Post 1- The Calm Before the Cruise

Hello and welcome to the ISU Students at Sea Hydrate Ridge Blog!

This blog will be a collaborative effort of all of the ISU participants, however, the man in charge is Zack Bailey. Zack and the rest of the gang would like to invite you to follow us on our journey to the bottom of the ocean and back! We will be at sea for several days and will use this blog to relay to you tales of challenges, trial, and successes that await us! We are open to answering any questions that you may have and hope that you would be willing to pose them. Hope to hear from you soon! 


Cheers!
-- Zack, Ashley, Ron, Mary, Elena, and Tony

Pre-Pre-Cruise


Several months ago we sent most of our gear to San Diego, CA and then sent Ron Taylor to accompany Scripps Institution of Oceanography scientists in a truck carrying their gear and our gear to San Francisco to load the R/V Atlantis. This was we did not have to carry the gear with us and try to load it when we boarded the ship in Oregon. 

We met the ship in Astoria, OR. Astoria does not have an airport, so we had to fly in to Portland and ride in a van for about 2 hours to get to Astoria. Astoria is has a rich history of salmon fishing and canning, but has recently turned to tourism for a main source of income. The movies "The Goonies" and "Kindergarten Cop" were both filmed in Astoria. 

We bought additional supplies for the trip, including extra bungee cords, rope, and other misc supplies. We needed weights to hold our experiments on the seafloor so we also visited local piles of scrap metal where we found suitable heavy pieces of metal with holes that we carted to the ship in an old borrowed wheel barrel. 

Shopping at the local scrap pile.

The guard stationed at the ship smiled, but had a funny look on her face when we passed by with the wheel barrel full of rusty scrap metal.

We plan to use these as weights that we will recover in a years time and will return them to the local scrap piles for use by future oceanographers! 


Our group from ISU consists of Zack Bailey, Ashley Burkett, Ron Taylor, Mary Smith, Dr. Elena Perez, and Dr. Tony Rathburn. Zack is an undergraduate at ISU while Ashley, Ron, and Mary are graduate students. Elena is a research scientist from the Natural History Museum in London. Tony is an associate professor of Geology in the Department of Earth and Environmental Systems at ISU.


We are working with research scientists and students from Scripps Institution of Oceanography (University of California at San Diego), and Cal Tech. Specialists from research institutions in Italy and Switzerland are also aboard. We are all working together to understand the strange and wonderful ecosystems that are associated with areas on the seafloor where methane emerges from the sediments. We are focusing on creatures that occur on and within the rocks that form as a result of the unique biochemistry in these environments.