Day 4 – Photos from the Deep
May 23, 2011
Location - Station M The weather calmed down a great deal today, and we got to work bright and early. We started out by recalling our deep-sea observatory that has been gathering photos and sediment samples on the ocean floor since last fall. A little before sunrise we sent the acoustic release signal telling the station to drop its anchor and come up to the surface. With the beautifully coordinated efforts of the crew, we brought the whole station up on deck smoothly and quickly! 
The floor of the moon pool, the room where the Doc Ricketts lives, opens to allow us to deploy it through the center of the ship. 
A view of the monitors in the control room, showing the live feed from the ROV Doc Ricketts at 4,000 meters (over 13,000 feet) underwater. It went down to visit the Benthic Rover, seen on the screen, and checked that everything was functioning properly. Taking advantage of the calmer weather, we then steamed back to the site where we had dropped our Benthic Rover, hoping to use our onboard remotely operated vehicle (ROV), the Doc Ricketts, to go down and visit the rover to make sure everything was running smoothly. After two and a half hours of cruising through the midwater, the Doc Ricketts met the Benthic Rover on the ocean floor. We circled the rover and watched it picking up and measuring sediment samples. Satisfied that everything was working, we brought the ROV back up, leaving the rover to its long journey along the bottom. 
This sediment trap has been hovering above the ocean floor for six months, gathering falling particulate matter in its giant cone, and preserving the samples in the little jars below for us to analyze in the lab. Knowing what sort of matter reaches the ocean floor from the surface is critical for understanding how the carbon cycling of the ocean works.
— Judit Pungor
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Logbook
Today we made the most of our last day here at Station M. We sent the ROV Doc Ricketts, down to the ocean floor once more...
The free vehicle grab respirometer (FVGR) being pulled out of the water after its brief stay on the seafloor.
One of the 4,000 images taken by the deep sea observatory. This one was lucky enough to catch an unusual visitor, a dumbo octopus!
A view of the monitors in the Control Room, showing the live feed from the ROV Doc Ricketts at 4000m underwater. It went down to visit the Benthic Rover, seen on the screen.....
Recovering the transducer after communicating with the Benthic Rover
A buoy is attached to many of the instruments we deploy, to help us locate it when we bring it back to the surface. The buoys have not only a large brightly colored flag to provide a visible cue above the waves, but they also carry both a light and radio strobe, both important to indicate where our machines surfaced.
A mixed pod of both Pacific White-sided and Northern Rightwhale Dolphins came up alongside our ship this evening. Cruise logs will updated when they are received from the ship. Please check back soon. Equipment
 R/V Western FlyerThe R/V Western Flyer is a small water-plane area twin hull (SWATH) oceanographic research vessel measuring 35.6 meters long and 16.2 meters wide. It was designed and constructed for MBARI to serve as the support vessel for ROV operations. Her missions include the Monterey Bay as well as extended cruises to Hawaii, Gulf of California and the Pacific Northwest.
ROV Doc Ricketts is MBARI's next generation ROV. The system breaks new ground in providing an integrated unmanned submersible research platform, with many powerful features providing efficient, reliable, and precise sampling and data collection in a wide range of missions.
Sequencing conical sediment traps are programmed to collect sinking particulate matter in sampling cups poisoned with 3.0 mmol HgCl2. In the laboratory, the collected particulate matter is analyzed in duplicate for total and inorganic carbon.
A push-core is a clear plastic tube with a rubber handle on one end. Just as its name implies, the push core is pushed down into loose sediment using the ROV's manipulator arm. When the cores are brought back to the surface, scientists typically look for living animals and organic material in the sediments.
The Benthic Rover is a mobile physiology lab. In a series of experiments, the rover measures how much oxygen seafloor animals are using. Precise motors lower two 30-centimeters-wide (12-inch) sample chambers into the sediment, where probes record oxygen levels. Two acoustic scanners use ultrasound to look 10 centimeters (4 inches) deep into the sediment for large animals, such as worms.
This midwater toolsled contains a High Frequency Suction Sampler (HFSS). You can see one of the 12 collection buckets in this image. This sampler acts like a vacuum cleaner sucking up samples and depositing them into one of the 12 buckets.
Oxygen consumption (a measure of biological activity) of the organisms living in the sediment is measured using a Free Vehicle Grab Respirometer (FVGR) with grabs that retrieve the sediments for faunal examination and chemical analyses.
The camera mooring consists of Cannon EOS 5D digital camera mounted on a titanium frame at an angle of 31° from horizontal with the lens approximately two meters above the seafloor. Up to 3500 images can be collected over a period of four months. The camera is housed with a PC104 processor and external memory drive. These components are used to control the camera and store images. Research Team
Ken is an open-ocean ecologist with 40 years experience going to sea and studying extreme ecosystems ranging from the deep ocean to Antarctic icebergs. The main thrust of his research is to understand the impact of a changing climate on deep sea and polar ecosystems. On this cruise, he will be coordinating the deployments of autonomous instruments to continue long time-series studies at Station M on the Monterey Deep-Sea Fan at 4,000 meters depth.
As lab technician, Jake's responsibility is to make sure everything runs smoothly so samples can be collected at sea and analyzed in the laboratory. He'll handle much of the organizing of the equipment being taken to sea, and will ensure everything works during the cruise. Once ashore he'll take all the samples and analyze them in a variety of ways with the goal of achieving a better understanding of how the ocean works.
Rich has been at MBARI since 2000. Rich has spent time on many types of projects, but mostly writing software for MBARI's autonomous vehicles. On this cruise Rich is responsible for the control system on the Benthic Rover.
Paul specializies in underwater vehicles and instrumentation. On this cruise he'll help prepare, deploy, and recover the drifters, crawlers, and landers being used to study the deep ocean at Station M.
Alana's focus is on developing oceanographic instrumentation. She has worked on several imaging systems, underwater vehicles (both remotely operated and autonomous), and a water sampling system for autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). On this cruise she will be deploying three instruments: the Benthic Rover, the time-lapse camera tripod, and Lagrangian sediment traps.
Judit is a graduate student at Stanford University's Hopkins Marine Station. By day, she studies cephalopod visual systems. By night, she helps Ken Smith's lab lift heavy objects. On this cruise, Judit will be working to document the research projects for the cruise logbook. |
