It’s been a great week of getting comfortable with the rhythms of the ship (and the ocean). I’ve always heard that the swell period in the Pacific tends to be longer than the Atlantic and after pulling out of port, I could instantly feel it under my feet.

For the first few days we assisted in final prep in the port of Lautoka, Fiji. We engaged in the most sacred of intern duties: carrying things for people. We lashed all the Ocean Bottom Seismographs (OBS) to the deck, cleaned and secured deck plugs, and got a lot of practice zip tying chords for various instrumentation connecting them from the deck to the computer labs in the ship. 

Once we departed port, we almost immediately fired up the multi-beam echosounder and sub-bottom profiler to collect bathymetry in the fore-arc of the Mathew-Hunter Trench south of Fiji’s main island, Viti Levu. I have some prior experience with echosounders so it was nice to have something familiar, but the depths of the bathymetry we’re looking at are hard to fathom—4000-5000m down! Please forgive the pun. 

Additionally, we deployed a magnetometer to measure fluctuations in Earth’s magnetic field to pair with the bathymetric data. This small, orange, torpedo-shaped device spools out 300m behind the ship in order to get a clear reading. It also happens that this device has given us the most trouble so far. During our first deployment, our magnetometer gave us wildly varying readings so we had to reel it all the way back in and swap it out with our backup. This was made all the more charming because it takes a couple minutes to spool it all the way out and it was pouring rain on us. Fortunately our tropical location meant that it was more like a nice shower…unfortunately water got in my boots and they took a few days to fully dry. I love wet socks! 

Our survey has been punctuated by deploying OBS off the side of the ship. These rigs sink to the bottom where they will record earthquakes and small shifts in the plates over the next 15 months. Then another cruise will pick them up and they’ll have a bunch of seismic data to analyze. We’ve been assisting the OBS technicians in prepping each package for deployment. It’s been incredible to see how methodical the checklists are for preparing the devices. After all, there’s no changing things once the ship’s crane plucks them off the deck and swings them over the side. After they are deployed we use acoustics to lock into the position of the OBS and track it as it falls to the ocean floor. 

Overall, it’s been an awesome first week. I’ve loved getting to know the crew and other science party members. My shift is from 16:00-2:00, so it’s been fun lurking in the late night and drinking more coffee than I should. 

Looking forward to more lovely sunsets!