Iceland!

     It has been over a year and a half since my last cruise experience, but I'm back onboard the R/V Marcus G. Langseth for another one.  Before I get into the details of the cruise itself and the scientific mission, I wanted to summarize my experiences over the last few days in Iceland.  My previous cruises have all been in the tropical western or southwestern Pacific (the Lau basin (Tonga, Fiji, Samoa) and the southern Mariana Trough (Guam)), so Iceland is definitely a change of pace.  For details on my previous cruises see the older entries in this blog.  Since I am already onboard the ship at this point and we are just now departing Reykjavik, I'm just going to try to summarize my impressions and experiences in Iceland from the last 5 days.  I'll try to be somewhat organized about it so it doesn't sound too much like me rambling, but as you know if you've read my previous blog posts, my writing style is somewhat of a free flow of thoughts, so a little rambling is inevitable :)  Here it goes, I hope you enjoy...

The Landscape

     The first thing that struck me on the bus ride from the airport in Keflavik (~45 min drive southwest of Reykjavik) was the lack of trees and the relatively flat landscape (I learned later that the southern part of Iceland is really the only flat part, the rest of it is much more mountainous, as you'd expect from a volcanic island).  The landscape consisted of lava flows (most of the exposed lava is ~10,000 years old at most) largely covered with silvery gray to yellow-green moss, with some patches of grass and a few shrubs here and there.  As we got nearer to Reykjavik, I started seeing trees, but apparently the majority of them have been planted.  My initial impression was reinforced when I learned that only 1% of Iceland is covered in trees.  Apparently it used to be 25%, but a combination of human deforestation, and lava flows/ash took care of most of them.  One of the Icelanders I met on the boat said they have a saying, "If you get lost in the forest in Iceland, just stand up."

     In order to see a bit more of what Iceland has to offer, I took two organized tours that covered most of the SW portion of Iceland. Although the tours were a bit pricy, I'm definitely glad that I did them, because I saw some amazing and beautiful things that were unlike anything I've seen before.  

The Golden Circle

     The first tour was the famous Golden Circle tour, which apparently is the most popular tour around here. Despite the popularity and large number of tourists, it was still pretty fantastic. I posted the full set of pictures on my facebook page, I'll try to post a few of the highlights on the blog as well, but with the slow internet connection on the ship I can't make any guarantees.  

     Our first stop was probably the least interesting unless you are really into agriculture, it was at Frioheimar greenhouse that uses geothermally heated water to maintain the temperature and water the plants.  They also pump in volcanic CO2 to help with photosynthesis. I got some coffee and a nice fresh-baked piece of bread, checked out the tomato plants, and listened to a spiel from one of the owners (it's a family-owned greenhouse) about the place and how it operates.  It is 100% organic, instead of pesticides they brought in flies to eat the few pests that exist here (probably wouldn't be adequate in warmer climates), and they bring in bumblebees to pollinate the plants. 

     Next, we saw the majestic and awe-inspiring Gulfoss (Golden) waterfall.  Although it certainly wasn't the tallest waterfall I've seen (~32 m total drop divided into two steps) or the largest (Niagara falls has a much higher volume of water), it still might be my favorite waterfall of all that I've seen (Rainbow falls near Mammoth, CA, Yosemite falls, and Akaka falls on the Big Island are close competitors). Describing it with words won't do it justice, so I'll try to post a picture.

Gulfoss Waterfall

    The next stop was the Geysir geothermal area, another popular tourist stop.  There is a restaurant where we had lunch and a gift shop, the usual tourist stuff.  There are a number of hot springs scattered around and the Strokkur geyser that shoots water 10-15 m into the air every ~4-5 minutes.  This was all very cool, but as far as geysers go, not quite as impressive as Old Faithful in Yellowstone or even the geyser in Calistoga, CA.  It was funny watching the tourists who got way too close running away screaming every time it went off.  ~90% of the people seemed to spend their time just sitting by the geyser waiting for it to go off and taking pictures, but I decided to do a little exploring, and I am very glad that I did.  I walked up the ridge above the geyser to get a better view of the area, and on the other side of the ridge was a beautiful little valley that to me captures the term "idyllic" better than any other place I've seen.  I still can't exactly explain why I liked this place so much, but I was giggling like a schoolgirl when I got to the top of the ridge and saw it laid out before me.  At the base of the valley were some small farms, scattered houses, horses (Icelandic horses were brought in by the Vikings and are one of the few pure breeds remaining), and a beautiful little meandering stream cutting through it. Objectively, there are probably other similar valleys around the world that are prettier, but there was something magical about this place and I (and my camera) loved every second of it.  I laughed out loud at the tourists that were crowded around the geyser the whole time and had no idea what was just over the ridge.

Strokkur Geyser

The Idyllic Valley in Geysir

     On the way to the last stop, we saw the largest lake in Iceland, Thingvallavatn, and a little more of the countryside, which consists of farms and small ridges, lakes, streams, etc.  The final stop was not necessarily the most aesthetically impressive, but definitely the most interesting from a geologic standpoint.  We took a short walk along the active rift zone that ultimately connects to the Reykjanes Ridge spreading center that is the focus of our current research (more on that later).  The walk took us through a small valley with vertical basalt cliffs on either side and up to a viewpoint where you could see a nice panorama of the lake.  There were lots of signs of active tectonics, cracks and fissures ripping through the ground and lava flows (some with very nice pa'hoe'hoe surfaces), although it did not appear to be geothermally active.  Apparently, you can snorkel or SCUBA dive along the rift at Silfra, which sounds pretty amazing.  Visibility is supposedly 150+ meters! (in comparison, great visibility in Hawaii is ~20-30 m, and usually you're happy with 10-15), and the water is so clean (glacial water filtered naturally through the rock) that you can just drink it while you snorkel. Of course, the water is a tad colder than Hawaii, you actually need a drysuit even just for snorkeling. If I come back to Iceland, I'll definitely have to try that.

