In the Water! At Last!

Jason goes into the water:
We were conducting science before we got the remotely operated vehicle (ROV) Jason into the water, we were certainly busy, it’s just that key parts of this research project require that we use Jason to deploy instruments on the sea floor. Before Jason was deployed, we recovered and deployed moored bottom pressure recorders, did CTD casts, and collected data with the ship’s multibeam sonar system to map the sea floor.

Scott Nooner indicates ROV Jason is ready to dive.

Yesterday, we finally had good enough weather to put ROV Jason, into the ocean. With the small back deck on the Kilo Moana, getting Jason into the water is challenging. Because the ROV Jason’s usual winch would not fit on the ship, Jason is running a two body ROV configuration with a second vehicle called Medea. As you watch this deployment video (coming soon), you can see the Jason group, preparing Jason, deploying Jason and then deploying Medea.

We are starting a 3-day long dive with Jason and Medea visiting benchmarks on the sea floor and taking pressure measurements at each one. We hope to also take water and gas samples at hydrothermal vents near the end of the dive on day 3, so Jason’s basket is full of sample bottles.
We cannot yet begin work with the MBARI AUV as the weather is still marginal for being able to recover the AUV while Jason is in the water on the Kilo Moana. We’ll be able to make AUV dives later when we can recover the AUV with Jason on deck.

Deploying the MPR (mobile pressure recorder) at a benchmark.

Because Jason is finally in the water, today is a bit more of a typical day for me, in my role as one of the Jason video loggers. I wake up at about 3:15 am and I arrive in the Jason control van at about 3:45 am for my 4-hour shift. I spend a few minutes talking with Morgan Haldeman, the 12 midnight to 4 am video logger, to see how things are running. There are two loggers for each shift, a video logger and a data logger. I am working in the van twice a day, in the morning (4 to 8 am) and the afternoon (4 to 8 pm). It is hard to get enough sleep in the 8 hours off between shifts, as it takes time to get ready to sleep and you have to wake up with enough time to get ready for your shift. So, I am lucky to get 6 hours of sleep each night.

Here is the view from my spot in the control van.

 The cameras on the ROV Jason are amazing. I feel like I am in the water with the animals and rocks. It almost seems like you could reach out and touch them.

We are presently visiting 10 different sites that have concrete benchmarks where we are collecting pressure measurements. These will help us learn more about how much the volcano has inflated since our last measurements, caused by magma moving into the Axial volcanic system beneath the summit caldera.

Filter feeder on the benchmark marker.

During the daytime 8 hours between my shifts, I am working on gathering photos, video and information for the blog. The science runs 24 hours a day, so everyone is getting pretty tired. We are half-way through our 10-day research expedition and I wonder how I can get more sleep!