Karen's Daily Blog

“And an ocean tumbled by with a private boat for Max and he sailed off through night and day and in and out of weeks and almost over a year to where the wild things are.”
                                    -- Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are (also quote below)

 

Land ho!  After nearly two weeks a thousand miles from any shore, you’d better believe it was a surprise to go out on deck this morning and see fishing boats and a craggy shore.  That’s Cabo San Lucas, the southern tip of Baja California and the entry point to the Sea of Cortés, where the Extreme mission will spend its final week.  We’ve reached 23º 10’N, 109º 8’ W – and we’re still nearly 24 hours from our destination, Guaymas Basin.

The Sea of Cortés (named for the Spanish explorer Hernan Cortés)  is here at the point where the continent of North America abuts the East Pacific Rise. If you follow the vertical line the sea traces north into the land, you’ll see that it’s the start of the San Andreas fault, a crack that could eventually cause Baja California and the western side of the state of California to separate from the continent. As the crack widened, Baja California moved west, and the ocean filled in the space.  Note: Some people call it the Sea of Cortés. Our navigation chart says Golfo de California (Gulf of California).  Under this sea, the rift in the Earth’s crust allowed magma to bubble through, resulting in hydrothermal vents.

Mosaic constructed by images collected in 1998 and compiled by Hanumant Singh, Dana Yoerger of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.;

The first hydrothermal vents were discovered northeast of the Galapagos Islands in 1977.  During the nineties Dr. Craig Cary took part in the Magical Mystery Tour, an odyssey of research cruises that carried scientists around the world to collect samples from hydrothermal vents. They gathered genetic material from the samples, hoping to see whether organisms at different vents were unique or were related to one another. Vents form at many points where tectonic plates intersect. These intersections form the Mid-Ocean Ridge, which wraps around the Earth like the seams on a baseball, and hydrothermal vents may be found at many points. Ninety-five percent of Earth’s volcanic activity is found along this ridge.

The Guaymas Basin, our destination for the next seven dives, is crossed with buckles and fractures called transform faults where the seafloor is spreading five to six centimeters a year. The magma here doesn’t erupt as it does at other spreading centers because it gets swamped with the muddy sediment that covers the floor. Sand has washed into the basin from the land on either side, then mixed with organic matter to form a deep, layered sediment a kilometer thick. Craig says the black smoker chimneys here are among the tallest in the world, including one of our targets, a site named after WHOI scientist Rich Lutz’s daughter – Rebecca’s Roost. 

Over millions of years, organic matter that was trapped in the sediment decayed and formed petroleum products. This oil is toxic to almost every living thing -- but not to the thriving inhabitants of the hydrothermal vent environment, including tubeworms, octopi, clams, mussels, and, of course, our objective during this cruise: protists, bacteria, and viruses.

Join us tomorrow for our first Extreme 2008 Alvin dive at the Guaymas Basin.  We have prototraps to retrieve; they were deployed in fall 2007 by Dave Caron’s lab. We have many, many sediment cores to gather, as well as clams (if we can find them in the sediment), Riftia and other worms, and water samples. 

“And now,” cried Max, “let the wild rumpus start!”

Today's Extreme Blogger:
Kevin Threadgold, Ordinary Seaman

Herman Melville was a sailor. So were Ralph Ellison and Joseph Conrad. Paul Gauguin, Richard Avedon, Jack Kerouac, Oliver Stone, Woody Guthrie, and Jack London all swabbed decks. Mark Twain, Peter Falk, Carroll O’Connor, Sterling Hayden, Jack Lord, and Jim Thorpe all stood at watch, pulled lines, chipped, painted, and secured for heavy seas.

Men, and now women, go to sea for as many reasons as there are ships at anchor off the coast of Panama. For some it’s about the money, but just as often the catalyst is an unshakablebelief that the holy grail is floating somewhere just beyond horizon.

 

So let’s say, just for the sake of argument, that the rock star thing doesn’t quite work out. Let’s assume, for a moment, that you will not be America’s next top model. And let’s pretend you hear your name called in the waves breaking on the beach in Seattle or San Diego or somewhere on the outer banks of the Carolinas.
  
What do you do?  

First things first. You’ll need a Z-card.

Also known as a Merchant Marine Document, Z-cards are issued by the Coast Guard. I got mine thirty years ago, working summers as a deckhand on the Woods Hole-to Martha’s Vineyard ferry. There was a catch-22 in the old days: To get a Z-card you needed a job, but to get a job you needed a Z-card. Today, although there are certain qualifications, anyone with the persistence to walk the requisite maze of government paperwork can make it happen. You’ll find everything you need to know at the U.S. Coast Guard National Maritime Center home page: www.uscg.mil/nmc.

But we’re not done yet. Not by a longshot.

You’ll need to invest about $1,000 in an STCW course. STCW stands for Standards of Training, Certification & Watchkeeping, a five-day course that will introduce you to the basics of firefighting, seamanship, first aid, and survival swimming. It is a requirement on all inspected U.S. vessels. I know that for a long time, because there is so much work for seamen in the offshore Louisiana oil field, the state of Louisiana offered the course free of charge through the state division of unemployment.
This may or may not still be the case. http://www.stcw.org/

You’ll need a TWIC: Transportation Worker’s Identity Card. This is a program designed and overseen by the Department of Homeland Security to improve security at U.S Ports. A TWIC will run you about $100 and is, as far as I know, available to anyone willing to undergo the requisite background check.  http://www.twicprogram.tsa.dhs.gov/  

And you’ll need a passport. I’m in the process of adding pages to mine. I have immigration stamps from Spain, Turkey, Mexico, Costa Rica, Tahiti, Chile, Greece, France, and Italy. Wait, I forgot Thailand. And China. This is the real beauty of the life I’ve chosen. I go to the places the rest of the world dreams about. And I get paid to do it. www.usps.com/passport.
  
That’s about it, but I’ll pass along a few suggestions.

Invest in a pair of comfortable steel-toe work boots. Steel toes are a little tricky. I went through five pair before I found something comfortable enough to wear all day. Check out the Carolina Woodsman Steel Toe ($78) at http://www.shoeline.com/.

You’ll need to learn three knots: a bowline, a clove hitch, and maybe a sheet bend. You’ll pick up more as you progress, but to set foot on deck and be anything but useless you’ll need at least those three. And it wouldn’t hurt if you could splice an eye in three-strand. http://www.animatedknots.com/
  
Pick up a good knife (http://www.spyderco/), a multi-tool (http://www.cabelas.com/), and a set of foul-weather gear: boots, rain pants, and a rain jacket. Columbia makes good, inexpensive rain gear, but Grundens remains the industry standard.

Get a good watch, a reliable alarm clock, and a small flashlight you can wear on your belt.

That’s a start anyway. This is a hard life, but the rewards are beyond anything you can imagine. It’s not for everyone, but if it reaches out and taps you on the shoulder, it’s worth a shot.

Photo Gallery

Video Gallery