F tropical equitorial weather we had just left 4 days ago. Not I, bring on the cold baby!
And we're back to starving the vegetarians out. Strawberry Shortcake and I had limited foods available for dinner as you can see from the menu. I ended up with a few french fries, cauliflower and cottage cheese w/kidney beans. Eh, food is food I guess. The meatatarians out here say the regular foods are fabulous, I'll take their word for it since I'm not interested in lamb, pork, beef, chicken...... And dessert was an oreo cookie cake (I am one of the few people who hate oreo cookies). I can't wait to cook again, and I think Jeboleth is eagerly anticipating my return for a decent meal as well. He tells me he's eating fine, like fried, breaded green beans (um that is no longer a vegetable!) and microwave box meals. :( I feel like I'm not eating much better out here. Luckily there is always fruit, the plums have no flavour, but the green grapes are very tasty.
Okay, time to go clean up and hit the bunk. We have to be on deck at 6:00 am (yes, on deck not just waking up) for the LVWS drop. Luckily the rest of the day I'll be sewing filters together. I'll leave off tonight with a photo taken by my bunkmate, Ms. Ed, during the beautiful sunset off the baja, on the bow of the ship. It was quite beautiful tonight.
Still Sailing Along
So we are still sailing along in calm seas, heading north the Guaymas Basin. I had to go online to figure out where this was, since I'm so used to being 450 miles away from land and not seeing anything. I found this picture from the WHOI website that gives me a better idea of where the heck I'm going and for you guys to also know where I'll be for a few more days. Its taking us 4 days to sail from 9N at the East Pacific Rise to our next spot. We will be there early Sunday morning, which means back to 4:00 wake up times and filtering tons of water, inducing bacteria and freezing samples with liquid nitrogen. You know, the fun stuff!
Yesterday the ALVIN group had a t-shirt sale. They sell t-shirts to us scientists to buy videos, the new tv, and other equipment for the use of them and the ship's crew (as well as visiting scientists) and make the place a little more home like. I got one for myself, one for Jeboleth and one for my roommate, Leo's Mommy. There weren't too many to choose from, so I hope they like them. Sometimes they have lots of cool stuff, but since the cruise was just after another cruise with no stops back at the US, they were limited on the supplies. Darn.
Today has been rather interesting. The place we're going to go sample is a very muddy place, like several inches to feet of mud surrounding the vents. This has made sampling the diffuse flow water difficult in the past because it clogs our filters up badly. This year, Maddhatter and K-Dude came up with some prototype of a bigger, better, bucket that will have larger filters attached. The problem is that these filters need to be made out here. And yes, unfortunaly K-Dude and Maddhatter know that I can sew. I could try to deny it, but my Halloween costume gave it away. Anyway, so I agree to be the scientific filter seamstress for this task. At first we thought I would be in luck, as the ALVIN group has a sewing machine on board. A sewing machine that I'm sure is older than me and probably worked back then too. The sticker for the last inspection was in 1996, Wow. We tried to get the old thing going, but it just wasn't having it. The bobbin wanted to work the under stitch only about every 10 stitches. We tore it apart, trying to get it to work, but to no avail. :( Looks like hand sewing small stitches were in my future today..... And thus, I took my filter pieces, thread, needle, pins and scissors and traveled to a comfortable place to sit and sew for a spell. I found the TV room was empty, so I popped in the "Serenity" DVD and sewed to Reevers, Mal and Mr. Universe. I had a few folks pop in and say they already watched the movie in there the other day, my reply was, "And??"
I finished that in about 2 hours, the filter and the movie. Then I tried to take a short break, but another filter needed to be made. I started that one, but the TV room was now occupied by a group meeting and the library had a talk going on. I sewed some, but then my eyes started crossing and my shoulders aching. Damn sewing machine couldn't work, could it! I had to take a break a while ago, and just allow my eyes to focus on things other than 1/8" stitches and white fabric. Hence the blog entry. I have to go back to sewing in a bit here, and I think that's all the work I have to do tonight. One more day of relaxing-ish time, or at least actual sleep.