The Rift Zone

Fissures in the rift zone and Thingvallatn Lake in the background

South Shore Adventure

     The next day I went on another tour called the South Shore Adventure, which went along the south coast as far as the small town of Vik, ~180 km east of Reykjavik. The drive to the first stop was characterized by flat farmland to the south and mountains to the north, with small waterfalls coming down the steep slopes in some areas.  I particularly took note of one farmhouse that was situated right below a small canyon with a beautiful ~20 m high waterfall, and I have to admit I was a little jealous that they pretty much have their own personal waterfall to enjoy whenever they want.

     Our first stop was at Myrdasjokull glacier, which was pretty freaking awesome.  It was my first up close encounter with a glacier (I had technically seen one way off in the distance on the Golden Circle tour) and I took an excessive number of pictures.  You can do a tour where you actually get to walk over the glacier, but we weren't allowed to actually walk on it.  I walked along the edge of the glacier so I could see it up close, much further than the rest of the tourists went, but apparently our tour guide did not appreciate my adventurousness.  Once she saw me up there, she came up and yelled at me to come back down, and in the process managed to get her foot soaked in a mud puddle, which I felt kinda bad about.  Parts of the glacier were covered in black volcanic ash and in some cases you could see ash interlayered with the ice.  There was a lot of glacial till beyond the toe of the glacier, which consists of rocks and sediment that have been carried along the base of the glacier and rounded (somewhat similar to rounded stream pebbles), as well as some small moraines (ridge-like piles of sediment pushed to the edges of the glaciers as it migrates downslope.

Myrdasjokull

     The second stop was at a black sand beach, which would more accurately be called a black pebble beach.  Having seen multiple black sand beaches on Big Island, that aspect wasn't particularly special, but there was a nice exposure of columnar basalt right next to the beach as well. Columnar jointing forms in a thick basaltic lava flow when the lava cools and fractures at 120 degree angles, creating hexagonal columns of rock.  These weren't the best example I've seen, they were quite perfect hexagons, but it is always a spectacular thing to see how something natural can be so perfectly geometric.  The best example I've seen is Devil's Post Pile near Mammoth, CA, which has nearly perfect hexagonal columns.  If you walk along the top, which has been smoothed by a long-gone glacier, it is like walking on a floor with hexagonal tiles.

Columnar Basalt

     The next stop was our lunch stop in the town of Vik, which is a very small town (probably a few 100 people) along the south coast. Here I had the tastiest meal I had during my entire stay, marinated grilled lamb with stir-fried veggies.  Otherwise, there isn't a whole lot to say about Vik.

     After that, we went to the Skogar museum, which displays some artifacts and preserved structures showing how Icelanders lived over the last few 100 years.  It was pretty small, but worth checking out. There was everything from the first Icelandic-translated Bible to clothes, fishing equipment, horse-riding equipment, housewares, and some preserved homes in the outdoor part of the museum. One thing that impressed me was how even the most common everyday items (e.g. spoons made from whale bones) had intricate carvings, an art that seems to be mostly lost today unfortunately.  The houses were small, constructed very close together, and covered with earth and grass for insulation.  The interior decor reminded me of houses in the American old west.

     After the museum, we saw Skogafoss waterfall, which has an impressive 60 m drop and also an impressive quantity of water.  It was very beautiful and you could view it from the base, the very top, and another viewpoint about 2/3 of the way to the top.  I think Gulfoss waterfall has the edge for being more unique and awe-inspiring, but Skogafoss was definitely worth checking out.

Skogafoss Waterfall

     The final stop was at Seljalandsfoss waterfall, which wasn't particularly tall (~25 m) and didn't have a huge amount of water flowing, but was still quite spectacular.  The best feature is that you can walk all the way around the waterfall 360 degrees, so it made for some more unique pictures.  There were also two small "bonus" waterfalls a short walk away that most people didn't bother walking to, but I made sure to check out.  Thankfully I didn't get yelled at this time for being too adventurous, but I'm definitely glad I checked them out.

Seljalandsfoss Waterfall

     Overall, I really enjoyed the tours and saw some amazing things that took my breath away and invigorated my soul. I will never get tired of the exhilarating feeling of soaking in the spectacular beauty of nature.  It's one of the things that makes life worth living and one of the main reasons I chose to become a geologist.  The fact that the things I saw were all during touristy bus tours definitely piqued my desire to discover the more remote places in Iceland.  I saw a very tiny portion of the country, less than half of the south shore, so the wonders of the other shores and the interior of the country are certainly a tantalizing thought. It is truly unlike anywhere else I've been and I'd love to come back here, rent a car, and explore the rest of this beautiful country.  However, there are also a multitude of other places around the world that I'd like to explore so who knows if I actually will come back.

