CORK Maintenance 2010 aboard R/V Atlantis

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.

We left San Francisco last night and are headed northwards to the CORK sites near the Juan de Fuca Ridge.  This year there is a very big biological component to this cruise: we have a whole crew of microbiologists from the Univ. of Hawaii here to pump borehole fluids from inside the crust.  Then they can analyze it for evidence of microbial life.

So what am I, a geophysicist, doing here?  I'm in charge of downloading pressure data from ALL the CORK sites we'll visit (except 1026B which is hooked up to a NEPTUNE Canada cable).  That means I'm on-call 24/7...ready to tote my computer up to the control van, plug myself into a myriad of cables, and "talk" to our data loggers that sit approximately 2600m below my feet!  I'll get loads and loads of pressure data this cruise, including the last 2 years worth of data from 857D, our CORK located in Middle Valley near an active hydrothermal field.  That's my pet site, and hopefully this cruise will provide me the data for chapter 3 of my PhD dissertation!

Stay tuned as we get ready to dive!