Karen's Daily Blog

“Who wants to take a submarine ride?”

Calls Dave Walter from the top of Deep Submergence Vehicle (DSV) Alvin.

Who wouldn’t?

Everybody does, of course.  But today’s lucky observers – the first of the Extreme 2008 cruise to the hydrothermal vents of the East Pacific Rise – are chief scientist Craig Cary of the University of Delaware (UDel) and the University of Waikato (New Zealand) and principal investigator (PI) Eric Wommack, also of UDel.  Two other PIs will dive another day:  Dave Caron of the University of Southern California (USC), and Shannon Williamson of the J. Craig Venter Institute.  Dave shouldn’t have to wait too long, but Shannon will; she’s helping lead this expedition from shore.

I take the opportunity to have a chat with Dave Caron about what brought him here. It turns out that, like many good things, this cruise has been a long time in the works.

Dr. Dave Caron, postdoctoral researcher Pete Countway, and the lab have been working on researching protists at the hydrothermal vents since 2002. There is a great deal of competition for research funding, and plenty of competition as well for working with Alvin. Getting funded involves writing proposals to the National Science Foundation which, Dave says, usually wants some evidence that there is something interesting and valuable to study.  But how do you prove that about something which nobody has worked on before, at a place about which little is known?

Dave and Pete’s approach was to work with Craig Cary, who has often worked aboard Atlantis and Alvin, to do enough research to show that doing even more would allow them to make an important contribution to vent microbiology. So Pete Countway went to sea with Extreme 2003, and his colleague Astrid Schnetzer took protist traps to the vents in 2004.  Next they applied together to bring their lab to sea. Their first proposal was rejected, so they revised. The second proposal was turned down, too; they revised again. “Three time’s the charm,” says Dave now. 

The USC lab, temporarily transported to the Hydro Lab close to Atlantis’s stern, is charged with excitement at the opportunity this cruise presents. They spent part of the morning netting surface-dwelling salps, dinoflagellates, copepods, and protists from the side of Atlantis.

 

That afternoon, when I peeked over Dr. Karla Heidelberg’s shoulder at the electron scanning microscope, I saw the structures of some creatures so tiny (30 nanometers, or .03 mm – smaller than the radius of a human hair – that the fibers of the fabric they were resting on looked like thick woven ropes.  “Like Christmas tree ornaments!” said Karla.

But the USC folks were just biding their time, watching the clock along with the rest of the scientists aboard, waiting for Alvin to emerge, carrying water samples taken all over the hydrothermal vent area. Before long, Dave, Pete, Karla, graduate students Amy Koid and Diane Kim, and research lab technician Jamie Botelho, stormed Alvin’s basket, wearing lab gloves to keep from contaminating their protist samples. They removed protist traps and placed them in zip-lock bags full of water for later processing – first to assess their  diversity (to see how many different kinds there are in their samples), and later for close analysis using the electron scanning microscope. Finally they’ll extract DNA and sequence it in hopes of learning more about individual types of protists and their roles in the vent community. 

 

Together, they worked quickly and efficiently to get the samples into place in the Hydro Lab. Today the Extreme 2008 mission didn’t look like the end of a long road anymore. Now it looked like the starting point for an exciting new journey.

Today's Extreme Blogger:
Lee Stanish

Seasickness

Living on a ship takes some getting used to. One moment you are standing on solid ground, and the next moment you are rocking side-to-side, back and forth, day and night. While your eyes see solid objects, such as cabin walls, your inner ear is sensing the rolling motion. Your brain gets confused by these different sensations and that gets translated into some awfully uncomfortable feelings of queasiness and nausea: the dreaded seasickness.
The first time I had been on a ship was during the spring of 2001, when I sailed the North Atlantic on the student sailing vessel (SSV) the Westward. She was a wonderful ship! (The Westward is a two-masted schooner that was rigged to teach students how to sail and do oceanographic research. It was retired in 2001.) I had heard about seasickness, but I didn’t really believe that it could be so bad. Well, it was. For almost four weeks, I wandered around the ship trying as best I could to control my nausea and to finish all of my ship chores. My body kept screaming, “Take me back to terra firma!” But there was too much important work to do. I persevered, and am surely a stronger person for it, but I learned my lesson: do not underestimate the power of the ocean!

On this cruise, I decided to take a different approach: obtain every sort of seasickness remedy and be prepared for the worst! In my repertoire I have everything from prescription medication to homeopathic remedies. My first line of defense is a prescription patch called Scopolamine. You place the patch behind your ear and over the course of a few days the drug infuses into your body to control feelings of motion sickness. It is really effective, but there are some unpleasant side effects. For starters, it causes severe cotton mouth. I must have drunk a gallon of water the first day I wore the patch! Sometimes I get a little dizzy, as well. The drug can also cause hallucinations, but fortunately, I haven’t experienced them...

My second line of defense consists of two types of over-the-counter motion sickness pills, Bonine and Dramamine. Bonine is made of a drug called Meclizine, while Dramamine contains Dimenhydrinate. The nice thing about Bonine is that each dose lasts longer than Dramamine and supposedly does not make you as drowsy. I may have to find out soon which one I prefer if I haven’t gotten my “sea legs” before the Scopolamine patches run out.
My third option is the tried-and-true natural medicine: ginger. Ginger contains chemical compounds that help calm queasy digestive systems. Patients who are undergoing surgery or chemotherapy are often given ginger to reduce nausea and vomiting, so it really does work! Plus it doesn’t make you sleepy or give you cotton mouth, like the other drugs can. My friend Krystal was kind enough to buy me an assortment of ginger products. I have two types of crystallized ginger, a liquid ginger extract, and ginger pills! The crystallized ginger is delicious and I snack on it throughout the day.

So far, the seas have been very calm and I feel great! While I am hoping that we continue to have fantastic weather, I am prepared for the worst. I may even have enough seasickness remedies to share with everyone else on the ship!

Photo Gallery

The A-Frame operator delicately drops Alvin into the drink. 

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