Reykjavik

     I spent four nights and 5 days in Reykjavik, the capital city of Iceland.  It is a big city by Icelandic standards (~120,000 population, plus another ~100,000 in the surrounding area, the vast majority of the total population of ~330,000 in Iceland), but quite small by American standards.  I enjoyed wandering around downtown Reykjavik, exploring the city, sampling the food and beverages, and meeting some new people.  It is a very clean city by American standards, with narrow European-style streets, unique, charming, and colorful buildings and a fun nightlife, especially given the city's small size.  I spent most of my time in the downtown area, there are pretty much two main streets with the majority of the shops, bars, and restaurants.  I never felt even remotely unsafe, never saw anything sketchy going on, and didn't see any homeless people.  After talking to one of the Icelanders on the ship, it sounds like most of the homeless stay in shelters near the harbor, or according to my tour guide, many have moved away to other countries in search of a job and a home. It makes sense that you don't find many people living on the streets given the weather, they probably wouldn't last very long. I tried a bunch of different restaurants, some of the food was good, but overall the cuisine did not impress me a whole lot. Although I did see a subway and a domino's delivery car, it was refreshing to not see a mcdonald's for once.  Every other country I've been to has mcdonald's, it was nice to find a place that doesn't.  The highlights of the food were an italian meat soup in a bread bowl that I had the first day and some asian-style noodles that I had at a little noodle shop. The most infamous Icelandic foods are fermented shark or whale, they just sound too awful to even be worth trying.  It sounds like nowadays they are mostly eaten as a tradition, very few (especially in the younger generation) actually enjoy them.  There is another infamous local liquor called brennivin, which is traditionally consumed with the fermented shark, presumably to cleanse your palate from the horrible taste.  I didn't try brennivin while in Iceland, but an Icelandic student from UH brought some to a party once, so I have tried it, and once was enough.  Apparently (from talking to a bartender in Reykjavik), it is made with cumin seed, but as far as I'm concerned it was the worst tasting alcoholic beverage I've ever had.  Each night that I went out, I made sure to go to at least three entirely new bars, just to get a good sampling of the local spots.  My favorite one was also the most Icelandic, called Hressingarskalinn.  On Saturday night, they had a local cover band that was awesome, one of the best cover bands I've seen anywhere.  They had a female singer who sung everything from AC/DC to Daft Punk, Journey, and Pink Floyd.  It was a mostly local crowd with a few tourists, the live music was in the front room, and they also had a dance floor in the back room that came alive later in the evening. Another of my favorites was The English Pub, they had live music as well, although it was usually just one or two guys with guitars rather than a full band. The Lebowski Bar was also a lot of fun, they had live music as well, and the bar was based on the movie the Big Lebowski.  There were photos from the movie on the wall and ~20 versions of white russians were served.  My main complaints with Reykjavik are the weather (even when the sun was out, it was cold), and the prices.  Including the tours, the food/drinks, and the two nights in the hotel that I had to pay for, I probably dropped $1000 in 5 days.  Thankfully I won't be spending any money for the next month!  This was also my first experience traveling in a foreign country entirely by myself, on my other cruises, I was always hanging out with at least one other grad student.  Traveling by myself was a good experience for me to have and I like that I can do whatever I want without worrying about what someone else wants to do, but I think I still prefer to travel with at least one other person.  I'm proud of myself for stepping out of my comfort zone, I did manage to meet some new people and I definitely enjoyed myself, but it still was a little lonely at times.  Most of the people I met were fellow travelers from France, Australia, Canada, Scotland, and DC, but I didn't meet too many Icelanders.  I never got any negative vibes or dirty looks from anyone, but I didn't find the locals to be extremely friendly. Perhaps it was my fault and I should have been more outgoing, but I didn't necessarily feel comfortable side-busting a group of friends that were just chillin and drinking together.  Another random thing was having the sun set around midnight, which was quite odd. Well, I think that's all I've got on Iceland. I'll start the cruise blog in a day or two...

Halgrimskirkja church, the main landmark in Reykjavik

Laugavegur street in Reykjavik, "the strip" where most bars/restaurants/shops are

Final thoughts...

It is Tues. 1/17 (Guam time) and we will be arriving back in Guam early in the the morning on Sun 1/22, so this will almost certainly be my last post of the cruise. It's entirely possible I'll do another cruise before I finish my PhD, but for now there are no more planned. It's safe to say that I am ready to be back on dry land for the foreseeable future. With the exception of the almost 2 week break between cruises (which felt a lot shorter than that), I have been on a boat since 11/4, by the time I get back I will have been at sea for ~62 days (~104 days total if you include the very first cruise on the Langseth). There have been highlights and good experiences, but also a lot of boredom during the slow times, especially on the current cruise. My free time has been filled with a lot of movies and TV shows in the lounge, email/facebook/general internet time, standing on the deck at night looking at the stars or just feeling the wind and breathing the fresh air, getting some sun on the hammock during the day, working out in the gym for 2.5+ hours every other day, and reading books. The feeling of confinement gets old, and the constant motion of the ship does get annoying even though I am very accustomed to it at this point. But I have survived it just fine, and it has been valuable to learn more about the process of collecting the data that I work with and the various pieces that go into the final product.

Sonar Mapping

There hasn't been a whole lot to report on in terms of the work I've been doing on this cruise since data processing isn't particularly exciting to talk about. However, the deep-towed sidescan data looks very good and should produce a nice data set for me to work with. The deep-towed bathymetry looks okay overall, but due to the narrower swaths of data and the much higher levels of noise, it will be less useful than the sidescan. The bathymetry from the hull-mounted sonar system looks very good though and is higher resolution than what we currently have, so it will provide a nice complement to the deep-towed data. The hull-mounted sidescan data will be largely useless however, the water depths were just too much for that system to handle. I'm not entirely sure why the bathymetry turned out so much better, presumably the depth should have affected both the hull-mounted bathymetry and sidescan data. For the last 3-4 days of the cruise, we will be collecting magnetic and gravity data throughout the survey areas to provide a different perspective and complimentary data to go along with the sidescan and bathymetry. We can collect this data much quicker since we can go about 5x faster while towing the magnetometer than we could while towing the IMI-30 sonar (~10 knots vs. ~2 knots). We should be able to cover the region that took us a few weeks to map with the deep-towed sonar in a few days.

