It's a Wrap

We’ve just entered the port at Guaymas and are in the midst of cleaning and packing and tying up loose ends. Yesterday we did our “clean-up” on the seafloor, collecting some animals, deploying some gear for the next cruise, and picking up the last of our short-term thermocouple arrays. The two thermocouple arrays we recovered complete our sampling of very young chimneys and biofilms of known age. We recovered orange and white biofilm that grew over a 6-day period over a small vent in the southern part of the vent field.

While very little mineral material had accumulated, there was enough material present for there to be fairly stable temperatures at many of the thermocouples, and of 224°C at one of them. We’ve deployed a second array there in hopes that a chimney will grow during the next 15 days.

We also recovered our third short-term array from the Busted Mushroom site in the central part of the vent field. Unlike at the vent in the south, where the chimney hadn’t grown back in 6-days, here at Busted Mushroom the chimneys grow back very rapidly! With yesterday’s sample, we now have chimneys of know age and temperature that grew in 2, 3, and 5 days. (And we have one that grew in 4 days from 2003). While they do not look very different in the photos, the slightly older chimneys had more substantial walls and more volume that was at temperatures less than 120°C, so we think that the slightly older chimneys will have not only more microorganisms present, but more diversity.

After 2 days, three days, and five days

So while many of us leave today, Kristen and Meg will remain behind with Luke and the new Science Party that arrives tomorrow. In two weeks, they’ll go back and recover whatever has grown within our final two arrays during the past fifteen days, allowing us to view the colonization and succession within two different types of chimney environments. Stay tuned…

Lauri’s Guaymas Impressions:

17 November: Where did the time go? It is officially our last day at sea and the weather has allowed Alvin one last dive. Professor Brian Cox of the BBC accompanied Chief Scientist Anna-Louise Reysenbach and pilot Mark Spear aboard Alvin to capture some deep-sea footage and observe the sub’s operations.

Even with the rush to finish projects and pack up lab equipment, some of us made time to join Chief Engineer Jeff Little for a tour of Atlantis’ engine room.

It’s a spatially efficient combination of high tech controls and really big, noisy machinery that is divided into roughly three rooms: control, generators, and propulsion. Since the ship is ‘diesel-electric’, all of the power that controls everything from stateroom lights to deck equipment to the ship’s mobility is generated by an array of monster diesel engines.

In case you were wondering, all of that power consumes about 1500 gallons of diesel fuel per day when stationed at a dive site.


Alvin’s last dive for this cruise ended about 5 p.m., just in time for dinner!

Swimmer Dave forgot his robe and newspaper.

Like any vehicle operating in its environment, Alvin needs a bath now and then, and since this was the last dive, it was also bath time. So once the sub was emptied of it’s human cargo, everybody helped spend last moments of daylight scrubbing and rinsing.

We arrive in port late tonight after seven dives and ten days at sea. This has been a fun and productive cruise and I hope that you enjoyed following us as we explored the Guaymas basin hydrothermal vents! Keep checking this blog, as Meg and Kristen are still at sea and will retrieve the 2 thermocouple arrays that are still on the seafloor.