Log Post: Sometimes you eat the dive…

Up early again today for our first Nereus dive in earnest, heading down to 2250m at the top of Mt Dent, just West of the Von Damm hydrothermal field, for engineering tests. After a few concerns right before diving (waiting for the coffee to kick in and provide clarity) we were ready to go and … Continued

Log Post: Current Affairs

My name is Kate Malloy. Despite being an undergraduate student from James Cook University studying marine biology, I recently learned to look past all the fish in the sea on a student exchange to Hawaii and began to develop an interest in physical oceanography. I am currently on board the R/V Falkor learning how to … Continued

Log Post: Massive Mysteries

Oceanographers, marine biologists, acoustic researchers, a Student Opportunities Participant, and an Artist-At-Sea: the team of the ‘Listening for Cryptic Whales Species’ cruise has come on board for an exciting cruise that focuses on investigating species of whales around the main Hawaiian Islands. This includes species of beaked whales, which have been called “the least understood … Continued

Log Post: Mixing It Up

Kaena Point on the island of Oahu feels like the end of the line for many island residents.

Log Post: The Irons of Loihi: 2+ or 3+ Redox

Metals are present in our ocean, this is nothing new to us. Scientists have been measuring metals for decades and have a fairly good idea of their average concentration at different ocean depths. Some of these metals are very abundant, including ones that belong to the alkali metal and alkaline earth metal group, such as … Continued

Log Post: An Exquisite Dataset

Summarizing a cruise is one of the most difficult duties of a Chief Scientist. I could distill all our work down to a slew of metrics—over 600 chemical analyses for pH, nutrients, and dissolved gases, 312 CTD casts, eight incubator deployments, 325 deck board experiments, and 216 liters of filtered sea water. All told, we … Continued

Log Post: The Night Cast

“Have you ever done a XBT cast?” John Fulmer asks. I have not, but I am excited to learn about another device used for deep-water oceanography. He hands me a cylindrical tube fastened in a holder that looks a bit like a caulk gun. At the point of the cylinder is a small pin that … Continued

Log Post: Chasing Eddies

After a bumpy night of sailing from Kahe (West O‘ahu) to the south of O’ahu and Moloka‘i, avoiding [most of] the roughest seas in the channel, we have arrived at our target eddy of interest – a cyclonic eddy (shown in blue) just North of Maui. We have been tracking this particular eddy for several … Continued