Dredging

The dredging has had pretty mediocre results overall. They have done over 30 dredges now (probably will be a little over 40 by the time we're done), almost half of them have produced little to no usable rock, and they have scooped up a fair amount of sediment as well. The rocks that they have gotten have not been particularly exciting either. The vast majority are just good ol' basalt (dark gray to black lava rock), not much variety in texture, not particularly fresh, very few crystals, and relatively few vesicles (gas bubbles). In my opinion as a non-geochemist, crystals and vesicles are really the only things that make basalt interesting to look at. I expected to find some serpentinite (essentially mantle rock [peridotite] with water incorporated into the crystal structure) as we got closer to the trench, but as far as I know they have not found any. Once they actually do chemical analyses, I'm sure they will find more variety within the samples, but from a superficial visual observation, there is very little variety. We have yet to find any rocks that are estimated at less than a few million years old (no dating has actually been performed yet). While these results may not be very exciting, the fact that the lavas all look very similar is important information in itself. In contrast, we had a huge variety of rock types and textures on the last cruise, reflecting different tectonic processes and local variations in the chemistry of the magma sources. Plus, we never had a single dredge that gave us no usable rock. It's unclear exactly why the dredging has not gone as well. Part of the problem is that the chain bag on the dredge has significantly larger gaps, and for most of the dredges they had a very flimsy net inside the chain bag, which pretty much ripped to shreds during each dredge. The current net they have been using for the last 5-6 dredges is much stronger, so that has helped them retain some of the rock that they have collected. They have also incorporated a pipe dredge (basically a heavy metal cylinder) along with the regular dredge, which is what collected the sediment and has also helped to get a few more rocks. Also, this region appears to be significantly less volcanically active overall than the NE Lau Basin, so the rocks are older and there is a thicker layer of sediment covering the rocks.

Thoughts on Marine field work vs. Terrestrial field work

While I still prefer the experience of land-based field work overall, marine geologic field work does have a few advantages. On land, I enjoy the freedom of being in a beautiful open setting rather than feeling somewhat trapped on a boat, walking around in nature, actually being able to touch the rocks and take samples with my hands, taking photos of the beautiful scenery, and the exercise of hiking around and mapping. However, the boat has the advantage of creature comforts: toilets/showers/sinks, a bed (even if it is tiny), having all of my meals cooked for me and not having to wash dishes, computer/internet access, a lounge with a TV, etc. It is enjoyable going out on deck and getting some fresh air, some sun, or looking at the stars at night, but staring out at the ocean does not quite compare to being out in the mountains and enjoying the much greater variety and beauty of the scenery. Scientifically, marine geology has the significant advantage of allowing me to study plate tectonic and subduction zone processes at a relatively large scale (10's to 100's of km), whereas it is difficult to study that large of an area on land, so you are usually forced to look at smaller-scale features and processes. You are typically limited to an area on the order of a few km for a land-based field project, since you have to map it by walking around the area rather than driving a ship over it and bouncing sound waves off of it to map. I think the work that I do with Fernando is just about perfect in terms of the scale and types of processes that I examine. At larger scales (1000's of km to global), you have to do too much generalization and assumption, and you lose a lot of the interesting detail because you simply can't take all of the small-scale variations into account. At a smaller scale (km or less), you get overly-focused on the tiny details and often lose track of how it fits into the larger picture. I think I have found an almost perfect balance in the work that I do with Fernando, which is a big reason why I chose to move on to do a PhD with him rather than transferring elsewhere to do something different. His personality and location in Hawaii were certainly factors as well. I also like the fact that I work from a truly geologic perspective (i.e. the features that are actually there on the seafloor), rather than purely geophysical (using measurements of gravity, magnetics, seismic waves, etc. to infer what might or might not be there), geochemical (using chemistry to make inferences about processes that we can't directly observe), or modeling (using complex equations and assumptions to either reconstruct past events or predict future events rather than using actual data). With that said, even though my work is from a geologic perspective, I also incorporate geophysical and geochemical observations and even a little modeling to support the geologic observations, which makes it much more robust and well-rounded. That interdisciplinary approach appeals to my personality. I've never been someone who can focus on just one thing and I've never had just one subject that I enjoyed or was really good at. I enjoy having variety in my work and I hope that my future career(s) will allow me to have some variety as well.

Well, I think that's all I have to say for now, I may add a couple photos over the next couple days, but otherwise this will be my last post for a long time. I hope you enjoyed the blog, and as always let me know if there are any questions...

Random thoughts after a week and a half

1) My opinion of the food has improved a bit since the beginning, although overall it is still not quite as good as the KM. The quality of meals is generally more variable, but we have had some pretty delicious stuff and there is a little more variety in the types of food than the KM. We had rack of lamb last night along with a pretty good chicken curry, we had a nice turkey/stuffing/mashed potatoes/gravy type meal for Christmas, and supposedly we are having a bbq for New Year's day tonight. We've had chow mein and fried rice, various types of soups, fried chicken, sandwiches, short ribs, burgers, hot dogs, and more. There is a somewhat disappointing variety of veggies in the salad bar though, the KM salad bar definitely was better. The KM had some good snacks, but it was the same stuff for the entire cruise, whereas they keep pulling out new snacks every few days on this boat. They have chocolate, candy, multiple kinds of chips, beef jerky, fruit snacks were just brought out yesterday, and I'm sure we'll see some more snack variety before the cruise is over. Probably the only advantage in terms of food that the Langseth (my first ship) had over the KM and the Thompson is the ice cream, they had six huge tubs of it that were constantly available. One of them was rainbow sherbert, which was pretty much all the dessert I needed on the first cruise. Others with more normal tastes in desserts would probably appreciate the fresh made cakes, pies, cookies, and pastries more than I, but I rarely eat any of those. They do have egg nog on this boat though, that is my typical dinner time dessert (although as with all store brand egg nog, it pales in comparison to Berkeley Farms egg nog. If you live in the Bay Area, you probably know what I'm talking about).

