Author: Chaii Layne-Neubauer

We are at the end of the 6 week of the this cruise and the end as whole is just around the corner. It has certainly been an eventful week. On our transit to the final station we recieved a distress signal from a vessel with a broken mast and running low on fuel. The Marcus G. Langseth was the closest ship to the distressed party and made the easy decision of changing course in order to provide assistance. After back tracking for several hours we were able to spot the small sailing vessel nested in a thick fog. The ship’s crew wasted no time in preparting to assist. They loaded up one of our small boats with fuel cans and a small party of three to meet the ship approximately a mile away from us. It is quite a process to deploy the boat and all were in attendance at the spectacle. Luckily there were no issues and the distressed vessel was able to make its way home safe.

With our own small boat and its party secured again we made for our heading towards the Arctic Circle. We passed right by Iceland on this transit and quite possibly may have seen it if the continuous fog didn’t follow us. As we passed the Arctic Circle we have truly come into a place of eternal daytime. Unfortunatley we have not been able to utilize this extra light to our advantage as we have suspened operations for several days due to the weather. Once it clears we will finish up our final station and make our way to Reykjavic for a well needed sight of land.

This marks the end of 5 weeks aboard the R/V Marcus G. Langseth. It is hard to believe that we have but a few weeks left on our cruise. This week has been quite productive in regards to our primary mission of collecting sediment cores. Most of the days we were able to do 4-6 deployments of the multi core with decent returns on average. I say on average because we have had several deployments with perfect returns and a few with none at all. It certainly is a practice in patience when we spend three or so hours on a deployment to only end up with no mud. The more challenging aspects of deck operations, such as running taglines and operating the winch, have also began to come easier and smoother. I still have much to learn but am worlds better than I was at the beginning of the cruise. Our work hasn’t only been on deck though as we also have been doing work around the shop on small projects as well as organizing all the copious data files from our instrumentation. Excel can at times be just as challenging as operating heavy machinery.

Luckily we have collected all the samples we needed for that station and are now headed towards our last intended station, north of the arctic circle! I am antsy to reach such a northern location especially with these extremely long summer days. By the time I head in for bed the morning light is already beginning to show even at midnight. Looking forward to our transit further north and beginning at our last station.

We’ve passed our 4 week mark on our cruise aboard the R/V Marcus G. Langseth. We’ve been steadily making our way north and its becoming apparent. The days have become much longer as well as colder. We’ve had a steady stream of fog that comes in most days for several hours at a time. We are almost done with our current station and have been working at a steady pace for the last several days.

Recently I’ve been learning how to operate the winch during deployment and recovery of the mutli-core instrumentation. This is certainly been one of the more challenging technical skills I’ve had to learn while aboard. Both deploying and recovering instrumentation takes quite a bit of coordinated effort between several different people. While I am in the winch booth operating via a remote joystick, there are two people running tag lines, someone operating the A-frame and a deck leader managing everyones actions. It is quite an intricate dance and one where safety is paramount. It can be an anxiety inducing build up but is done within a moment and comes with elation when everything works well.

Tomorrow we will begin setting our sights even further North, riding along the Eastern coast of Greenland. I will be keeping my eyes out for any auroa borealis though seeing the occasional pod of whales has been a good consolation prize if not.

Week three of our cruise has passed and the time has seemingly flown by and trickled at a glacial rate. We began the week in the midst of being on our third station and it has become the problem child. During the 5 days we were at station we continually faced equipment, weather and sediment difficulties though luckily to no detriment to morale. For several of the days the weather kept us from deploying off deck part of the time. That coupled with difficult ocean conditions limiting the amount of usable cores meant we had our work cut out for us. It was certainly rewarding for all when we recovered the last core onto deck and made our heading for our next station. The next several days of transit were a welcomed change of pace with several projects to take on, both small and large. We arrived on station Tuesday morning refreshed and ready to get that mud. Unfortunately this sediment was far too dry for the science party’s liking and thinking quickly they decided to move overnight attempting to find more favorable conditions. Hopefully our new location holds mud worthy of our efforts.

My second week aboard the Langseth has officially ended and the time has seemingly flown by. At the beginning of this week we were just starting our transit to the next station. From the Bermuda area we headed North East up the Atlantic for several days. These transit periods are a good time to rest as well as perform some of the necessary tasks that we wouldn’t have time to while we’re at a station, busy collecting core and water samples. During this transit we did some house cleaning of the marine tech shop, prepared equipment for future projects and remounted the remote controls for the winch. All our work was well rewarded though when we were accompanied by a huge pod of dolphins at sunset on our last day of transit.

Fearing foul weather oncoming, we began coring with haste on Monday succeeding in deploying three times in the day and three times again today. It seems we are getting a rhythm to the task and even with depths reaching near 5000m we are having no issues keeping that pace. The difficulty I’ve come to understand with coring is until you have the samples back aboard, you never truly know what quality you’re going to get. The coring specialists do everything in their ability to optimize each deployment but in the end we are at the whim of currents, sediment and benthic characteristics. Unfortunately the science party has only been able to utilize a few individual cores from each deployment on this station though we are trying several fixes to bump those numbers up. As they say, necessity is the mother of invention. Hopefully this week comes with better mud and even more adventure. 

Our first week of the trip has already come and gone in a flash. I boarded the Langseth in Brooklyn Harbor late on the 9th. That was followed by a full day of preparations and getting the lay of the ship. Its quite a maze of hallwyays and decks that I easily became lost in the first several days. I would say I know it well now though I think I find a new room everyday. The ship left port in the early hours of the 11th in order to refuel and then were on our way out.

The ship’s engineers were faced with a potential delay, waiting for a part, and not wanting to waste any precious time the crew and science party decided on a new first deployment station whilst we wait. The instrumentation we are primarily using on this cruise are multi-cores, taking cylinders of mud from the sea floor, thousands of meters below the surface. The first station was a bit of a crash course for me in the operation of multi-cores as we deployed them several times over the next couple days. Some good news came at the end of this station when the engineers were able to fix the ship without going back to port.

After finishing up at our initial station it was time to make haste towards the next and official first station. Transit took several days and was a good time for all to rest and reset before the real work began. We only arrived on station yesterday and have already had our share of success and tribulations. During an inital CTD deployment the Langseth’s new winch malfunctioned leaving the CTD stuck close to the bottom for several hours. With the valiant efforts of the ship’s engineers and electricians the winch was repaired and CTD recovered in one piece. Today we’ve deployed two more cores and seem to be smoothing out all the little problems as they come. We hope for fair winds and following seas as our journey begins.

Hello Everyone,

My name is Chaii Layne-Neubauer and I am one of the interns about to sail with the R/V Marcus G. Langseth on its next voyage from New York to Iceland! To introduce myself, I grew up on the beaches of California and in the deserts of Arizona. I got my Bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Arizona and then worked as a test engineer for Caterpillar for a time. Recently, I’ve been pursuing working in the marine research world so this opportunity has been a dream for me. This will be my second research cruise, the first being aboard the R/V Sally Ride working with a water sampling team for Scripps where I learned the ropes of CTD deployment and fluorometer readings. In my freetime I enjoy cooking, fishing, taking apart (and sometimes putting back together) cars and a good horror flick. I cant wait to begin this new adventure so keep an eye out for updates from me on the weekly!