1/30/09 Update

Well, we officially experienced the first (and hopefully last) cyclone of the trip. It was named Tropical Cyclone Hettie and it lasted for about three days or so. We avoided getting hit by the worst part of it by sort of skirting around the edge, but it was still rather unpleasant. The boat was pitching and rolling quite a bit more than usual, occasionally things would fall off desks or slide around, and sleeping was much more difficult. We've had almost 24 hours of relative calm now, and we've actually begun shooting the air guns and collecting data. The air guns are in 4 rows of 10 guns, towed about 200 m behind the boat, all suspended a few meters below rubber tube floats which kind of look like giant snakes in the water when they move around on the waves. Only 9 of the 10 guns in each row are active at a time (the other is a spare), and they all fire off at once every ~3 min (450 m in the water). In each row, there are guns with variable pressures that produce a variety of sound frequencies. The sound waves are what travel to the ocean bottom and penetrate the crust. Thankfully, we don't really hear the guns on the boat; from what I've heard, on other boats or in shallower water the sound can be pretty brutal and make for a hellish experience. While shooting the guns, my job is to log the start and end of the lines that the boat travels along (a grid pattern over the study area), and to log any problems with the guns (of which there are many so far). Apparently, we're going to be shooting for almost 2 weeks on the current area, after which we retrieve some of the seismometers from the seafloor and place a smaller number of them in a location just north of where we are. As you might imagine, watch duty during shooting is pretty boring, but it's nice to actually be doing what we came to do. Unfortunately, we can't see the data in real time, it's all stored on the instruments and has to be processed extensively before it's of any use. The marine mammal people are constantly listening for any signs of marine life while we shoot as well.
I got a chance to go out before my shift at 11:45 pm or so and see some stars, which was pretty awesome. The milky way was visible in a big swath overhead, although to be completely honest, I've seen stars just as well on camping trips in California or Oregon before, I was hoping for a little better being this far from civilization. I try to get outside for an hour or so every day and just stare at the ocean, it's very peaceful and helps keep me sane. Although there are a few bright spots here and there, overall I think it's pretty safe to say that life on a boat is not for me, I'm definitely ready to get back to solid ground, especially since I have 4 days on a resort island in Fiji to look forward to, and then back to good old Hawaii. I still have a long way to go though; I'm interested to see what my opinion will be by the end of this trip. In the big picture, I'm glad I'm getting this experience and seeing this side of the geologic spectrum, but for me this simply doesn't compare to being out in a beautiful place in the mountains somewhere where I can actually see and touch the geology. There are some really cool things going on out here geologically (see the "Science of it All" post for details), but seeing it filtered through a computer monitor is just not the same. Oh well, for all the Calvin and Hobbes fans out there, I guess I can just chalk it up to "building character." Until next time...