A few weeks ago I was interviewed for the Chemical Heritage Foundation Distillations Podcast. I spoke about the current state of the Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. You can listen here.
In December 2010 Katie Sheline ’13 and I were at sea in the Gulf of Mexico examining the impacts of the Deepwater Horizon Disaster oil spill on the seafloor (see earlier posts). When we stepped onboard ship, Katie became very excited and I wasn’t sure why. The smell of simple green? The autonomous underwater vehicle Sentry? The deep submergence vehicle Alvin? The endless delicious food from the Galley? The famous scientists? No, none of these. Even though all of these at some point would provide many exciting moments for us during the cruise, there was a huge grin on Katie’s face for a different reason. Onboard ship accompanying us on our expedition was as Katie put it, “The guy from shark week!” This guy, was Mike DeGruy, filmmaker, underwater adventurer, ocean crusader and as we learned throughout the cruise, amazingly friendly, knowledgeable and all round wonderful human. Sadly, Mike is no longer with us. This is a huge loss for all who knew him and I send my thoughts and condolences to his family. Being at sea with Mike for 10 days, was an incredible experience. I have loved the oceans for as long as I can remember, but his passion for the oceans was infectious and inspiring. I am fortunate to have met Mike. We are all fortunate that he has left us with such beautiful images from the murky depths. You can see more here and hear Mike talk here.
Sylvia Earle and film crew had already boated across the Gulf of Mexico and boarded the Atlantis before I even made it up on deck this morning. She, along with the rest of us, was waiting to see Alvin make its last dive. I learned that Sylvia has never been underwater in Alvin before, which I found very surprising given her outstanding oceanographic career. All the hype and film crews made Alvin’s last dive almost surreal. There were four different film crews, plus everyone else on board with their personal cameras, capturing the scene. The saddest part was when Alvin came back up, knowing that Alvin would never be the same.
However, after the sentimental pictures, once Alvin came up it was back to the same routine- there were cores and slurp filters to be processed. Working on the boat is just like being in lab back on land, except things are a little messier, there aren’t many fancy instruments, and you’re constantly moving back and forth. You also get the additional bonus of looking out the porthole to a great ocean view.
While I was reading outside today (since it was a beautiful, calm day… crazy how the weather can change), a bird- like a sparrow, not a seagull- flew onto the deck. It was weird because it was the first animal I’ve seen in a week other than dead tubeworms and brittle stars. Although I’ve been on the lookout for whales or sharks, or even fish, I haven’t seen anything.
Since today was our last full day on the boat, we spent the end of the night sorting and packing away all of our supplies. We’re going to ship our samples back to Haverford, but we still have two action packers full of unused jars, vials, paper towels, tape, etc. Tomorrow is going to be a busy day full of cleaning rooms, sweeping labs, and unloading the ship. Since we lost a day at port, everything will have to be done in half the time.
Biggest curveball of the day goes to Chuck Fisher for announcing that we will be out at sea an extra day. As chief scientist he felt that not having an Alvin dive yesterday or today meant that things would go unfinished. He wasn’t happy with how the imaging turned out and feels that one more dive is needed, which the NSF agreed to fund. I can understand where he’s coming from. We’re already out in the middle of the ocean and it would take a lot more effort to get a whole new cruise lined up to finish the work. I know it’s an inconvenience to most everyone on board and for me, losing a day back at school will make taking exams interesting…
The good news, however, is that the seas have calmed down quite a bit. They were rough this morning and into the early afternoon, but have mostly settled out now. It got pretty bad last night though. My bed is basically a pullout shelf with a mattress on it, so it doesn’t have much support. It also doesn’t have any railing to keep me in. The huge swells last night nearly bounced me out of bed three times. I contemplated moving my mattress to the floor. However, the weather reports look good for tomorrow and I can only hope for calm weather so we can get in the last Alvin dive.
Since there was no dive today, there wasn’t much to do (other than make rearrangements of travel plans). I cleaned a couple things in preparation for tomorrows dive and took a shift watching the multibeam sonar topographic map, but that’s about it. I did get to watch the film crew set up for a shoot though. It took a surprisingly long time for them to get the lighting and camera angles just right. Then I got to watch Helen make her TV debut as she talked with Amanda about oil and its impacts on microscopic life in the seafloor. It was pretty funny to watch at first because they were both a little uncomfortable with being on camera, but as the interview progressed it got much better.
I’ve completely lost track of time while on the ship. Schedules and routines are determined by if there is an Alvin dive, not what day of the week it is. For example, I thought today was Sunday and our 6th day out at sea. It’s Monday and our 8th day out at sea.
