teachers at sea

i meant to post this a couple days ago. we have 3 teachers with us,
participating in the 'teachers at sea' program. they have been posting
to their blog as part of keeping connected to their students while at
sea.

http://blogs.oregonstate.edu/tastgt0909a/

cheers, jay

last shift

well, this is my last shift, midnight to noon. then i will sleep till
we get to port (i hope, sure could use it; i was not having much luck
sleeping in these rough seas, being thrown back and forth...)

we were looking for a lost UW AUV (automated vehicle that collects
physical oceanographic data), but it was dark and we had no way of
communicating directly with it... we almost took another core, but it
was to dangerous...

soon we will be heading through the Juan de Fuca strait, and then seas
should get more gentle. i will be working on my GSA presentations
tonight, finally!

peace out, j

headed for port, hopefully our last core...

good morning, Sunshine!

we just collected our last core. as i showed up to my watch, we were
preparing for another core, but captain phil told us the seas are too
rough and may get rougher. so, he did not feel it was safe to core in
these conditions. so,,, we are heading north. chris romsos and i have
our waypoints set up for the entire way back to port. if the weather
clears further north, Goldie wants to try to take another core. we are
all so tired. i hope the weather is rough the entire way to port. lol

sleep was interupted by the safety video. could not get to sleep after
that, so i think i got about 4 hours or so. but,,,, it is not like i
have a choice in the matter... good health is for landlubbers i guess
:-(

ok, back to the grind... can't wait to get off this ship. of course,
in a couple weeks, i will look back and wish i was back on it. weird...

peace out, j

two more cores

hello y'all,

yet another beautiful day in paradise-dise,,,

awoke to find the last kasten core (that we were headed for when i
went of watch) was only ~20% full. so, since it was so light, when
they lifted off the corer from the liner, the liner did not have
enough weight to hold it on the ground and it fell down, mixing up the
mud/sand a little (so the recovered sediment is in poor shape).

so, i set up some waypoints for a survey/transit to the next core
site. we are headed for ODP site 1019 N 41 40.972 W 124 55.48. this is
a site that was drilled (not cored) in 1996. there are good
sedimentation rate records here that record the reservoir correction
(the difference in the radiocarbon age of sea water between the
surface waters, which are closest to the age of the atmospheric
radiocarbon, and the waters near the sea bed). the difference in ages
of these two settings can tell one about the circulation of the water
column ('ventilation'). the 1996 cores do not contain some of the
Holocene sediments (~<10,000 yrs), so we hope to core there to fill in
this gap of information. we use the reservoir correction for our age
estimates of earthquake timing, do this information will be useful for
our research.

we just finished removing the 0.680 wire and re-threading the 9/16
wire so we can piston core. we used the 0.680 wire to collect the
kasten core yesterday. we recovered a spectacular core with most
excellent turbdite stratigraphy (see previous post about the northern
Viscaino block core). this was our best kasten core yet! a good thing
to end a shift on. all my stagehand rigging experience back in the
80's makes me feel rather comfortable doing rigging on this ship.
rigging is like riding a bike. things have not really changed much in
the last 20 yrs. most of stage rigging is based on maritime rigging.
maritime rigging just has larger loads than in convention centers and
theatres. concert rigging max loads were typically ~2tons. we
recurrently have ~15,000 pound tension on the coring cable here on the
ship (when we pull the core out of the sea floor).

following this core, we will head back out to the abyssal plain (site
1019 ~1,000 meters water depth up on the shelf/accretionary prism).
Dr. Romsos and i have set up a survey to optimize for clean sub-bottom
data collection. we have good mutlibeam bathymetry data here already.
we will take one more piston core further north, hopefully also in the
shallower accretionary slope basins (where foraminiferid abundance is
higher, enabling us smaller sample sizes for radiocarbon age samples).

After that, the weather is going to be really rough as the 'perfect
storm' comes to whip us in the posterior. once that happens, we will
have no more science to do (too unsafe to work out on deck in those
16' seas). this will give me some time to work on my presentation that
i am giving next tuesday. i started it a week ago, but there is still
quite a bit to do. i am also going to help Mo on her presentation,
which is to be given on sunday morning. she has a spectacular story
about the sedimentation in the gulf of alaska following the Last
Glacial Maximum (LGM), ~22,000 yrs ago. i will be helping her process
her CT data from her cores. this was a contingency of her attendance
on this cruise. some certain people keep forgetting this, but not me.
i am very thankful for her presence on this cruise. she is doing a
banger job, along with Amy M. Garrett, on the Multi Sensor Track data
(where we collect density, P-wave velocity, Magnetic Susceptibility,
and resistivity data). this is nice, as there are already so many
things for me to keep track of (i am the B-team 'chief scientist').

