Frustrations with equipment -- but success with science
We will be coming to the surface tomorrow morning, so here
is a quick update.
Equipment problems are still bedeviling us. The laser line
scanner froze while at TAMU-2 and we thought we got it working, but it turned
out that the Jaz drive broke and didn't record our data. So we did lose
the pictures from sites TAMU2-6.
It was this morning when we really figured out what was
wrong, so we surfaced to try making repairs. Finally, after Mark White,
the Raytheon technician, was able to go out on deck (we surfaced of course),
he could use his cell phone to call the office and troubleshoot. We submerged,
got down to the next site (TAMU-7), and found that the shutters on the windows
through which the laser shines had vibrated partially shut on the way down.
Argh.
So we have made do for the rest of the night using our
eyes and the X-star. The NR-1 captain fired up the sub's digital still camera
and I think he will be passing on some images. Not laser scans--but proof
of what we have seen.
Our cruise has been successful scientifically. Tonight
we went to TAMU-7, TAMU-8 and are on our way to TAMU-10. (We will backtrack
to the GC234 mosaic site tomorrow if we get the laser working.) At TAMU-7
and at another spot on the way to TAMU-8 we found tubeworms and gorgonian
sea fans and beggiatoa bacteria mats.
It looks like the darkest spots in the sonar records are
the places where chemos are likeliest. In our X-star subbottom profiler
records, we almost always see a dark high reflection layer come up to the
surface where we see tubeworms and beggiatoa mats. This dark layer is probably
gas or hydrate. So we are learning what we set out to learn. | 