Tomorrow is Alvin’s last dive before it goes under reconstruction for about a year. Talking to some of the Alvin crew, I learned that the improvements will allow new Alvin to dive to 6500 m, deeper than any other manned submersible on the planet. New Alvin will also expand the hull by about 7 inches, which may not seem like much, but will make quite a difference. All modifications have to be somewhat confined, however, because they don’t want to change the A-frame, storage hanger, or any other fitted equipment on the Atlantis. The dive plan for tomorrow is to successfully image the coral as detailed as possible. Chuck and Mike will get the last dive. Also, Sylvia Earle will be coming on board tomorrow to watch Alvin’s last dive and do some filming. It should be an interesting day.
As the weather reports predicted, there were high winds and large swells today so there was no Alvin dive. Instead we’re steering in straight lines and using the ship’s multibeam sonar to create a basic topographic map of the sea floor. Although it makes a really neat map, it means we’re going straight into the waves, which hasn’t made for a gentle ride. I would say about half of the science group has spent most of the day sleeping to avoid being nauseous and seasick. Luckily, I haven’t had any trouble other than being slammed into the walls a few times.
Since Alvin didn’t dive, it was the perfect time for an onboard tour of the AUV. Even though it looks relatively spacious on the outside, the actual living space is quite cozy. There’s definitely no room for more than three people. The windows to see outside are no bigger than a dinner plate, and the screen to view what the camera on your side is recording is about 4″x6″. The space above the sitting area is covered with switches for all the different functions Alvin can perform. The pilot seat has a small scale replica of one of the arms, which he moves to move the corresponding part on Alvin’s arm. It seems pretty nifty, maybe one day I’ll get to see it in action…
For a day off I was kept pretty busy. After lunch I washed all the push core supplies in case we do get a dive tomorrow. There were two days worth of cores to clean, so it took awhile. After that I spent about an hour and a half in the cold room changing the preservatives of some of the tubeworm samples. On this trip, my biggest fear has been to get locked in the walk-in freezer where we are storing our samples. The door can only be locked manually from the outside, but shuts automatically to keep in the cool air, and every time I go in I think it’s going to lock me in there.
Even with all my busywork, I was able to steal a chance to go outside and stand on the bow and ride the waves as they came crashing in. The bow would raise up really high and then slam back down. It felt like a roller coaster going over hills. The weather isn’t supposed to get any better until tomorrow afternoon, but there are hopes of one last Alvin dive before we head back to port. The dive will probably be delayed, but a late start is better than no dive at all. Chuck wants to image some more coral at the first dive site so that we will have a more complete profile of the coral community.
Alvin had to cut its dive short today due to a change of weather. The winds picked up and are expected to be 30- 35 knots tomorrow, along with 10 ft seas (but it’s still warm!). I’m excited for the storm. Just watching the waves crashing into the bow today made me giddy. I’ll get to experience what it’s really like when things take a turn for the worse out on the open ocean. The seas started rising this afternoon, as evidenced by the more intense rocking and rolling of the boat. I haven’t had much trouble getting my sea legs- you just have to be able to walk while tipping sideways and bobbing up and down a bit. However, the constant movement did make showering a bit more difficult.
We only had to process one sediment core, so I was able to observe and help the biologists dissect tubeworms and section coral. When processing the tubeworms, you have to separate the insides (mostly bacteria and blood) from the outer tube. Of course, the routine gets quite messy. After one particularly juicy tubeworm, the table looked more like a crime scene than a scientific lab. I got a tubeworm anatomy lesson from Ken Halanych as he was separating the specimen into different samples, but I was preoccupied by the guts so I don’t remember much of it.
Most of the coral sampling took place in the cold room, so I wasn’t able to see it. I did get to see the tubes preserving the small pieces of coral, however. Andrea explained to me that some of the coral samples are going to be used for DNA and population genetics, while the other samples will have their cells inspected. The cells will be examined for any sort of damage caused by the oil spill.
Due to the bad weather, Alvin won’t dive tomorrow. If the weather continues as predicted, we should be able to get in a shallow dive on Monday though.
Today the ocean was completely flat and there was relatively no wind. It was also warmer- a long sleeved t-shirt sufficed. As I was looking over the edge of the bow, I could see patches of small oil sheens floating by. They were probably from one of the three oil rigs in sight (two of which are relief wells from the Deepwater Horizon site). It’s crazy because even in the middle of the day you can see the flames burning off the tops of the oil rigs. Since there were no waves and I could see for miles, naturally I was on the lookout for any fins of sharks that may have been swimming around.Unfortunately, I struck out. Last night there were apparently large squid hunting in the lights from the end of the boat, but, as I mentioned, I was busy filtering seawater and missed seeing them. However, tonight as I was out on deck washing core supplies, I did see a couple of small squid.