ok, good morning, Sunshine... hugs and kisses to you...

technical difficulties

well, when i went off shift, we were changing wires from the 9/16" to
the 0.680. we wanted to take a kasten core at a site cored back in
'02. since the 9/16 cable has a hock in it (knotted with wire breaks)
womewhere around 3600 feet and the water depth is 3400 here, we had to
use a different wire. things combined to help the wire jump the
sheave, so the ship's crew have been working the last 12 hours to fix
this problem (which revealed some other problems with the sheave). so,
the wire is just about fixed now and after the wire is re-terminated,
we will attempt this again.

luckily the day shift spent their time moving stuff around in
preparation for wrapping up outr cruise. lucky as there are about
twice as many people on that shift, much better for moving our kasten
cores around, at about 800 lbs each. on our shift, we will continue to
clean up the lab and stow things that are not tied down. we have 16 ft
seas ahead as this storm front comes in. gonna be rough.

good morning y'all and Sunshine!

back to the grind i call my wonderful life, jay

last kasten core

good morning, Sunshine!

slept through my alarm today! awakened by goldfinger's pounding on my
door. there was a piston core on deck and the entire night shift was
absent. at least i was not the only one... but, i jumped right into my
deck gear and helped the coring crew deploy what is likely to be our
last kasten core (they are several hundred pounds and are too heavy
for me to help lift).

after this site we will collect a core in a shallow core site to
attempt to find a location that has no gravity flow deposits. this
will permit us to make a background hemipelagic sedimentation rate.
the depth of this core is ~1,600m, so the sed rate will be a little
different than our deeper 'turbidite' filled cores, but it is the best
we can do. also, being shallower, the foram abundance will be greater
(since the carbonate compensation depth, the depth where calcium
carbonate - what composes the foram skeletons or 'tests' - dissolution
outpaces the rain rate of these particles, limits the abundance of
forams at the greater depths of the 'turbidite' cores)

ok, time to get going, over and out, jay

three little birds, beside my doorstep, singing sweet songs, of melodies pure and true, this is my message to you,,,

yesterday we had several birds (small, warblers or sparrows?) join us
on our voyage. they will probably die out here... and then a falcon
joined them (second hand, i did not see this) and ensued to predate...

this morning, three were still stuck indoors in our main lab,,, they
have been flying around. sooo cute, but they are probably doomed. we
are so far offshore they are unlikely to make it to land. one, who was
the most tired of them all, would come land on us, on our heads and
shoes (not on mine). eventually the crew came in and caught that slow
moving one, to send it outside. poor little birds... they are so cute,
but doomed.

seas are rough. we have a low pressure moving in. seas will reach
11-14' on monday and maybe up to 18' on tues. never really know until
it happens, but we are lucky to have had good weather till now. people
are really going to get sea sick now. Handoko is already back to pray
to the porcelain goddess. wish me luck as i imbibe more ginger
capsules... ok, time to get back to geophysics watch...

blessings, jay

heading north

we collected our southernmost core yesterday. we then followed the
fault the bounds the southwest boundary of the Viscaino block,
collecting multibeam data to get good bathymetry. we want to try to
work out the geometry to see if it is synistral or dextral strike slip
or thrust (if we can). in some places it looks right lateral, some
places left lateral. once we look at the mapped data, in its entirety,
we may have a better idea.

then we collected a kasten core (8" square core, 10' long) and a box
core (24" square, 18" deep) at a previous site (where core 16JC is
located, a core with a great record of nice and sandy turbidites).

we are on a transit currently to head for some channel systems along
the northern part of the Viscaino block, we are now calling this the
northern Viscaino channel (perhaps we could be a little more creative,
hahaha). in 1999, Goldfinger collected a core in this area, but never
did anything with the core. while on this cruise, he looked at the
high resolution magnetic data and it indeed looks like a promising
site. basically, the northern cores (south of Cape Mendocino) have
large SAF turbidites underlain by small CSZ turbidites. the further
south, the smaller the CSZ turbs get. The northern Viscaino channel
has the potential to have the largest CSZ turbs as the most upper
canyons are on the southern flank of the Mendocino fault (most
proximal to the CSZ of all other canyon systems). Secondly, this
channel system is not connected to terrestrial input.

