My name is Madison Alstede. I’m originally from West Springfield, MA and I’m currently going into my senior year at the University of New Hampshire studying Earth Sciences with a concentration in Oceanography. I’m very excited to be joining the ADEON crew on this leg of their cruise and broadening my oceanographic experience.

One of the more interesting occurrences along the transit was passing over the Puerto Rico trench, which contains the deepest point in the Atlantic Ocean. The idea that we were passing over water more than 8,000 meters deep was definitely a thrill!

Hi, my name is Jenn Conyers. I’m an undergraduate ocean engineering student at UNH from Franklin, MA. I’m here helping the research team, which should be very interesting because I’ve never spent more than an afternoon out at sea. Living on a boat is a very strange but exciting at the same time. The boat is constantly rocking back and forth which can make it difficult to walk down hallways but is nice when you are trying to fall asleep. This afternoon some of the scientists lost the battle to the drowsiness side effect of the sea sickness medicine and had to take a quick recovery nap.

My name is Cassie Fries, and we just left port on the RV Endeavor, cruise EN615. Currently, you can still see a faint outline of San Juan, and this will be the last time we see land for the next three weeks. It's super important for us to make sure everything is tied down before we set sail so that nothing moves even if we hit rough seas. Lots of knot tying is involved, and I got lucky enough to learn a new knot. With all the equipment we have, having it secured is the most important thing.

Preparations for ADEON Cruise 2 are in full swing. In December of 2017, ADEON Cruise 1 deployed 7 ocean bottom landers off the Outer Continental Shelf from Florida up to Virginia. Our goal for this cruise is to retrieve all 7 landers, download data, and redeploy; conduct fine-scale acoustic surveys and net tows, and collect all the necessary metadata to fully interpret both the vessel and lander acoustic time series.

Written by Jennifer Miksis-Olds. In about an hour, the R/V Neil Armstrong will pull into port in Woods Hole, MA. Almost 4 weeks ago, we left Woods Hole with a vessel laden down with equipment, an ambitious science agenda, and some anxiety about how we would all fare in inclement weather or rough seas. We return to the dock with a sense of victory; we accomplished more than expected in data collection, there were no injuries or illness (besides some seasickness), we participated in recovering an autonomous sailboat lost at sea, and we squeezed in a good amount of fun.

Written by Stephen Milea. As the cruise draws to a close, we have begun to take the time to reflect upon what we have done and how we can improve for next time.  We have discussed changes to be made in certain protocols to ensure that our data will be organized and our equipment maintained.  After being on the night shift for the past three weeks, it has been nice to be awake during the day and to see the sun.  It has also been nice to see our friends on the day shift for more than a few minutes.

Written by Hilary Kates-Varghese, UNH graduate student in Oceanography. There were two goals the Chief Scientist stated to us at the beginning of the cruise 1-get the science done and 2-have fun. I think we have successfully met those goals. Today sort of has the feel of the last day of summer camp. Three and a half weeks ago, I remember walking around the lab, and no one was hanging out, everyone scattered to their rooms when they didn’t have a formal assignment. Now, everyone is in the lab, reminiscing about this cruise and excitedly discussing plans for the next one. At this point, we have finished all the field work for this cruise and are systematically compiling all the data--crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s.

Written by Chief Scientist, Joe Warren of Stony Brook University. Well, the cruise is wrapping up as we've now redeployed our last bottom lander and are trying to get a few more environmental samples before we have to start heading North back to Woods Hole.