2) The crew on this boat seem to be the least friendly of the three overall, although on every cruise there seems to be at least a few crew members that for some reason don't like the scientists (specifically the male scientists). They always seem to be friendly to the female scientists though, which I guess is not surprising since the ratio of men to women is usually around 10:1. The crew has sort of made the library their "territory" and the one time I went in there a few nights ago I felt like I was interrupting a private party and got some dirty looks from a few people in there. With that said, there are plenty of nice people in the crew that I've chatted with a bit, and the marine techs (the people who work directly with the scientists) are nice, as they usually are. I don't want to make it seem like the crew is mean or anything, I just feel like there are a few of them that are resentful of us for some reason and just aren't very friendly (Sam (another UH grad student) has noticed the same thing, so it's not just me). We'll see if my opinion changes as the cruise goes on, it could just take them a little while to warm up to us.

3) We have had issues with just about every piece of scientific equipment so far; nothing that is preventing us from getting the data we want, but everything has not gone smoothly. The deep-towed sonar has been having problems, mostly on the starboard side, since the beginning. The sidescan returns were very weak for the first survey and the bathymetry data pretty much looked like crap, maybe a third of the starboard swath was actually usable data. After the first survey area, they found a short in the starboard electronics and fixed it, so it has improved for the beginning of the second survey area, but apparently it is still not quite as good as it should be. One of the MAPR's, which is an instrument that we attach to the sonar tow cable to detect the signature of a hydrothermal plume in the water column, crapped out on us as well, but there are extras so it wasn't a big deal. The dredging also has not gone as well as hoped. They have had a few good dredge hauls with a fair number of rocks, but some of the dredges have come up empty and many have been very small. They were actually picking little tiny bits of rock off of the deck with tweezers on a few dredges because they needed to get every last bit of rock that they could. On the last cruise, we would have just swept that stuff overboard, we always got at least a full 5 gallon bucket worth of rocks, and sometimes as much as 8 full buckets. The variety of the rocks in the first survey area was also not very exciting. All of the samples were pretty much the same stuff: all basalt (the typical lava composition erupted at most spreading centers), with no visible crystals, not much variation in texture, and very few vesicles (gas bubbles). It definitely makes me appreciate both the quantity and variety of rocks that we got on the last cruise. However, we are now mapping the forearc rifts and will be dredging these after the mapping is done, so we will almost certainly see a greater variety of rocks along these structures than the first survey area which was along the backarc spreading center.

4) Two nights ago was the best stargazing I've seen on any of the cruises so far. There were a ton of stars and I could actually see the Milky Way, which I have not seen on either of the other boats. I spent almost an hour laying out on the hammock, listening to some tunes, and looking at the stars, it was really nice. It helps that the fore deck of this ship is darker than the other two so there is less light to interfere, plus there was no moon. However, I still don't feel like it was better than the stars I've seen camping out in the Sierras or Northern California, you just can't get complete darkness because they always have to have at least some lights on on the ship.

5) We did have a mini New Year's Eve celebration last night in the main lab. The scientists from U. Rhode Island and UT Dallas bought a blue godzilla pinata in Guam and we had some fun taking turns hitting it, so it was nice to do something a little festive. Otherwise, New Year's pretty much has felt like any other day on the cruise. In case I hadn't mentioned this already, alcohol is no longer allowed on American research vessels, so there was no champagne to start the new year.