tempers continue to be short as the cruise wears on everyone. nobody
seems to be immune, including yours truly. (there are some who do
appear to be immune, perhaps some correlation with the amount of
responsibility)

the 3.5 kHz echosounder sub-bottom profiler has been giving us grief
the entire cruise. we finally (yesterday) switched to the back up
control box and it seems to be working now. we should have done this
earlier (but there is always a tradeoff between stopping getting data
for a while during the switchover).

peace out, jay

southern most position, we think

we are currently a little further south of the Noyo canyon, N 38
54.2104 W 124 18.2018. the core we are collecting here may help us
further resolve the relations between CSZ and SAF tectonics.

we are just west of an unnamed fault that bounds the southwest
boundary of the Viscaino block. the fault offsets several submarine
canyons. the last potential core site was abandoned as it appeared to
lack a good stratigraphic record (too muddy). we think it is too muddy
as the fault that offset the cayon thusly shut off the sediment supply
here. so, i pointed out to chris that we could constrain the age of
this by coring there. if we can do this, we will be able to determine
a slip rate on this fault. there are currently no estimates of slip
for this fault as nobody has worked on it (it remains unnamed, but we
will name it; it's not my fault, the person it is named after must be
dead).

after this, we will transit further north on the abyssal plain,
downstream of submarine canyons draining the viscaino block. as i
mentioned in an earlier post, these canyons are not connected, in any
way, to sediment draining the shelf nor terrestrial drainages (rivers
or streams).

yet another beautiful day in paradise on this wonderful rust bucket
called the R/V Tommy G. Thompson. i slept a good 9.5 hours, but i am
still tired. still fighting a cold, but i am not getting worse.
finally the air conditioning got fixed. the last couple of days were
terribly hot and i kept falling asleep in the lab. i was really worn
out from the heat. in my berth, i was laying in bed with no sheets and
sweating. last night however i got to use my blanket. love it. i hope
to work on my GSA (geological society of america) meeting
presentations soon. i started one, but not the other.

swells have increased, as is my ginger caps consumption. i feel great!
peace out, Sunshine!

Cascadia and San Andreas

we are currently taking cores in the Noyo channel region. we are
attempting to further determine the earthquake records of the CSZ and
the SAF. we took a core yesterday in the same location from a cruise
in 1999.

later today we will do some more surveying and then run back north to
the northern part of the Viscaino block. there are a couple canyons
that drain the block and are not connected to any river/stream system.
so,,, these canyons have even fewer alternative explanations for
turbidity current triggering... we are quite excited about these
cores. we do not need to leave the Mendocino fault region until
Monday, but we may leave earlier to give us more time to core in
accretionary slope basins on our return transit. we will also be
collecting more bathymetric data and more sub-bottom data.

i am still feeling a little ill (not sea-sick). the seas are rather
mellow and this is good for coring and general morale. everyone is
having a good time. danielle is back up and running (she had a back
injury almost a week ago; i have been avoiding heavy lifting, don;t
need to get a helicopter lift to a hospital).

our point mag instrument (for collecting magnetic susceptibility data)
is no longer working properly, so we will have tons of work to do when
we return to corvegas.

i started my powerpoint for my talk at geological society of america
meeting a couple days after we return. i am gonna go to hurricane
ridge in the olympics on my way back to home after the cruise. chicken
my cat is doing well, according to my friend morgan who is taking care
of her. THANKS MORGAN! time for some lunch, it is about 4:45 AM. did
not have much of a breakfast at midnite.

peace out, jay

moving south of the Mendocino fault, going towards Noyo channel

we are now transiting to the Noyo channel core site. we have had
decent luck coring in the MDZ...

passing over the Viacaino block, pretty unstratigraphic (hahaha). we
plan on coring where cores were collected in 1999. we want a clean
core so that we can CT-scan it. the one we have has had samples
removed, so the CT-scan is not very good. we are on a 75 nautical mile
transit, followed by a 15 mile bathy/sub-bottom survey.

the biggest problem we have currently is that there is a part of the
cable (that we use to lower the corers to the sea floor) that has
broken strands in it. we do not really know exactly where in the cable
this problem is. so, when we get to the site, we will lower a kasten
core ( 8" square corer, about 10' long, designed to collect large
volume cores as the foraminiferid abundance is low here and we need
larger sediment volumes to get enough foram fossils to obtain a
radiocarbon age) to see if the wire is long enough to core at Noyo.
the site depth is ~3320 m. we know we can core to 3088m, but not how
mych deeper. we do not want to lose our coring equipment, nor injure
any person (if the cable breaks, people could get hurt, the tension at
3300 m from just the cable is 4,620 pounds at 1.4 lbs per meter in
water).

