Tuesday, September 29, 2009

up and down with the sea

we just passed the mouth of the strait of juan de fuca and are now
heading south to our first core site. we have placed waypoints
(coordinates that the ship will head for, our 'route') so that we will
acquire new multibeam data (bathymetry, backscatter, etc.) in regions
that are not currently covered by previous mapping efforts.

our first core site is in the Rogue Canyon, just offshore the mouth of
the Rouge River. during the last ice age, when the sea level was lower
(~130m), the river actually connected to this underwater canyon. since
sea level rose following the melting of the ice sheets, the upper
canyon filled in with transgressive sediments and the continental
shelf was also covered in these sediments. so, the canyon is not
currently directly connected to the river.


more later, emergency now... jay

3 comments:

Sandy As Is said...

Hope the emergency turned out ok. We are watching the Tsunami alerts on the weather channel. Hope you can observe something!.... but of course are safe!!!
Watching the news....
love, Mom

Anonymous said...

was ok, had to go pray to the porcelain goddess....

on board a ship at sea is the safest place to be during a tsunami. due to the water depth, the wave height is really small in the deep sea. it was probably 5-20 cm in height as it passed beneath us a couple hours ago... the news is probably hyping it up a little...

more later, jay

Sandy As Is said...

I thought that you were in the safest place, on a ship, at sea, and with a bunch of experts. Lots of news reports and discussion.
Gotta get to work and finish getting ready for Back to School night.
Hope you feel better, soon.
Love, Mom