#19 EMAIL FROM TONY

Writers Note:  I include the following email to highlight the incredible extent of involvement and expanse throughout the academic world these research cruises encompass.  Although the science crew consisted of only about 15 people, there were researchers from numerous universities and labs across the country and world involved with the planning and ready to use the data coming out of these efforts.  The main effort involving the sediment traps may have been 10 years in the planning.  Getting a slot onboard one of these ships is quite limited. I felt very lucky to worm my way onto a project like this.  It was a realization of a long held dream, to once again touch the research world of the life sciences, a world with which I was quite familiar from college days; tranquilizing elk in the Cascades for blood and stool samples, metallurgical studies on reactor fuel pins at Hanford,  jumping out of helicopters into the Alaskan tundra for soil and vegetation inventory studies, and breeding fish and running bio-safety testing for ultrasonic imaging.  Two weeks into the cruise and my admiration and affection for these researchers had continued grown and friendships were developing.  

From: T@wrigley.usc.edu

To: s@notes.cc.sunysb.edu, p@umich.edu, c@mit.edu, c@biology.gatech.edu, i@ahab.Rutgers.edu, l@botan.su.se, r@dundee.ac.uk, b@soest.hawaii.edu, e@cats.ucsc.edu, d@icess.ucsb.edu, s@princeton.edu, r@hpl.umces.edu, d@rsmas.miami.edu, z@cats.ucsc.edu, f@mizar.usc.edu

Hi Folks,

I have been talking to Doug Capone and Michael Neumann on the Knorr and I

thought that I would bring you a brief update on the cruise.  Suffice to

say that things are not going according to plan!!

They left Las Palmas on schedule full of high hopes (I am paraphrasing a

little here for dramatic effect).  They arrived at the 30N, 45W station

where the first sediment trap had been deployed. Unfortunately, they had

some difficulties with the release, it wouldn't!  As they were trying out

some options for next steps, they were informed that a crew member was sick

and they had to head to port to drop her off.  This took about 6-7 days,

effectively preventing a return to the 30N station.  Thus, they steamed to

Barbados with the intent of concentrating the residual time on the 10N, 45W

station.

A few days ago, they arrived at the 10N, 45W station where the second trap

has been sitting quietly collecting sinking material.  Unfortunately, it

would also not release (do you detect a pattern?).  Subsequent tests with

the backup release show that this model works fine at 3000 m, but not a

4000.  Our pre-cruise tests were are 3000 m which seemed close enough to

our operating depth without actually dragging the thing on the bottom.  It

is rated to 6000-7000 m.  The release is not flooding, they just doesn't

work at that depth.  We tested the one at 4000 m, brought it to the surface

to confirm that it was still closed, then lowered it again to 1000 m and it

worked just fine.  Any thoughts on pressure-sensitive or depth sensitive

failure modes?   We are trying to get the factory folks to help us figure

this out.

Unfortunately, after a little while at the 10 N station, another crew

member got sick (patterns abound).  They are, you guessed it, steaming back

to Barbados to drop this person off.  On arrival, they will have time to go

back out and do a little more work just beyond the Barbados 200 mile limit,

but not much else before getting back in to load the second leg.  Hopefully

they will have used up all of the bad luck that the Knorr can carry and the

second leg will be a charm.

It is not all bad news.  They have actually been collecting a lot of other

data as they went along.  They have been doing a fair number of Fe and Dust

addition experiments and the preliminary data from 14C uptake do seem to

show a stimulation with dust. We will see how the N-fixation on those comes

out when they get back to port.  We will have a lot of experimental data

which should be invaluable.  Besides the traps, the real impact of the two

illnesses are a reduction in station time and the inability to do the

short-term traps deployments for the appropriate durations for short-term

context to the incubation experiments.

The next steps for these traps are still uncertain.  We are going to try to

figure out why they have this weird and consistent failure mode.  We have

two options.  We can push for going back out right after leg 2 for a

trap-only leg.  If we know the problem with the releases this would get us

the traps back close to the original schedule.  If not, we could drag for

them to the same result, but without a real way to re-deploy.  We could

also wait and to out at the end of this year.  They traps were set up to

start sampling again after a 10 day recovery window.  They will continue to

sample at monthly intervals for another 8 months or so.  If we go out 8

months from now, we will have a pretty good dataset, albeit a bit delayed.

So think good thoughts for our buddies at sea, both the ones on this leg

and the ones on the next.  If you want to volunteer for the trap recovery

leg if scheduled, please let me know (Barbados to WHOI).  Any other

suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers, Tony

_______________________________________________________________________

Dr. Anthony F. Michaels

Director

USC Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies

University of Southern California