more later, back to work... love it! cruise is going great. all in
upbeat mood. danielle with back injury is back to standing up (she was
stuck in bed for a week). peace out, jay

south of eel river canyon, adjacent to unamed canyon (could be called bear river canyon)

good morning, Sunshine!

we are currently bringing up core TN0909_10JC, our tenth core. we are
looking at stratigraphy in the Mendocino deformation zone, aka, THE
TRIANGLE OF DOOM! we want to be able to deconfound the stratigraphic
relations between Cascadia subduction zone, San Andreas fault,
Mendocino fault, and other crustal fault ruptures.

saw a whole bunch of dolphins yesterday. the weather is perfect coring
weather. it has been sunny to partly cloudy. we had a few sprinkles
yesterday, but that has been the limit of precipitation. i love the
view of the coast range from the ship. i can see the Mad River Valley,
Fickle Hill, South Fork mountain, etc.

last night i got the longest sleep of the cruise, about 7 hours. gotta
go, the core is about to come up on deck and i need to eat a quick
bite of food before my shift starts. peace out, jay

ill, but chill

well, yesterday as i went off my shift, i had a total of 10 hours of
sleep for the last 4 days. not enough... i got about 5 last night and
i have a cough and am ill now. but, i am acting chief scientist and
looking for another core site. the last core site i chose was the best
core site yet for the cruise.

the point mag sus equipment is now set up to be manually run. so, it
takes 2 people 3 hours to run a single core section. it normally took
2.5 hours for one person before... since we are short on science crew
on my watch, i am prioritizing core descriptions. it is simply a
better way to spend our time.

ok, back to core site planning and main lab / core description science
managing... i will try not to fall off the stool as i watch the data
accumulate (i have almost passed out twice so far this morning... need
more sleep to get better, but i do not have that luxury right now.. if
i get sicker, i may not have a choice,, hahaha,,, such is life. i can
sleep in a couple weeks)

peace out from the nite shift,,, jay

coring and coring, love to core

we are having great luck in coring... we recently recovered our 6th
piston core. the 3.5 kHz seismic data (showing sub-bottom profiles of
sedimentary layers) is successfully capturing the same stratigraphy
along strike. we can follow individual strata as we move south along
the subduction zone trench. we have been coring in the trench (abyssal
plain) and have been obtaining 5-7 sections (each ~1.5 m long).

we have been having problems finding good core sites in the shallower
basins of the accretionary prism in the continental slope. there is
rugged topography and the seismic data get confounded by this (the
best situation for seismic profiling is over flat topography as the
seismic waves bounce off a large area of ground, so if there are
cliffs adjacent to the flat area, we see both sets of "returns" and it
is difficult to distinguish the data from only a specific area; so,,,,
it is really hard to see the sub-bottom strata here). we would like to
core in the shallower areas so that we will have more foraminiferid
fossils (calcium carbonate shells for radiocarbon age control).

i saw several dolphins the other day. after that, people saw the same
group and noticed that some were the type that do not have a dorsal
fin. then yesterday we got too see a short shark. it was swimming
along side our ship. apparently this is rather rare and some on board
with more ship time than i said they had only seen a shark once
before. lucky me (and us).

back to work! i hope i get more than 3 hours sleep tonight. my shift
is 12 midnight to 12 noon and it is difficult to shift my body
clock... blessings, jay

work, work, work

we recently recovered our 3rd piston core... it is now cut up (in 1.5
m sections max length) and being analyzed for density, magnetic
susceptibility, P-wave velocity, and resistivity. once that is done,
they wil be split and sent to the main lab to be described.

i have been describing cores, managing scientists in the main lab,
working on developing site slection using multibeam data and 3.5 kHz
sub-bottom profile data, and fixing computer/technology problems.
feeling rather satisfied. the last 2 days were 16-17 hour shifts (even
though i am scheduled for only 12). last noght i finally got 6 hours
sleep, better than the single hour i got the night before! we are
short on science crew, so we probably will not be able to complete all
of our tasks as we would have liked.

basically, even though there have been some substantial problems, most
all is proceeding rather well. i am no longer sea sick and feel great!
a beautiful Sunshine sunrise today, brought up beautiful thoughts of
all my friends as i looked to the east to see the horizon of the coast
ranges above Crescent City (approximately where we are currently
stationed, near the Smith River submarine canyon.

ok, back to fixing the point magnetic susceptibility equipment. it has
ben malfunctioning the entire cruise. we have fixed several problems,
but others seem to pop up. the person who constrcuted it (while i am
thankfull for their effort as we would not have it withought them) was
not an electrician (even though there are some crafty electronic feats
that were mounted to make it work).

godd morning, Sunshine!