Luckily we are over 1/2 done, nearly time to go home!!!! You realize there are a few things, other than your significant others and pets, that you miss desperately out here when you no longer have them: 1) Weekends... 2) After work time... 3) My own bed... 4) My own kitchen and cooking... 5) Interaction with people other than the 40 same people you see every single day nearly 24 hours a day........ Sigh.
Okay, so today's last photo, yes I actually have one for you, is of my walk path from the lower deck to the bow. It is rather a nice walk, sometimes a bit noisy due to the ship's fans and engines, but the covered walk is nice, and gives such a pretty view as you climb up to the next stairs to sit in my favourite spot. :D Ciao!
Calmer seas and still sailing
Hi all. Last night was pretty rough with the waves and wind. K-Dude was even considering sleeping in one of the lower cabins, on the floor if necessary. I'm usually fine with it, other than the climbing the stairs that keep moving. And in fact I was fine all night. Until this morning, when the seas were calm. My tummy doesn't like to go from wild to calm, it can handle calm to wild, but every once in a while, the wild to calm isn't so great. I wasn't so much sea sick as just not feeling well. There were no bouts of nausea, just the "eh" feeling. And on top of that, one of the deck crew thought it was a great idea to scrape paint off the boat by using an electric grinder, at 8:30 am, on one of the few days I get to sleep in, right outside my porthole. Gee, thanx.
Most of today I have sat in front of this computer. So if you're wondering why this post is going to be short, that will be why. I was sitting here answering kids questions from across the country on the Write the Scientist portion of our ship's web page. They weren't all that bad, but the fact we had over 70 questions to answer, and they weren't all simple ones, was a bit tasking. My brain is fried on what a hydrothermal vent is, do I like my job, how long is a giant squid and what would you do if the hydrothermal vent exploded while you were in ALVIN..... Oy vey. Those are all really good questions mind you, but after about the 20th one, it begins to be a bit less of a fun educational event and more of a task that has lost its luster.
I also got an email from a reporter to ask me questions about me and the upcoming MS Walk I'll be doing out here. I found that one of the questions was quite sexist and its taking me some thinking on how to phrase my answer to address that fact while still getting my point across. His question was this: "Tell a little bit about yourself. A neat part of this story is that you are a woman scientist." Apparently there are no other "women scientists" and it is super "neet" that I'm a woman and a scientist. I thought I was taking this too much to heart, but asked other women and men onboard how they would feel if they were asked such a question. Only 1 out of the 9 people I asked said they saw nothing wrong with the statement. So 8 people agreed that yes, this was inappropriate and not at all a wise question. Sigh.... people these days! Really, right now, of the science crew out here, women out-number the the men 15 to 7. And the ship's crew has four women, one of which is the Third Mate and another the First Assistant Engineer. Maybe the reporter is like 90 years old and has no clue? I don't know......
I also failed to take a single photo today. That's right, my camera never snapped a single shot today. How sad is that? The upside is that we are in calmer waters, my "eh" feeling is gone (although my shoulders and fingers are aching from typing too much) and we only have 3 more days to get to the Guaymas Basin. We did also find out that tonight our clocks go back one hour, so heads up to Jeboleth that I'll be 2 hours behind you now as of Friday morning.
That is all for now, I feel bad for not leaving you with a photo so I'll leave you with a quote from one of my favourite and most admired scientists,
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. --Albert Einstein
On the Move and Incredible Shrinking Cups
We are off and on the move, sailing towards the Guayamas Basin, our next location for sampling hydrothermal vents. This is a bit further north and closer to Mexico. We may even be able to see land in the very, very, very far distance. I haven't seen land since November 9th. Right now we're still experiencing high waves and wind, so the travel is rather rocky. We did have the last dive go ahead at 9N, and got more samples of Riftia. The one woman who was in the sphere today said that the bobbing on the surface in rocky waves was not fun and she nearly lost her lunch on the sub pilot. Luckily, she didn't.
As I promised, I shrunk some cups. Some of you know what I'm talking about, others are wondering what the heck is wrong with me? 