The Instruments

As I mentioned in the last post, there are three legs to our survey: two along the forearc rifts and one along the spreading center north of them. The primary mapping instrument we are using is deep-towed sonar. There are two instruments: the IMI-30 and the IMI-120. They are both sonar systems that are towed on a cable relatively close to the seafloor. The IMI-30 is slightly lower resolution (~5 m) and towed ~500 m above the seafloor, but gives you slightly wider swaths of data. The IMI-120 is towed ~100 m above the seafloor, gives you narrower swaths, but higher resolution (~1-2 m). For comparison, ship-mounted systems have resolutions of 30-100 m, depending on water depth and the frequency of the instrument. As I explained in a previous post ("Sonar Mapping" in the "The Mission and Instruments" section of the blog on the previous cruise, 11/12/11), sonar systems emit sound waves that bounce off the seafloor and return to detectors on the instrument. There are two types of measurements: bathymetry and sidescan (aka backscatter). For bathymetry, the instrument measures the travel time of the sound beams and converts it to a distance to give a map of the topography of the seafloor. Sidescan (backscatter) is a measure of the intensity of the reflection, which is affected by both the type of material and the orientation of the seafloor relative to the instrument. Harder surfaces (such as fresh lava flows, or rock that is exposed along a fault scarp) give a stronger reflection while softer surfaces (such as sediment) give a weaker reflection. With an instrument mounted on a ship that is a few 1000 m above the seafloor, the type of material is the primary thing that is picked up in sidescan imagery, the orientation of the seafloor does not have much of an effect because it is so far away. You essentially end up with a black and white image of the seafloor that shows you where highly reflective recent volcanism and faults are, and less reflective sediments are. However, with a deep-towed instrument, since it is much closer to the seafloor, the topography of the seafloor becomes a much bigger factor. Imagine if the instrument was flying through a valley that is 200 m deep but it is only 100 m off the bottom. It will not be able to "see" over the edges of the valley and thus you will get no reflection from outside of the valley. Also, if the instrument is flying along a steep slope, it will get a very good return from the upslope side but will get very little reflection from the downslope portion. If there is a volcano on one side of the instrument, the side of the volcano facing the instrument will give a strong reflection, but there will be a "shadow" on the opposite side because the sound waves are not hitting that side. Deep-towed data also tends to degrade toward the edges of the swath and is usually not very good directly below the instrument because the beams are oriented toward each side not vertically (hence the "sidescan" name). However, you can see MUCH more detail than you can with instruments that are mounted on the ship, allowing you to identify individual small faults and lava flows and even see the texture of the surface of a lava flow so you can tell what kind of flow it is. In an image from a ship-mounted system, you would just see dark and light patches, and only large faults will show up. We are primarily using the IMI-30 because it allows us to cover a wider area while still giving great resolution and has less distortion than the IMI-120. We will use the IMI-120 if we want to examine a particular area in greater detail or if the IMI-30 craps out on us. We will be towing these instruments along the length of the rifts and the spreading center, providing much more detailed maps of the volcanic and tectonic structures than we currently have. It will eventually be my job to interpret these detailed maps and try to figure out what is going on in this region (I honestly don't know exactly what I'll be saying in the papers I'll be writing because I haven't seen any of the data yet). We are basically driving the ship in straight lines along the features, collecting 2 or 3 parallel overlapping swaths of data for each of the features.

A small (I couldn't get a larger version without signing in) schematic image showing the deep-towed sidescan sonar setup. You can see how the beams are oriented, the blank spot directly below the instrument, and the strong reflections/shadows on either side of the volcanoes. I'll post an actual image of what the data looks like later.

My job on this cruise is to do some of the initial processing (called "bottom detect editing") of this data as it is collected. I work a 9 hour shift from 6 pm-3 am. Fernando's (my advisor) other student, Regan, is doing another 9 hour shift from 3 am to noon, and one of the employees of the group that owns and operates the instrument (Hawaii Mapping and Research Group (HMRG)) is covering the noon to 6 pm shift. It is somewhat difficult to explain what exactly I'll be doing and I'm not fully comfortable with all of the technical details of how these instruments work, but basically I'm making sure that the instrument knows where the real bottom is. Because we're dealing with sound waves and they aren't as precise as something like a laser, there are a lot of echoes and reflections that confuse the instrument. The instrument has an array of transducers (the things that emit and detect the sound waves) on either side, roughly oriented 45 degrees from vertical. Sometimes the sound reflects off something in the water column that is not actually the seafloor, and sometimes the sound waves from one side of the instrument are picked up on the other side of the instrument. This can make the instrument confused as to where the real bottom is on a particular side. So I look at the raw data right after it's collected and try to find the reflection that represents the "true" bottom. However, because we don't actually know definitively where the bottom is, it can be very ambiguous sometimes, especially when the topography is complex and/or different on either side of the instrument. The guy who is in charge of HMRG calls it a "dark art" rather than a science, and this is an apt description. The basic idea is not to be 100% precise on getting the actual bottom, because you can't, but rather to make the image more believable and easier to interpret and to eliminate the obvious errors. Sometimes it is very clear where the true bottom is, sometimes it is not clear at all. So far, it has been going pretty well, there have definitely been some ambiguous swaths, but I'm getting more and more comfortable and efficient with the process. Unfortunately, the first survey area is along the spreading center, which is the simplest of the three survey areas, so it will likely be more difficult for the other two areas.

The other major part of the mission is sampling the volcanic features that we see in the sonar data. I will not be involved in this part of the operation, beyond checking out some of the rocks for fun. There is another group of grad students from University of Rhode Island and University of Texas Dallas who are covering this part of the mission. There are two main sampling methods: wax coring and dredging. I have described dredging in detail (see "The Mission and Instruments" post from the last cruise, 11/12/11) previously, so I won't talk much about that. Wax coring seems to be kind of a lame sampling method and doesn't really produce great samples, I think dredging will end up being the primary method. No dredging has occurred yet, we are waiting until we map the first area to identify good sites to dredge, but we did do a few wax cores when we had to pull up the deep-towed sonar for repairs two days ago. It's basically a cluster of small metal cylinders filled with wax that have a heavy metal weight on top and are attached to a wire extending from the ship. It's a pretty simple process, they basically just drop the thing overboard and let gravity slam it into the seafloor. Ideally little bits of rock will get stuck in the wax, which can then be removed and analyzed. To any non-geochemist, the samples are not impressive at all, they are literally tiny mm-sized bits of rock (or sediment if you're unlucky) that aren't much to look at unless you have a powerful microscope. They still can do chemical analyses of the tiny samples, so it is useful, but definitely not the best sampling method. Dredging may be imprecise, but at least you get lots of rock to look at. I'll post some pics once we actually get some dredged rocks. I think that covers the gist of what we are doing.

