February 8, 2004
Left- One of the swimmers photographed from Alvin's pilot viewport during the launch today. Right- the 'Pajama Boys' - Hans and Ian -prior to their dive today.
Alvin was launched from R/V Atlantis for Dive 3965 today under higher seas than the last few days. All aboard Alvin were relieved when it sank into the tranquility of the ocean depths. On the ocean floor Alvin almost landed on a large “expired” fish that had attracted a large number of white crabs, scurrying around for their fish dinner. Although still recovering from a hip replacement, Chief Scientist Hans Schouten manned the port seat, squatting in relative discomfort for 8 hours, yet doing stalwart work. The starboard scientist, Ian Ridley, thought this reflected Hans’ commitment or that he should be "committed".
Hans
(left) and Ian (center) as they climb into Alvin for their dive today.
Gavin Eppard of the Alvin Group was the 'Launch Coordinator' today.
John Maclennan watched the launch today after a hard night's work in the rock lab processing the lava samples from yesterday's dive.
The dive focused on a observing and sampling a fault east of the EPR axis. These off-axis faults are thought to be a barrier to flowing lava and may contribute to the sharp magnetic edge observed east of the axis. The dive successfully imaged several parts of the fault system, which clearly has been active relatively recently. Alvin collected several lava samples for chemical analysis using the robotic arms, skillfully manipulated by Anthony Tarantino, the pilot. In addition, Alvin deployed a series of biological experiments for Wolfgang Bach and Cara Santelli.
Alvin's
manipulator arm sampling pillow lava on today's dive.
Alvin surfaced to find an angry sea, but a “bobbing and lurching” Alvin was scooped aboard Atlantis as usual, a testimony to the skills of the swimmers and Atlantis' crew. The two, somewhat seasick scientists thank them!
The Avon coming back to Atlantis after helping recover
Alvin after today's dive.
Bob
Green, of the Alvin Group (left) helps the Bosun Patrick Hennessy, deploy
the steerable elevator. This is a project that Bob has been working on
with other members of the Alvin engineering team back at WHOI. The basic
concept is to try to control the descent of the elevator so that it can
be 'steered' towards a landing site, rather than just be at the mercy
of the currents during descent. These tests will help determine the next
steps in developing this instrument so that it can be used by Alvin and
ROV Jason for science programs that use these vehicles.
Even the Rabbit Cam winch control has caught "tropics fever".
Two images from TowCam survey #7 last night. The photo at left shows the curtain-folded sheet flows that are a focus of tomorrow's dive at the large lava flow near 9° 43.5'N, that Mike Perfit and Javier Escartin will go on. The photos is approximately 6 m across. The right photo shows some pillow lava with a large cirrate octopus, or more aptly named a 'Dumbo' octopus because of its large ear-like flaps on either side of its head (scale across photo is ~4 m).
A Missed Birthday wish to Maura from Ken Sims.
Please check out the new link to the Maps and Data that we'll be posting every few days. This is part of our shipboard analysis of the data we are collecting and using to plan out the rest of our field program -
Link to New Map and Data Section
There is pretty 'Neat-O' stuff in here.. don't miss it!