The pressure at the bottom of the ocean is intensly strong, so strong that if you punctured a hole in AVLIN the stream of water could cut a person in half before the sphere quickly imploded. Its intense pressure. Styrofoam cups (and wig heads, and cones, and anything else) collapse under this pressure. There is a tradition out here to decorate Styrofoam cups, place them in a mesh bag on the outside of ALVIN, tucked under a safe place, and let them shrink under the pressure as ALVIN dives to the bottom of the ocean. It is really cool, some of the cups can shrink to thimble size, some don't shrink much at all. We've come to realize that the cheaper the cups, the more they shrink! Probably due to more air space between the Styrofoam pieces. I made some cups for Jeboleth and his family, you can see in the first photo that they all look like normal cups. In the second photo, I had to add an undecorated cup to show you how much they shrunk. I also drew cool designs on the other sides of the cups, but those are a surprise for them so you don't get to see that now! We do tons of these out here, in fact one of our PI's (principle investigators) brought trash bags full from a local school she knows. I've made the same type of cup for myself each time I've been out here, a vine of blue morning glories. Blue morning glories are my favourite and I've traditionaly drawn them for each cruise, with the dates. My cup didn't make it into the last bag for the dive, but it will when we get to Guayamas to dive.
I will be answering the Write the Scientist questions for the ship website tomorrow, hopefully. The link they sent us isn't working yet so Maddhatter and I have been busily occupying ourselves with other things. I watched an episode of Firefly tonight (my fav one "Out of Gas") and then we dissected a Riftia worm. I was looking forward to this. I hadn't dissected anything since high school and this was an unusaul organism. I wasn't prepared to be so grossed out. These things have a lot of blood, and the scientist who was showing us how to dissect them did it while they were still alive. I'm not so sure that was necessary, it bothered me quite a bit. More than I had expected actually. Maddhatter was very good at doing the dissections again, goddess bless him!, and I collected the parts into tubes, labeled them and cleaned up the the rest. Still not so sure I want to do more of this, hmmmm. I have to ponder this.
Well that is all for tonight. Its a short post, but with the waves and all I'm kinda getting tired of watching my monitor come closer to me, then move away from me, then move to the right, then to the left, then up, then down..... You get the point. The picture I leave with you tonight is taken from my favourite vantage point on the ship. Its the second deck up, over the rails facing the bow. This is the best place to sit, think, soak up the sun and just have a moment to yourself when you can. Enjoy.
Rough weather, cancelled dives
Hi all. The last two days we've have had some rough weather, winds have been up to 25 knots and waves around 6 - 10 ft. Not too horrible, but enough that it is too dangerous to put ALVIN in the water or try for a retrieval. I feel bad because Maddhatter has had his dive postponed until probably our next location. We may still dive here tomorrow, weather permitting. If not, we will sail on to our next location, the Guayamas Basin. This will be a very different environment, new sea creatures and I believe we'll see land in the far distance. I've only ever boarded the ship from Guayamas, last year for the ~2 weeks I was out here. The town isn't all that great, and isn't nearly as beautiful and fun as Manzanillo (where we boarded the ship this time). 
This is a photo of lovely Manzanillo taken by Mookie, I don't have any of Guayamas, you probably wouldn't want to see it anyway. Last year's adventure had me trying to order vegetarian food in the restaurant next to our hotel, which was listed as a steakhouse, yeah that worked well, I had a cheese quesadilla for dinner. :( It also included a 1 legged man throwing his artificial leg at us, cursing us out in Spanish and being hauled away by the local police as he yelled and screamed at us in Spanish. I think we did something to him, but since we never spoke to him, came near him or barely looked at him, we're not exactly sure what we did. While waiting for the water taxi to take us to the ship, we also had two fine ladies stop to speak to us in Spanish. One of the girls understood Spanish fluently, but as soon as I heard "Jesus Christus" I knew what the ladies intentions were. Luckily, they gave up on us. So what will Guayamas be like this time? Short. We dock on the 30th, stay on the ship for the night and fly home on the afternoon of Dec 2nd to get home (ah, home) very early Dec 1st!
