A Total Eclipse of the Parts .. .. .. .. and the mysterious disappearance of Sir Pings-alot.

Turnaround, every now and then turnaround…

Hi – I’m Joe Warren, the Chief Scientist on this research cruise. While that may sound like a fun job title, what it really means is a lot of spreadsheets, emails, and phone calls trying to organize all the different parts of this research trip. And not that much sleep during the cruise. Chief Scientist tasks range from: making sure the vessel from the University of Rhode Island can do everything we need to accomplish for our scientific mission ship from Rhode Island; getting all of the science party (and our gear) from Canada, New York, New Hampshire, Florida, DC, and Chicago to Puerto Rico where we boarded the ship; planning out how many days/hours we need at each site to accomplish all our task and make sure we get back to the dock on time so we can get off the boat and the next research cruise can get onboard and on with their science (and lots and lots of paperwork).

the crew — Figure 1. The ADEON team aboard the Research Vessel Endeavor as we head out to sea.

This is the first Turnaround cruise for our ADEON project. In November of 2017, we deployed landers at 7 sites and this trip is to recover them, take the data off the instruments, put new batteries on, remove corrosion, and then drop them back down again to record data for the next 6 months. By the time this post goes online, we should have completed 2 of the 7 sites and be mid-way through our 3rd. While I was trying to come up with some text for this blog post (as everybody else has done a good job of covering the basics of the cruise), I remembered there was a song (Total Eclipse of the Heart by Bonnie Tyler) that does a pretty good job of describing some aspects of life at sea (and in particular waiting to see if an instrument that you put 100s of meters below the sea surface six months ago is going to come back up when it should).

Turnaround, every now and then I get a little bit lonely

And you're never coming round

Turnaround, every now and then I get a little bit tired

Of listening to the sound of my tears

Turnaround, every now and then I get a little bit nervous

That the best of all the years have gone by

Turnaround, every now and then I get a little bit terrified

Thankfully, I think the only tears we’ve had so far have been from laughter – there were a lot of card/board games played during our 3 day transit to our first station. Everybody from the ship’s crew, to the veteran ADEON members, to our newest and greenest recruits, has been doing a good job of helping us get our science done in the middle of the ocean.

And the sunrises are amazingly pretty out here (one benefit of being on night watch)…

-Joe

p.s. If anybody has seen a small plastic squeaky pig (with a bunch of research cruises written on his back), please let me know. I seem to have lost my lab mascot!

the pig — Figure 2. The ALES lab mascot answers to the name Sir Pings-a-lot. He enjoys sunsets, fisheries acoustics, and roaming about research vessels. He does not always wear his spectacles (much like Clark Kent).