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!