Katie is a PhD student at the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. She served as a Physical Properties Specialist on Expedition 327 in 2010. She was also an instructor for the 2009 School of Rock aboard Expedition 321T. She studies the hydrothermal system in Middle Valley (at the northern end of the Juan de Fuca Ridge) using data collected by CORKs (Circulation Obviation Retrofit Kits).
As I prep to walk out the door and fly west for my yearly "science family reunion," I wanted to share a poem from a book that my mother (a high school chemistry teacher in NH) sent me recently.
Hooray for the Sea and the ROV
The wide ocean swells across most of our planet.
Update from Katie Inderbitzen aboard the R/V Atlantis, currently at sea servicing the Juan de Fuca CORKs.
This blog is the first in a series by Katie Inderbitzen, (former School of Rock instructor and future Physical Properties Specialist for Exp. 327) who is currently aboard the R/V Atlantis for the 2010 CORK maintenance/data collection cruise using the Remotely Operated Vehicle JASON.
Since my last update there have been several developments...some good, some bad. We successfully installed a new instrument string in hole 1301A, however when we tried to pull the string from 1301B the recovery line broke at the weak point under 6000 lbs of tension, leaving the instrument string stuck in the hole.
Another update from Katie Inderbitzen aboard the R/V Atlantis regarding the CORKs on the Juan de Fuca Ridge flank.
Well, we were fortunate to only spend about a day in Astoria! Dodged a big bullet on that one....perhaps aided by all this Kevlar on board! And despite some very big swell which made for an exciting recovery yesterday, we dived to check out the status of the CORK at 1301A.
Another note from Katie Inderbitzen, our CORK expert (and School of Rock instructor) aboard the RV Atlantis...
Karma, it seems, is not being all that kind to us this cruise! Sometime during the transit out of Seattle the Atlantis's starboard thruster broke, leaving only the port and bow thrusters usable for dynamic positioning and maneuvering while launching the Alvin.
Greetings from the northeastern Pacific Ocean! I'm not writing from the JR today, but from the R/V Atlantis, support ship for the Alvin submersible. If you were following blogs during the School of Rock expedition, you might remember that a very important part of that cruise was to dump cement around several seafloor observatories (CORKs) that were leaking. Well, it's
So for the last 17 years I've wanted to "look inside" the ocean crust, as it were. I've been using data collected by the JR and the Juan de Fuca CORKs for the last 3 years, but I've never had the chance to get a good closeup look at the cores BEHIND the data! Of course you can imagine how excited I was to get to examine a cross section through the ocean crust by looking at
The Rockers have learned about an amazing number of topics in the last week...but they've also been having fun during their downtime! You may have read about the Hump Day dance party in other blogs, for example. However, one thing you may not realize is that when you get 15 fairly geeky teachers in one place for any extended amount of time the bad jokes come out. And boy do we
There is something to be said about going to sea. It's a necessary part of life for most (if not all) marine scientists. Time to remind ourselves why we love science, the ocean, and our careers. I am lucky enough to go to sea at least once a year for several weeks to collect data for my doctoral thesis.....however this cruise is a bit different!