Science Background

So as far as scientific research cruises go, this one is a little more traditional than the previous one. Instead of being funded by a seafloor mining company, this cruise is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). My advisor, who is the chief scientist for this cruise as well, applied for grant funding for this project, which is paying for the ship time as well as my meager salary. The cost of a ship per day is on the order of $25,000-$30,000 (up to $50,000 for certain ships), so research cruises are definitely not cheap. The area that we are working in is the southern Mariana Trough, which is ~100 miles southwest of Guam. This is another backarc basin environment, similar to the Lau basin (for a description of what a backarc basin is, see my previous post, "Science Background" on 11/11/11, or a really old post from the first cruise, "The Science of it all," although I misspoke in that post saying that the subducting plate melts to create the arc volcanoes. This is not true. Water released from the subducting slab causes the mantle above to melt, the slab appears to not melt much at all and can still be seen in mantle imagery (tomography) sometimes as deep as the core-mantle boundary.)

The Mariana Trough is the southern portion of the Izu-Bonin-Mariana Arc system, which is a subduction zone that stretches all the way up to Japan, and is the geologic feature along which the recent devastating earthquake/tsunami in northern Japan occurred. I don't know quite as much about the complex history of this area, but the basic situation is that the Pacific plate is subducting under the Phillipine Sea plate (a small plate sandwiched between the Pacific and Eurasian plates) in a roughly W-NW direction, creating a chain of arc volcanoes and a well developed backarc basin seafloor spreading system. For a more detailed but not-too-technical description of this area, check out the wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Izu-Bonin-Mariana_Arc. This area has been active for much longer than the Lau basin (~50 My instead of only 5-6 My for the Lau basin), and so has a longer and more complex history. One interesting thing here is that there has been two episodes of arc rifting, creating two backarc basins. The first episode separated the Palau-Kyushu Ridge on the west side of the system from the Izu-Bonin-Mariana arc, leaving behind the extinct Parece-Vela and Shikoku basins (see the map below). Then in the southern portion of the system, a more recent episode of arc rifting has formed the much smaller and still active Mariana Trough, which is the region that we are focused on. At the southern end of this trough, along the trench where the two plates converge, is the famous "Challenger Deep," the deepest part of the ocean in the world at almost 11,000 meters, although it is still possible that a slightly deeper trench may yet be found.

Map of the entire Izu-Bonin-Mariana (IBM) Arc system. We're looking at the southern Mariana Trough west of Guam and the region between Guam and the trench.

As you can see from the maps, the trench runs roughly N-S for most of its length, but along the southernmost portion of the system it makes a sharp bend and becomes almost E-W. The geometry of the subducting slab here is very complex and not entirely known. There appears to be a tear in the slab near the SW corner and while for the N-S portion of the system the slab is subducting in a W-NW direction under the basin, in the southernmost E-W portion, a small chunk of slab appears to be subducting in a more northerly direction. This piece of slab is plunging almost vertically down into the mantle, which is part of the explanation for why the Challenger Deep is so deep here. But, to make it more complex, while this chunk of slab is subducting toward the north, because it is still attached to the Pacific plate, it is also moving W-NW. This creates strike-slip motion along this E-W trending part of the trench, the Pacific plate is moving toward the W, and the Mariana Arc is moving toward the E as seafloor spreading continues in the Mariana Trough. There is another short wikipedia article on the Mariana Trough for those who want a little more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariana_Trough. Friction along this boundary causes the overlying plate to rift apart, creating widening cracks that stretch from the trench to the backarc spreading center.

Bathymetry map of the Mariana Trough. We are mapping the area W and SW of Guam. Unfortunately the spreading center is not marked here, but it is ~1/2 way between the ridge that Guam and Saipan are on and the West Mariana Ridge. You can see in the north that the ridges have not yet split apart and are still a continuous volcanic arc. The dark blue crescent-shaped feature is the trench itself, you can see how it changes from ~N-S to ~E-W.

These rifts are the primary focus of our mapping and sampling, and have never been examined in much detail before. They also will be a major focus of my PhD work, the data we are collecting during this cruise will be the primary data set for most of my PhD. These rifts are called the Southeast Mariana Forearc Rifts (SEMFR), and there are two primary ones that we will look at. Unfortunately they are too small to be seen on the maps I've posted here, I'll try to get some more zoomed in maps later. Our survey will be divided into three legs, two of them along the two rifts, and a third along the spreading center N of these rifts. Less detailed mapping of this region has shown that there is active volcanism along parts of these rifts. As the crust is stretched and pulled apart, the mantle rises to fill the space and melts because of the reduced pressure, creating volcanic eruptions along these rifts, which is roughly similar to what happens along spreading centers. These rifts are unique because the slab is much shallower underneath them, starting at a few km depth near the trench and increasing to a few 100 km by the time you reach the spreading center. Normally, the first volcanism that occurs is along the volcanic arc (the row of circular red/yellow features that run along the west side of Guam and Saipan on the map above), where the slab is ~100+ km deep in the mantle. Between the arc and the trench (the forearc), the mantle typically does not melt, and even if it does, the crust is too thick for the melt to penetrate. But because of these rifts opening up in this region, the water-rich melt rising in the mantle has a window to get out onto the seafloor. Also, because the slab is so shallow and there is so much water being released from it, the mantle is relatively cool, so you don't get "normal" types of lavas that you would see along a spreading center or one of the arc volcanoes. I'll give some more details on this once we actually get some samples of this stuff, but one of the things I expect to see is serpentinite. Serpentinite is what is formed when the mantle (which is largely a rock called peridotite) reacts with water and incorporates it into the crystal structure (it is ~40% water by volume), and this can actually erupt onto the seafloor as serpentinite "mud". This requires relatively cool temperatures and lots of water, which is what you find in the shallow part of a subduction zone. Serpentinite is the state rock of California, and is normally found within the oceanic crust where water has reacted with the mantle. In California, it was scraped off onto the continent from the top of the subducting Farallon plate, it was not actually erupted onto the seafloor. It is very rare for it to be erupted onto the seafloor, so I am excited to see some samples of that. I think that covers the basic scientific background, I'll get into what we're doing and the instruments we're using in the next post. I tried to make this explanation accessible to non-geologists, but it is rather difficult, so if anything is confusing, let me know in a comment.