So what else is going on out here? Well there are the other workers, Oh, and Maddhatter and I dissected a Giant Clam yesterday! That was interesting. We're saving the "parts" for more ancillary studies. Maddhatter actually did the dissection, he's got experience and I'm pretty sure I would have sliced off a finger had I tried. But he showed me where the gills were, and the pseudopod, and some of the other internal 
organs of the clam. We collect the pieces and also some of the clam blood, which isn't actually "blood" in the sense like our blood, not hemoglobin. It looked more like melted raspberry sherbet (sorry, it did!). I thought I might be grossed out by the process, but it was really rather interesting and intriguing to see the dissection. We never did get to the Riftia in time, schedules got too confusing for the person who needed to teach us how to do the dissections. Poor tube worms finally gave up and died in the cold room too. We will try again before we leave though.
I thought you guys might like to see my living quarters, or stateroom as well. I share a room with another woman. We have two bunks, I've got the bottom bunk. Our bunks have little curtains on them, which is cozy but also practical. Working hours out here are not "normal" and I say that in every sense of the word. Take for instance yesterday to today. Yesterday I woke up at 5:00 am to be on deck for work by 5:15 (okay I probably made it there by 5:29....). I worked/ate/helped others/etc until 10:45 pm. I went to my room and showered so I got into my bunk by 11:15, probably fell asleep by midnight. I woke up at 3:45 am, to be on deck for the next collection using the CTD instead of the LVWS by 4:00 am. The CTD (conductivity, temperature and depth) device measures all those things and can collect water samples at discrete locations thorughout the water column. We worked today until about 2:00 pm and decided it was time for a mass nap. We all scurried to our bunks (some of us a bit faster than the rest, like say Strawberry Shortcake, Maddhatter and Mookie....) and napped, for a while, like 3 hours or more. Hence the moral of the story is that the curtains can block light and let you sleep at any hour of the day... as necessary.
So what work did I do during that time? I spent my day cutting up a filter, adding filtered sea water to it, taking sub-samples, trying to get bacteria to induce (basically produce bacteriophage), freezing samples in liquid nitrogen, eating, moving files, finding data, making microscopy slides from the samples, viewing the samples and taking pictures of phage and bacteria under a microscope at sea and saving the images. BTW, for all of you who have ever used a microscope, you haven't lived to the edges of extreme microscopy until you have tried to look at and take pictures of bacteriophage on a moving ship, in 10 foot swells, using oil objectives.... This is the scene... while watching the live feed of the image on the computer monitor the image goes in and out of focus according to the height of the wave, movement of the ship and how the slide is positioned. When the image is in focus (for all of 2 seconds) its a race to click the "Take Image" button to actually take the picture. Of course this is also while the sample fluorescence is fading (I am using only a Hg bulb, no adjustable laser line to reduce fading). I'm telling you, its fun and exciting. You should try it somtime.
Okay, back to my stateroom. So the bunks are tiny, I'm 5'2" and can touch the ends of the mattress w/o much effort. We have a porthole window, a very small desk (not really usable), two cabinets for clothing and such, a sink and mirror, life vests and survival suits. 
We also have a connecting bathroom shared with the adjoining room where 2 other women are living. The shower is very small, and has low pressure water (I have to be careful with the amount of soap I put in my hair!). The toilet is very close to the shower, so much so that you could probably use both at the same time (not joking). There is also a heat lamp in the room, which is quite nice. Its a small room, but I don't exactly spend a whole lot of time there. It is also 3 decks up from the main deck where I work, so "running to my room" is often a task. If you think its because of the 3 decks, that's a yes and a no. When the ship is rocking, rolling and pitching, its difficult to walk down the passageway much less climb stairs. Think of it this way, imagine walking up the stairs, but the stairs move right and left quickly so you don't have a straight path up, at the same time the stairs move forward away from you or back into you causing you to not know whether to step out or in some. It is a task in coordination and tolerance, which usually by the time I reach my stateroom deck I'm cursing out either the ship or the ocean or both. :( But this is only really bad in harsh weather, like the kind we've had for two days straight.
