Well, I have some excellent news that I’ve been keeping under wraps for quite some time since I didn’t want to jinx it. A few weeks ago my boss at HVO mentioned that a scientist friend of his from Woods Hole asked him to join a scientific research cruise to the Loihi Seamount. Since Loihi is definitely something I’d like to research in the future, I promptly freaked out. I demanded to know what his reply was, and he told me that he’d been there, done that. I informed him that he was nuts. To that, he asked if I wanted to go. Cue another freak out.
My amazing boss then put in a good word for me with the scientist, and after an interview and much airline and school wrangling…I’m going on a research cruise! That means that instead of leaving here tomorrow to return to California, next Sunday I fly to Oahu. I’ll meet up with the boat and we’ll depart on Monday, 9/22. We’ll return to port on October 12, and I’ll fly back to California the next day. That’s about three weeks at sea! Since marine geology is what really butters my bread, this is one of my strongest dreams come true. Now, here are the details.
The cruise is actually going out under the auspices of the FeMO Iron Microbial Observatory at Loihi Volcano. The boat is the R/V Thomas G. Thompson, a NOAA-owned and University of Washington-operated vessel. If you click the ship’s link you can see all of the details, including the berthing setup. I’ll be in berth #35! Excitement. If you read the FeMO link, you know that they primarily study biology. I will most likely help out with that, but I’m there for an experiment in sampling volcanic glasses. My boss on the ship is from WHOI, as I mentioned before. That’s not all of the awesomeness, oh no. It gets better.
I assume most of the people who read this blog have watched the Discovery Channel at some point. Many of you may have heard of the ROV Jason. I certainly had, and using ROV and submersibles to do research was another of my life’s goals. You can guess where I’m going with this, can’t you? Jason will be on board, and we’re using him to collect the samples. Absolutely incredible. Words just can’t do justice to how amazing this whole summer has been (and continues to be).
I think this is an appropriate time to thank the people who’ve made it all possible. Thank you to my parents, for obvious reasons, and because they’re the best parents anyone could ever have. They gave me chemistry sets and helped me with science fair projects since as early as I can remember. Thank you to my professors at California State University – Los Angeles, and in particular Dr. Kim Bishop. They are magnanimous enough to allow me to make up the coursework I’ll miss while on the cruise, and Dr. Bishop is taking over my teaching duties while I am gone. Thank you to everyone who reads this journal, whether I know you in real life or not. You have made documenting this journey of a lifetime a true pleasure. If you have specific questions you’d like answered, please leave them in the comments of this post. It’s often hard for me to go back and pick the questions out from the comments, so let me know what you’d like answered!
Ok, just so this post isn’t all texts n’ links, here’s a picture of the R/V Thompson!
VolcanoSummer 