Onboard R/V Thomas G. Thompson

Well, the two week break between cruises went pretty quickly, as expected I guess, and now I am on the Thompson for the next cruise. I arrived in Guam on 12/20 (I left HI on 12/19 but we are 20 hours ahead here). This time I really didn't get any time to explore the island since we boarded the ship the day after I arrived. From what I saw and what I've heard Guam isn't the most exciting island to visit anyway. It sounds like the primary reason to come here is for scuba diving, which I have heard is very good. Unfortunately I won't get a chance to do any diving since I don't really have the money and I didn't want to stay very long after the cruise since I've been away from home so much. All that I saw of the island was on the drive from the airport to the hotel and from the hotel to the harbor (which is inside of a Navy base), as well as a quick stroll along the beach by the hotel. It has a very strong American influence since there are some massive military bases on the island and it is an American territory. Most of the typical fast food restaurants and stores that you would see in just about any American city are there and everyone speaks English. It basically looks like an average American city for the most part, although there are some pretty decent tropical beaches. Apparently, it is a big place for Japanese tourists, it was described to me as the Japanese Waikiki, it's where they go to get a taste of some tropical beaches. It's about the same distance from the equator as Samoa (~13 N), so it is a little hotter and more humid than Hawaii, but since it is winter in the northern hemisphere, the weather is generally more pleasant than Samoa. It sounds like there is a possibility of typhoons coming through, but so far the weather and the seas have cooperated, I'm already used to the motion of the boat and off the dramamine after 3 days.

The boat itself is significantly larger than the Kilo Moana, meaning that there is a lot more lab space, more deck space, and the rooms are larger. All of the science people have their own rooms, which is really nice. However, despite the fact that the room is almost three times the size of the Kilo Moana rooms, the beds are still the same tiny size. They could have easily added a foot or two of width to the beds and still had plenty of floor space, I'm not sure what they were thinking on that one. Beyond the larger size of the Thompson, the Kilo Moana is pretty much a nicer boat in every way. It is newer and cleaner, and the food was significantly better (although it's pretty hard to beat the food on the Kilo Moana, so that is not unexpected). We did have some surf and turf last night (steak/lobster), so there is good food onboard, but just not as consistently good so far, and generally lower quality. There are more public computers available and slightly faster internet, so that is a plus. There is a pretty decent lounge with a nice big TV and a bunch of movies, but the 70's fake leather seats and couches are not nearly as comfy as the huge soft black leather couches on the KM. The gym is also not quite as nice as the KM, they have a bench with some dumbbells, a decent non-electronic exercise bike, and a broken treadmill. I'm not sure why they thought free weights on a moving ship was a good idea, the KM had a pretty nice weight machine that seemed a lot more appropriate for a boat. But it's better than nothing, I've already used the gym twice. I think that covers the basics of the boat, let me know if you have any questions. I'll get into the scientific aspects of the cruise and my job on the next post...

The Final Post (until the next cruise...)

Well, we are officially nearing the end of the cruise, less than 3 days left until we’re back in Apia. I have had some interesting experiences, seen some cool rocks, and eaten some delicious food, but it is safe to say I’m ready to be back home, especially with the prospect of another month-long cruise looming in less than 3 weeks. We have completed 25 dredges, with two (or maybe 3) more planned for tomorrow (Saturday). Then we will start transiting back to Apia around 2-3 am Sun morning, hopefully arriving in port on Sun afternoon and getting off the ship by 8 or 9 pm Sun night. Then, a 2 am ~4 hr flight to Auckland, NZ, a ~6 hr layover there, and another ~9 hr flight back to Honolulu. Needless to say I’m not looking forward to that. We’ve still only had one dredge with a significant amount of sulfides in it, unless we get really lucky tomorrow. The AUV is still having issues, the last few times it has only come back with at most a third of the data it should have collected. Apparently, the data-related problems are nearly all due to the multibeam sonar unit made by a company called Reson (not the German company Geomar that owns the AUV itself). It’s possible Reson may get sued for lost ship time (which is in the range of $30,000+ a day) but I’m not entirely sure. One side benefit for me (and my advisor) to all of the AUV problems is that we have gotten to do a lot more mapping with the ship's multibeam sonar system than we initially expected to do. We have filled in a number of gaps and extended the width of some of the previously mapped areas, which will be quite useful when I start looking at this area for my first PhD paper. Overall, this cruise experience has been significantly better than my first cruise on the Langseth, although 30 days is still a long time to be on a boat. The ship is nicer, food is MUCH better, the shorter duration of the cruise helped, having the previous experience under my belt also helped, and in general I had a better attitude about this cruise from the beginning. On the last one, I focused too much on how long I was going to be stuck on the boat and was just too negative in general, whereas I had a much more accepting, go-with-the-flow attitude this time. Attitude certainly makes a difference. Well, I think that’s all I’ve got for now, I’ll probably start the next episode by 12/22-12/23 when I am onboard the R/V Thomas G. Thompson south of Guam.

A photo from one of the nicer sunsets, thought it was appropriate for the final post.

p.s. I'm still going to attempt to upload more photos to previous posts, although probably not as many as I would like given the painfully slow internet connection. Update: Done!! Check the older posts for new photos.