Alrighty then, time for me to go. I've got more things to share in the days to come. On our 4 day transit I will try to cover other cool topics such as the incredibly shrinking cups, what ALVIN looks like inside and what the ship looks like around the decks. Hope you all are enjoying living vicariously! I'll leave you today with the sunrise from this morning on the Pacific Ocean, always beautiful!
What am I doing out here?
Today I thought I'd tell you what I am doing out here, share my work and what kind of equipment and samples we're using. If you're wondering why I'm spending nearly a month at sea far from home for my science, you're about to find out why. Our main objective out here is to collect diffuse flow vent water. This is the water that is not directly out of the vents but not so far that the temperature is at typical sea water temperatures. The hydrothermal vents can get very hot, upwards of 300 - 400 degrees C (or 572 - 752 degrees F) at the direct source of water spewing from the vent. The water diffuses around this spout of incredibly hot water down to about 2 degrees C (or 35 degrees F) within a distance of a few inches to a few feet. The water we want is between 20 - 50 C, any colder and it won't be very different from the typical ocean water and any hotter and the nutrients (such as iron or sulphur) precipitate out of the water and can change the entire chemistry of the water sample when the sample surfaces in an oxygen rich environment.
We collect 210 liters (55.5 gallons) of the diffuse flow water in a device called a Large Volume Water Sampler (LVWS). The LVWS has 3 large plastic boxes that hold specially made Tedlar bags. The water is pumped into these bags by two small specialized pumps that can withstand the pressure of the deep ocean. A special ocean depth batter is used to run these pumps as well. The water goes through a series of filters set in sequence of larger pore sizes to smaller to collect specific organisms. The final water that we collect has oceanic bacteriophage, and this is specifically what I want for my study. The LVWS was designed by K-Dude back in 2001, 
its gone through a few changes, additions, removals and upgrades, but the basic design has proven to be very useful and quite good at getting the samples we need. It takes a lot of work to assemble and maintain the LVWS, and we have 2 on board this year. We pull up one LVWS around 5:30 am and drop the second one around 6:30 am in turn. The term drop isn't really accurate though. The process is a very complicated and well organized event that requires a crane operator, the Bos'n, and deck crew. They have to swap out the flotation buoys, make sure the homing device is working and no one is in the way of operations so no one gets injured. It kind of is like a well choreographed dance that can only be done by professionals, I'm sure I could find music that would be appropriate for the whole operation.
Once we have our water sample, we filter it, a lot. We take that 210 liters (55.5 gallons) and filter it to concentrate all the bacteriophage down to about 250 milliliters (1 cup). This sample we can use to genetic studies, look at morphologies (what does the bacteriophage look like) and many other experiments that will help advance the field of environmental viral ecology. Very few people do this kind of work, and it isn't the easiest either. Other biologist get to work with mice, or other such larger organisms. I work with organisms that are so small that I need a microscope to see them, and a special microscope called a transmission electron microscope (TEM) to see what they really look like.
This is all a great deal of our work. But being the curious scientists that we are, Maddhatter and I are doing ancillary projects too. We're collecting Riftia (see previous blog entry), some hydrothermal vent chimney pieces, some hydrothermal vent clams, and some Alvinella worms. That's me in the picture holding an Alvinella and a close up of what the worm looks like. They range in sizes from very tiny to about 50 cent piece size. I'm quite sure they all will be great projects to explore, experiment with, gather data for and all that other fun science stuff, Maddhatter and I just need to figure out how to find the time to process and evaluate the samples when we do get back to "real life" at the lab on land. I'm sure we'll find fabulous things about the critters living in and on these organisms, and maybe even find some funding to do more work (and another dive in ALVIN, Yay!) Cross your fingers for us!!
Okay, enough science talk for the day. On the upside, I took this picture of today's dinner menu. I am now a very happy vegetarian, the cook made special food for us veggies so that we didn't get any "meat contamination." He rocks!!
