 task remarkably well. So well that we have to ask: How do they do it?
April 23 Log
Morale is just as important
as every other facet of a successful journey on board the Okeanos Explorer;
it is an assigned collateral duty that is an essential part of the seafaring way of life.
April 22 Log On Friday
, the Okeanos Explorer
and her tandem remotely operated vehicles (ROV), Little Hercules
, dove on a never before seen area of the seafloor in Ewing Bank block 915 (EW915), 130 miles south of New Orleans.
April 21 Log A famous quote
attributed to Louis Pasteur translates as, "In the field of observation chance only favors the prepared mind."
April 20 Log
During yesterday's dive, we searched for natural hydrocarbon seeps
— areas where oil and natural gas slowly leak out of the seafloor. This is an entirely natural phenomenon and an important characteristic of the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem.
April 18 Log Dive 06 of this expedition
really began about seven months ago during what we call a water column mapping cruise on the Okeanos Explorer
April 17 Log As with most of the systems
aboard the Okeanos Explorer
, the video system and the video engineers that operate it play an important role in the ship’s mission of systematic ocean exploration.
April 15 Log The third leg of the Okeanos Explorer
Gulf of Mexico mission is operating in a part of the Gulf, the oldest sediments of which are part of the upward-moving Louann Formation.
April 14 Log Ocean exploration
is commonly thought of in spatial
terms, e.g., the creation of maps of previously unobserved seafloor. However, it has an equally important temporal
component which addresses how ocean processes change through time.
April 11 Log Think of your last road trip.
It is likely you pored over maps, plotted your journey (possibly even rerouted it), fueled up, (hopefully) gave the vehicle a check-up, buckled everyone in, and were on your way.
April 4 Log An interesting challenge
was presented to the remotely operated vehicle (ROV) team last week: Develop a method to drop syntactic foam markers from Little Hercules to mark sites of interest for return dives.
April 2 Log Working at sea
has been both an incredible personal and professional experience for me. The Okeanos Explorer
is filled with amazingly skilled and passionate people.
March 27 Log As I logged on
to the Okeanos Explorer
links this morning, I could hardly control my excitement over today’s dive on a potential shipwreck site.
March 24 Log I have explored the depths
of the ocean on a number of different ships with a variety of deep-sea vehicles, but I never done it from my desk.
March 23 Log Early yesterday morning
an electrical fire at a NOAA headquarters building caused havoc for a number of friends and colleagues in the Washington, DC, area.
March 22 Log The remotely operated vehicle
(ROV) went in the water at 0800 EDT (on schedule), and we eagerly awaited the discoveries ahead of us as the ROV descended to the seafloor.
March 21 Log By 0730
, we had already cancelled today's dive at our primary location on the Florida Escarpment.
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