Karen's Daily Blog

“Knowing her fate, Atlantis sent out ships to all the corners of the earth. On board were the twelve: the poet, the physician, the farmer, the scientist, the magician and the other so-called gods of our legends . . . “

These are lines from the old, mystical Donovan song that still gives me chills. Way down below the ocean is where I want to be. Alvin’s down there today, here in the Sea of Cortés, carrying pilot Mark Spear, Dr. Pete Countway of the University of Southern California, and Dr. Shawn Polson of the University of Delaware. Lucky ducks!  

Above waits Atlantis, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution research ship that is our host for the Extreme 2008 cruise. It is the namesake of some truly noble beings, and shares names with some others.

Atlantis is an island of legend, said to be situated in the Atlantic Ocean west of Gibraltar. Some say the philosopher Plato originated the legend in 428 B.C., but it may simply be that he was the first to record it. The Atlanteans were an unusually well-educated people, living in a beautiful city with an advanced technology. In Plato’s version, volcanic eruption underwater causes an earthquake that results in a great flood, and Atlantis disappears beneath the sea. The disaster is said to have begun and started in just 24 hours, one day and night. Atlantis was received by the Greek god Poseidon, the king of the sea. Her advanced civilization had influenced Mediterranean cultures from Spain and Morocco in the west all the way east to Athens and Persia.

Kircher’s Map of the Atlantic, from Mundus Subterraneus (Undersea World) 1669

One theory about the source of the legendary destruction stems from the island of Santorini, or Thera, the center of the huge Minoan eruption, in which half the island sank into the sea. The island now curves around a caldera, the crater of the volcano, which is building up again from under the sea and is still active. 

Another theory gives the location of Atlantis as the Bermuda triangle, and credits the sunken city for the triangle’s presumed ability to attract ships and aircraft into its vortex and cause their disappearance. 

Neither of these theories jibes with Plato’s story, which places Atlantis at the middle of the ocean, in the area of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Many other stories, histories, and cultural assessments of Atlantis were proposed over history, including a suggestion popular in the 19th century that the Atlantean culture was related to the Mexican and Central American Mayan or Aztec cultures. So difficult was it for some cartographers to separate reality from lore that they included Atlantis -- along with other mythical lands -- on their maps. 

Kircher’s Map of the Atlantic, published in 1669, features Atlantis in the center of the Atlantic, just where the Mid-Atlantic Ridge (MAR) is found. (Note that east is west, and west is east.)  The MAR was discovered in 1872 through the work of scientists aboard HMS Challenger, considered to be the first true ocean science research vessel. Is it any coincidence that ridge explorers named an assemblage of hydrothermal vents -- and their towering chimneys -- “Lost City?”  When plate tectonics became widely accepted, it sank the theory that there could have been a mid-ocean island that was lost during recent -- that is, human -- history.

The “A II” (A-two) is what we called the R/V Atlantis II, the research vessel that our Atlantis replaced.  The beloved A II logged more than a million miles for science, including 49 Alvin dives before the brand new Atlantis rolled into the sea (check out that footage at the start of the Extreme video) to take over the work as Alvin’s tender, or mother ship. 

(Craig Cary told me about the observation bubble it had in its bow, where you could sit and look out underwater. Once, he said, a mother dolphin swam close to the bubble and peered in, then moved aside so he could see her baby. )

 

What was the first Atlantis? It’s the boat that appears on WHOI’s logo. The 142-foot ketch-rigged sailboat was WHOI’s first research ship, which logged some 700,000 research miles between 1931 and 1966. 

There’s another research ship Atlantis worth mentioning:  NASA space shuttle Atlantis, which sent the crew of our ship a commemorative picture with the official emblem of the shuttle.

Our own Atlantis has seen Alvin through thousands of dives in nearly eleven years of service. And for the Extreme 2008 scientists, it’s our mother ship, too. 

Today's Extreme Blogger:
Fanny R. Moussan

Estudié la carrera de biología en el área de hidrobiología en la UAM (Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana). En la UAM estuve a cargo del laboratorio de biología experimental.

Recibí mi titulo de maestra en ciencias con especialidad en oceanografía química, estudios que realicé en el Instituto de Ciencias del Mar y Limnología de la UNAM (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México).

Mi proyecto de maestría estuvo enfocado a la simulación de ventilas hidrotermales de ambientes submarinos para síntezar compuestos nitrogenados tales como el ácido cianhídrico, el cual es el compuesto base para formar aminoácidos. El objetivo era simular un escenario del océano similar a la que se encontraba en la tierra primitiva utilizando diferentes mezclas de gases a diferentes valores de presiones y como fuente de azufre la pirita (FeS2). La importancia de este estudio es descifrar las condiciones químicas más parecidas al momento en que surgió la vida en la Tierra.

En este momento me encuentro en este crucero con el propósito de la obtención de material de estudio para el proyecto de tesis doctoral cuyo principal tema estará enfocado a aspectos que incluyen biología y ecología de macroorganismos infaunales en los sistemas hidrotermales.

Las muestras que colectaré son sedimentos en zonas considerando la presencia de las siguientes variables: actividad hidrotermal, presencia de petróleo, bacterias y temperatura. Del sedimento se realizará análisis geoquímico, lo que incluye la determinación cuantitativa de elementos traza y con estos datos poder caracterizar los ambientes en los que se encuentran los organismos infaunales. También se analizarán las concentraciones del sulfuro que es la principal especie química en que se encuentra el azufre por las condiciones óxido-reductoras del ambiente. Los organismos infaunales que voy a estudiar en el sedimento son del tamaño de 0.5 mm y se hará mediante caracterización morfológica y técnicas moleculares (18S y COI).

Por esta razón representa para mí una gran oportunidad de participar en este crucero “Extreme 2008” donde podré interactuar con expertos en el área de sistemas hidrotermales. En nuestro territorio marítimo nacional tenemos manifestaciones hidrotermales submarinas profundas y someras, las cuales compararé en sus aspectos geoquímicos y biológicos para un mejor entendimiento y conservación de nuestros recursos naturales.

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