Category Archives: Scientific cruise, March 2017

We have been at sea for nearly a month, as the guests of the crew of the RRS Discovery. This group of 23 seafarers operate under the leadership of Captain Antonio Gatti. In general, it has taken me some time to get used to the many nautical terms on the ship, but especially the crewContinue reading “The shipshape crew of the RRS Discovery”

This cruise has been a bit unusual in that we transited the equator four times, and, given our proximity to the vernal equinox, we jumped between all four seasons. As exciting as this is from both a geographical and celestial point of view, I hadn’t appreciated the naval significance of ‘crossing the line’. I soonContinue reading “Crossing the line”

Today I interviewed the OBS group from the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics (IGPP) at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, which is part of the University of California San Diego. Scripps has a long history of making OBSs. In the early 1990’s, I was a postdoctoral fellow at IGPP and at that time thereContinue reading “Syntactic flotation: the Scripps way”

I have been at sea for over 3 weeks now and have seen very little of anything beyond the ship. As our internet connection is barely working, I am feeling a bit cut off from the outside world. In contrast, I have never been so aware of my immediate surroundings. We are constantly monitoring thingsContinue reading “The wildlife at sea”

Sometimes things don’t always go as to plan. We arrived at site I04D at 15:00, quickly establishing communication with the OBMT and the OBS. The OBMT was on its way to the surface with an ETA of 17.50 – all was going well. After surveying in the location of the OBS and sending an acousticContinue reading “Fishing for OBSs”

France has a rich history of working in the oceans, collecting some of the longest tidal records available, for example. During our voyage, we happened to pass the French research ship the “Pourquoi Pas?” off the west coast of Africa. The Institut de Physique du Globe in Paris (IPGP) runs geophysical observatories that monitor earthquakeContinue reading “Le OBS”

PiLAB is a unique experiment in many ways, one of which is that ocean bottom seismometers and magnetotelluric instruments are co-located. This allows the comparison of two very different physical properties of the plate and underlying mantle – elasticity and the conductivity – which together offer insights into the nature of tectonic plates, how theyContinue reading “Zen and the art of magnetotelluric measurements”

Until this cruise, my experience with seismology fieldwork had been entirely on land. The group at Bristol has deployed seismometers in some of the harshest conditions on Earth, including the Canadian Arctic and the Afar region of Ethiopia and Eritrea. Operating a seismometer at the bottom of the ocean presents a whole new set ofContinue reading “What’s inside an OBS”

The weather remains good, the sea is calm and we are about to cross the equator for the third time. We are steaming westward away from Africa and have some long transits between stations. Time to enjoy the sunsets and sunrises. But, this has also given us some time to start acquiring magnetic data. ElectromagneticContinue reading “Magnetic attractions at the equator”

If you have been to sea many times, packing is no doubt a fairly simple task and you seldom forget something. However, for many of us on DY-072, this is the first time on a scientific cruise. I am happy to have remembered all the cables and adaptors that I need, but brought too manyContinue reading “What to pack”