We’re done with dives! Yesterday was the last Alvin dive of the cruise and we’re heading back to Astoria, Oregon to drop off the scientists before we go on our transit to San Diego for offloading. Most of the week has felt relatively routine by now – getting Alvin ready for dives in the morning, turning on various beacons and radio devices, cleaning camera lenses, refilling CO2 scrubbers, etc. so I’m going to be recapping some notable highlights. Hard to believe we’re already done with dives and switching to a new schedule right as I was getting the hang of things!
The variety of people on board the Atlantis has been pretty interesting to talk to. Since our professions and backgrounds are so different, it’s been fun to chat with scientists, maritime crew, and educators about their roles on and off the ship.
Every time Alvin returns from a dive with the bio box used for collecting organism samples, it’s always entertaining to see what fruits the depths have yielded for us that day. In this picture, they’re mostly tube worms with bacterial growths (the white fuzzy parts).
Some students from Arizonan schools have sent in decorated Styrofoam cups for the sub to bring down to the seafloor. Due to the extreme water pressure (more than 200atm at over 2000m of depth) that’s down there, the cups end up getting squashed into these cute Shrinky Dink-like crush cups. I made one for myself on Monday, and the result is in the pic below. I’m quite fond of it.
On the final dive, I got to ride on the small boat that retrieves the swimmers. It was a nice feeling to be out on the water on a smaller dinghy, and I got some new POVs of the dive procedure. All in all it was quite entertaining, and I feel like I got a better understanding of the diving process from all roles.
It’s not all work out here anyway – there’s also plenty we do to keep morale high during monotonous hours when work feels stressful. Once when the seas were calm and the sun was out, the galley moved out onto the front deck for lunch to grill burgers and hot dogs. I really wasn’t expecting something like this, so it was a nice change of pace to rewind with a soda and chat with the crew.
A silly picture of me in the sub helping pilots run end-of-cruise maintenance checks. Learning about all the procedures and failsafes built into the sub was very intriguing.
This evening, another pod of dolphins came to visit the bow of the ship again! There’s no way to really tell if they were from the same pod, but they were of the same species at least. It felt like there were a lot more than last time – I’m taking it as a sign of good luck and safe voyages seeing as they also greeted me when I came out to the ocean for the first time.
Offloading at Astoria and transit starts tomorrow, so that’s what my next update is going to be about. See you soon!
Aidan