Alvin brought up 12 cores, slurp filters, 30 tube worms, two large coral samples, and some mussels. The biologists on board finally had a good stock to work with. However, the excitement was soon replaced with stress (especially for the corals). It’s not that the work requires a high level of technical skill, it’s just that there is so much to be done all at once and everything has to be processed quickly. Most of the work is processing and prepping samples so they can be preserved and analyzed back in labs on land. As much as we may try to guess at what we’re seeing, nothing is definite or proven.
Helen and I realized the beauty of organization today. Although we don’t have comparatively as many samples as some of the other people on board, we still had a few difficulties with our sample log. When you do the same procedure multiple times a night for multiple days, they start to blur together. We figured everything out after sifting through our lab book though. Working with the filters has been the most complex. First, the naming is confusing- filter of the slurp filter, filters from the slurp filter, etc. Second, there are different aspects of the filter from which samples must be collected separately- the filter itself, the seawater in the filter’s canister, and the seawater from the biobox that held the coral from which the slurp was taken. When dealing with the oil spill and potential data for litigation, everything has to be precise and specific, which ends up making it all the more confusing.
My job with today’s samples was pretty much the same as last night, except a little less filtering and a little more sediment cores. Luckily there weren’t many problems with the filtering today, and it actually went by relatively quickly. Although I would have liked to see more of the processing of the tube worms, corals, and mussels, I was busy with the seawater and sediment cores. Things start to get weird late night in the wet lab. The music gets turned up and people start singing as they crank out the core samples. Everyone is tired to the point of delirium. But that’s what makes it fun.
We grabbed a few photos inside the sphere. Obviously the most exciting stuff is outside the sphere, but that is for the science report. There is also the audio from the launch of our dive at the bottom of this page
Another day onboard ship, and another early morning Alvin launch. It’s great to be out at sea and amazing to have spent all of yesterday at 1400m below the surface. We spent most of the day imaging corals and taking collections of different materials to be analyzed back onboard ship. There is really no match for being able to see the corals, sediment, crabs, jellies etc.. up close and in person in Alvin. The colors are clearer and you can understand dimensions and scale much better. Tim Shank (WHOI) and I worked hard the whole time we were on the seafloor, trading off imaging with HD, note taking, and still photography. Our pilot Mark Skowronski did an excellent job getting us around the seafloor trying to leave as little trace on these deep water ecosystems as possible. Manouvering the sub and operating Alvin’s claws sure can be tricky, but we accomplished most of our goals and I hope our samples will generate some meaningful data. During our transit to the surface there was time for a peanut butter and honey sandwich and half a milky way. We took some snapshots of ourselves and I pressed my head up to the window to watch the light show as we ascended. You really don’t want to miss a minute of the view when you are underwater. As we surfaced, the sun was setting, and Mike switched our cameras to film the sunset with the Atlantis cruising in front of it. I watched this like a movie as the Atlantis pulled us in. As we were lifted out of the water, I asked if we could be put back in. It’s tough to leave Alvin’s sphere, an extremely special place and this version of Alvin only has a few more dives left. It will be a while before Alvin dives again after this cruise, but when it comes back it will be even better. For now, I am pretty content thinking about yesterday’s dive, #4661 and must get back to writing up my dive notes for Chief Scientist Chuck Fisher while they are fresh in my mind.
another day another dive
Since Helen was in Alvin 1400 m down exploring the bottom of the sea, that meant I could do whatever I wanted back on ship. Just kidding. I prepped for collecting the samples that Alvin would be bringing back, and I helped Amanda assemble the push cores for tomorrow’s dive. I also spent some time on deck. It was a perfect day- the sun was out, the sky was clear, the sea was calm, and the wind was just a soothing breeze. You still need a sweatshirt to be warm enough outside though. Being out on the ocean is so relaxing. I love it.
However, once Alvin came up the mood changed. They had collected 6 cores, a slurp filter, a whole gorgonian coral sample, and two brittle stars. For me that meant storing the collected seawater for DIC (dissolved inorganic carbon) analysis, sectioning cores, and filtering seawater from the slurp filter and bio box. It may not sound like much, but if you compare the size of the filter to the amount of slurp and bio box water, you’ll understand why filtering alone took 4 hours. Not to mention the large amount of particles in the water that clogged the filters- I almost got through an entire alphabet of filters (I got to V). Filtering is not my forte. I do, however, like sectioning cores. You get to move around a little more and actually interact with what you’re working with.
Interestingly enough, my filters turned out to be the hot topic. When the slurp filter sucked up whatever gunk was covering the corals, it picked up polyps that had fallen off the corals. These polyps didn’t look normal, which spurred quite a bit of discussion, and were scrutinized under Erik’s high-tech imaging microscope (which is amazing, might I add).
The plan for tomorrow is to have Alvin dive on the same site as today. Supposedly we’re going to get a colony of tube worms. That should be interesting.
