Karen's Daily Blog

Troubles!  Yes, we’ve got troubles. 

Expedition Leader and Chief Pilot Bruce Strickrott tipped me off to the first problem last night: “You ought to go up to the E.T. lab and see what they’ve got,” he said.

The E.T. (Electronics Technician) lab was already full when I got there. It’s not a particularly big space, but it’s extremely well-organized and well-stocked with every kind of tool, instrument, and component. There ahead of me were Alvin/WHOI engineers Lane Abrams and Dan Gomez-Ibañez, PITs Mike Skowronski and Anton Zafereo, and Extreme scientist Conrad Pilditch, who, like me, was just curious.

Something inside one of Alvin’s “cans” had short-circuited, and Lane had the can disassembled on a workbench. As he worked to replace a few parts, he showed me the spare can assemblage and circuit boards that had been taken out of storage and set out before the group began assessing the problem. This kind of trouble-shooting – and having the solutions to troubles in advance – is the hallmark of the Alvin procedures put in place by past Alvin group members and perpetuated by current ones. Over and over, I hear praise given to the design and constant evaluation and improvement of our favorite submersible.

Alvin/WHOI engineer Lane Abrams.

“The sub is a good machine,” says Lane. “It likes to dive. But stuff happens.”

My nose tells me something melted down, but I’m reminded that none of the elements that keep Alvin running are inside the sphere, for safety. So how did the pilot know there was a problem?  What went wrong? “The rudder,” PIT Dave Walter explains to me later. The pilot usually uses a joystick to steer the rudder, but the rudder appeared to stop working. So the pilots flipped a switch to change the steering to differential mode. Each of Alvin’s three cans powers two motors of the same size. With one can failed, its two motors were not functioning. But the other two propellers were still working. It’s a testament to Alvin’s designers that even with a third of its motors gone, Alvin functions just fine. The dive was completed, its missions on the ocean floor accomplished.

Now, at ten o’clock at night, Lane and the others nearly had the can fixed, and before midnight Alvin was ready to report for duty the next morning.

More trouble! I figured out what the problem was shortly after going on deck this morning.  My first clue was a big wave that bounced up onto the deck and soaked me from my feet to my shoulders. Ten minutes after I’d gotten dressed in clean clothes, I was squishing and squashing my way up the stairs to change into dry things. It seems that overnight we’d built up a bit of a sea. Now the sea was running at upwards of 26 knots.

Dave Walter said, “We might launch in this, but recovery would be difficult.” Our day’s dive, with scheduled pilot Bruce Strickrott and observers Shawn Polson and Jamie Botelho, was on hold until eleven . . . and then it was scrubbed. 

 

“Snow day!” announced Korey. With everything all set and ready to go, the Alvin group could take a well-deserved rest, and plans were made for ping-pong tournament games and an evening of sharing some quality TV-watching with the science crew.

As for Jamie and Shawn, they took part in our Phone Call to the Deep from aboard Atlantis – with extra participation from the ship and science crews – and worked on calming the butterflies that must still be in their stomachs for what would now be tomorrow’s dive, with fingers crossed for calmer seas. 

Today's Extreme Blogger:
Kathy Coyne

This is my fourth cruise aboard the Atlantis and unlike many of the scientists on board, this is the only ship I’ve ever sailed on. My work at the University of Delaware focuses primarily on coastal phytoplankton communities, made up of single cell plant-like organisms that form the base of the food web in the ocean. For this work, I rarely have need for a research vessel larger than a canoe or kayak. Collecting samples involves just a short walk to the pier across the road from my lab or a short drive to one of Delaware’s Inland Bays. No need for a submarine, either -- water samples for my research are collected by simply leaning over the side of a dock and filling a water bottle, and sediment samples are easily collected using a pole and coring device.

Working on protist communities in hydrothermal vents is much more challenging and requires months or even years of planning. Most of the equipment we use on this cruise, for example, was specifically designed for the extreme vent environment. It has to withstand high pressures and temperatures and also must be easily manipulated by the Alvin pilots from within the submarine. Other challenges in deep-sea research are unpredictable and beyond our control. Last night, we meticulously planned out our dive for today and had all of our sampling gear ready to go and lashed onto Alvin’s basket.  Unfortunately, the weather kicked up overnight, and the launch for today was scrubbed due to rough seas. Sample collections back home may occasionally get postponed due to weather, but out here, days that we don’t dive are lost, and we rarely get a chance to make them up.

 

Yet there are some similarities between the vent research I’m doing on the Atlantis and my research at home in Delaware. As a molecular biologist, I use DNA and RNA to study interactions between microbial organisms and their environment. In Delaware, I have used this approach to study phytoplankton community dynamics. While the questions may be different, the methods I use are applicable anywhere.

On board the Atlantis, I am investigating a group of protists called ciliates. Like phytoplankton, ciliates are also single-cell organisms. Instead of forming the base of the food web, however, ciliates graze on other organisms, such as bacteria, and form an important link in the transfer of nutrients between microbial species and higher organisms. In this research, I want to answer questions about ciliate diversity and their role in hydrothermal vent environments.

A few years ago, volcanic eruptions at the East Pacific Rise destroyed some of the vent sites, effectively shutting off the flow of minerals and other chemicals that many of the hydrothermal vent animals depend on for life. While other investigators have moved on to new sites to study these animals, we have found that these inactive sites are a great place to look for ciliates and other protists. Tubes that once housed the giant Riftia tube worms and empty shells of vent mussels are slowly being decomposed by bacteria in much the same way that leaves and fallen branches are turned to mulch in a forest. Since ciliates graze on bacteria, these decaying tubes and mussel shells have also been colonized by a variety of ciliates and other protists. 

 

We have been able to image some of the protists from hydrothermal vents using microscopy and an electron microscope, and you can see some of these fantastic images in the previous blog by Karla Heidelberg. At this point, though, it’s impossible to identify many of these organisms from their images because most of them have never been seen before. In spite of its power, microscopy is also limited in that only a small fraction of the protists can be seen due to the small sample size. Using molecular methods, we can sample much larger areas and use DNA sequences to evaluate the diversity of the ciliate population. Eventually, we will be able to pair these sequences with microscope images, to get more detailed information about the biology of protists at hydrothermal vents.

After four voyages, I’ve come to look forward to each cruise and my time on board the Atlantis. The ship’s crew, Alvin pilots, technicians, and scientists are really a terrific group of people. I have had a few opportunities to dive in Alvin on previous cruises. It is truly an amazing experience to see firsthand one of the most extreme environments on Earth. After visiting these sites, I think we have all gained a deeper appreciation for the diversity and resilience of life on this planet.

Photo Gallery

Checking under the hood of Alvin. 

Video Gallery