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Science Report
- 6/30/00
We arrived at the
southern Cleft segment this morning and deployed an elevator mooring with
6 extensometer instruments on board (photo right). The elevator mooring
allows us to get things up and down from the bottom that are too big,
heavy, or awkward for ROPOS to handle by itself. The Juan de Fuca Ridge
is the boundary between two tectonic plates that are slowly moving apart
at an average of about 6 cm/yr. The extensometer instruments will be making
very precise, daily measurements of the distance across the plate boundary,
and so we can learn more about the character of spreading events. These
extensometers are new versions of the prototype instruments we have used
at Axial over the last few years - they can stay down longer, are more
precise, and are better designed for making long-term measurements at
the same site. ROPOS is just about ready to dive and will move the 6 instruments
from the elevator and position them on the bottom across the spreading
axis.
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Elevator mooring used to transport
instruments to ROPOS on the seafloor.
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