Student's
Report:
We are Vince
Russo and Andy Alvarez. We are two of the Reefdogs selected to cruise
on the Ronald Brown with our other four classmates. All of the Reefdogs
have been put on a schedule that rotates between departments on the ship.
Today is the second day
that we have been working with the science crew and their jobs have been
running around the clock for most of the cruise. One of the projects that
we have been observing is the recovery of MTR moorings that were moored
to the bottom last year. MTR stands for Miniature Temperature Recorder.
These recorders are built inside these titanium cylinders that are arranged
in a series along the line that is anchored to the bottom. They were placed
right in the hydrothermal plume last year and have been recording temperature,
current flow rate and direction every 30 minutes since then. Dr. Baker
and the ship's crew have been recovering them for the last two days. Each
time an old one is recovered, another new one is sent down to spend a
lonely year in the Axial Volcano faithfully gathering data for next years
discovery. This data is important though. Dr. Baker can use this data
to estimate how fast and where the hot water is moving from the vents.
It was interesting to see the yellow floats pop up to the surface after
they have been down for so long. The floats detach from an anchor (big
links of iron chain or old railroad car wheels) after our ship sends a
sound message down to an instrument called an acoustic release devise.
Well that is all for today.
Tomorrow we will write about our experience with the oceanographers and
how they send an 1100 lb. device called a Sea Bird CTD down to the murky
depths of the hydrothermal plume.
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