Beauty of the hump

Hump day...

... is the time when people start separating into two groups, the "half-empty" and the "half-full" ones.

Some of us are excited because we have reached the middle of the expedition, and from now the time we already spent out here is shorter than the remaining cruise time. Others can hardly believe that there is still another month ahead of us. I think it is safe to state that we all begin to feel the lack of weekends, spare time, a walk in the forest, some time with our friends and families. Although the atmosphere on board is still very relaxed and we all get along with each other very well, new findings and cores from the deep do not seem that thrilling any more... Which is a shame on one hand, as we get to see things every day that no man has ever seen before, but understandable on the other hand, as our brains are already filled with so many outstanding impressions.

In this respect, there were two major things that broke the daily 12 hour routine. First, on our last site we hit hard rocks much shallower than anticipated, and it was decided to take this opportunity and drill some tens of meters into these rocks. Although this was not planned, it brought up some of the spirit that has been driving all deep sea drilling programs since their very beginning: The curiosity to discover something unexpected, to improvise, to return to the essence of science: exploration. And apart from that, the stuff we drilled looked very different from the green and gray mud we had pulled up so far. Definitely a nice variation, although preparing and splitting hard rocks is much more effort for the technicians, and their hard work is highly acknowledged.

The second deviation from everyday (or everynight) life was the hump day party. Although it took place from 11 pm to 1 am - a little strange to the people of the night shift having a party right after falling out of bed -, it was real fun. There was some nice food, nice music, and even the most sleepy scientists joined the dancing crowd for a while before going up to their labs.

Now, after we left Bowers Ridge about two days ago, we are sitting amidst dense fog at our new drill site, so far the northernmost one. After exploring the Umnak Plateau in the southeastern Bering Sea and Bowers Ridge pretty much in its center, the sites we will drill in the next weeks will hopefully reveal some new information about the connection of the Bering Sea to the Arctic Ocean. This connection might be a crucial component in the circulation system of the global ocean, but so far the only thing we know about it for sure is that it is highly sensitive to sea level variations. Thus, these northern sites most probably represent excellent archives of climate change and related processes in the northern hemisphere. We are excited what we will find!

So far, so good. Let's hope that the coming month will be as exciting as the last one, and the sea as calm, before we finally reach Yokohama in early September.

Viele Gruesse an alle

Christian