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Dispatch 21 – Land ho, VERTIGO

We have had a rare opportunity these last 4 weeks to sample a remote region of the ocean on board the Research Vessel Revelle. We are fortunate to be heading to shore with 1000’s of samples and hard drives full of scientific data. Over the past few days we’ve met to discuss our results and…

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Dispatch 20 – An Oiler’s Perspective on VERTIGO

Lat: 40° N Long: 177° E Air temp: 21.87 °C, 71.36°F Sea temp: 21.37 °C, 70.47 °F Sky: Sunny, and beautiful! True wind : 9.8 knots Waves: 2-4 feet From port to starboard, forward to aft, ours is a space crammed with machinery. And it’s hot…really hot… …and loud. The work is not always glamorous,…

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Dispatch 19 – Identifying with Deep Sea Creatures

Lat: 40° N Long: 177° E Air temp: 21.87 °C, 71.36°F Sea temp: 21.37 °C, 70.47 °F Sky: Sunny, and beautiful! True wind : 9.8 knots Waves: 2-4 feet One of the most exciting things about collecting animals with the IONESS is that you never know what unusual things it might bring up from the…

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Dispatch 18 – Micro-submarines in the Ocean

Lat: 40° N Long: 177° E Air temp: 21.87 °C, 71.36°F Sea temp: 21.37 °C, 70.47 °F Sky: Sunny, and beautiful! True wind : 9.8 knots Waves: 2-4 feet Figure 1. Interzonal migrating copepods predominating in the subarctic Pacific and its marginal waters. They carry out day-night (diel) and/or seasonal vertical migration down to 2000…

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Dispatch 17 – Next Stop: Honolulu

Lat: 44° N Long: 168° E Air temp: 12.03 °C, 53.65°F Sea temp: 13.0°C, 55.4°F Sky: Foggy, still. True wind : 30-40 knots Waves: 20 feet Heavy seas and 35-45 knot winds kept us off the decks and inside as we counted down the last 24 hours of our VERTIGO cruise (see storm photos). Up…

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Dispatch 16 – Hidden beauty

Lat: 47° N Long: 160° E Air temp: 11.8 °C, 53.3 °F Sea temp: 11.5 °C, 52.8 °F Sky: Foggy, still True wind : 34.4 knots, really windy Waves: Flat, 15-20 feet, got real stormy They say “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”. Firstly, this assumes that you have the appropriate anatomical, biochemical…

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Dispatch 15 – Life Aboard a Research Vessel

Lat: 47° N Long: 160° E Air temp: 12 °C, 53.6 °F Sea temp: 11.5°C, 52.8°F Sky: Foggy True wind : 13.5 knots Waves: Flat, 1-2 feet It’s 5.00am on board the R/V Roger Revelle, 300 nautical miles off the Kamchatka Peninsula. Soon, the sun will rise and once again be obscured by the dense…

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Dispatch 14 – Heavy Breathing

Lat: 47° N Long: 160° E Air temp: 12 °C, 53.6 °F Sea temp: 11.5°C, 52.8°F Sky: Foggy True wind : 13.5 knots Waves: Flat, 1-2 feet The most unexpected thing about the ocean is that it breathes…. heavily. How and why? Well that’s what we’re here to find out. Most of us have some…

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Dispatch 13 – A Needle in the haystack

Lat: 47° N Long: 160° E Air temp: 9.75 °C, 49.6 °F Sea temp: 10.366°C, 50.66°F Sky: Foggy True wind : 9.2 knots Waves: 2-5 feet We have a number of instruments on board the ship which when deployed are tethered to the ship or to surface moorings so we’re able to track them and…

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Dispatch 12 – What lies below? – Episode 2

Lat: 46°N Long: 161°E Air temp: 9.5° C, 49.1° F Sea temp: 10.5° C, 51° F Sky: Foggy True wind : 15 knots Waves: Flat In our earlier note “What lies below?” we pointed out that the strong near surface stratification in this corner of the North Pacific is a key aspect of the environmental…

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Dispatch 11 – How to make a living in the twilight zone

Lat: 46°N Long: 161°E Air temp: 9.5° C, 49.1° F Sea temp: 10.5° C, 51° F Sky: Foggy True wind : 15 knots Waves: Flat We concentrate our studies for this cruise on the mesopelagic zone, between about 100 and 1000 meters below the ocean surface. This zone of the ocean is cold (about 2°C…

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Dispatch 10 – We are out of Points

Lat: 47° 08’N Long: 161°06’E Air temp: 14.0°C, 57.2°F Sea temp: 10.8°C, 51.44°F Sky: Overcast True wind : 19 knots Waves: 13-14 feet The words “We are out of points” was written on a small post-it left by the Captain on my laptop this morning. What this referred to was that we needed to update…

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Dispatch 09 – What grows up doesn’t all go down

Lat: 47° Long: 161° Air temp: 11.1 °C, 52°F Sea temp: 10.34 °C, 50.6°F Sky: Foggy True wind : 16 knots Waves: 1-2 feet Here on the VERTIGO voyage, at a site north-east of Japan, we are studying the mechanisms that control the export of particles to depth. A key component of VERTIGO is to…

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Dispatch 08 – Hunting for marine particles

Lat: 46° 48’N Long: 161° 29’E Air temp: 13.93 °C, 57.1°F Sea temp: 10.8 °C, 51.4°F Sky: Foggy. Still True wind : 16 knots Waves: 2-3 feet VERTIGO is spending a considerable effort, stalking marine particles that are sinking out of the surface ocean to the deep sea. We capture them by placing open tubes…

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Dispatch 07 – What lies below?

Lat: 46° 59’N Long: 160° 58’E Air temp: 11.74 °C, 53.1°F Sea temp: 10.31 °C, 50.6°F Sky: cloudy and foggy True wind : 11.7 knots Waves: 1-2 feet We are holding position here in the far northwest Pacific (47°N, 160°E) under a white dome of sky. Little moves on the sea outside – a feather…

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Dispatch 06 – X marks the spot

Lat: 46°N Long: 160°E Air temp: 8.97 °C, 48.1°F Sea temp: 9.44 °C, 49°F Sky: mostly cloudy, still True wind : 15.1 knots Waves: 2-4 feet Our VERTIGO cruise is focused on “K2” a Japanese time series site in the NW Pacific where we expect to find unusually high particle fluxes. So while it is…

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Dispatch 05 – IONESS a Success

Lat: 47°N Long: 159°E Air temp: 10.009 °C, 50°F Sea temp: 10.83 °C, 51.5°F Sky: mostly cloudy True wind : 25 knots Waves: 5-7 feet Last year we used the MOCNESS (Multiple Opening and Closing Net Environmental Sampling System) on board the R/V Kilo Moana to sample zooplankton at discrete depths. This year, due to…

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Dispatch 04 – Life at sea without email

Lat: 46°N Long: 160°E Air temp: 12.36°C, 54.2°F Sea temp: 11.284°C, 52°F Sky: mostly cloudy and very foggy The red arrow points to circle on this map where R/V Revelle was positioned when this satellite image of ocean color was taken on July 26th. The position of the Japanese time series site K2 is noted…

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Dispatch 03 – Out of the Frying Pan and into the Gyre

After an eventful and anxious few days at port in steamy Yokohama, we were relieved to finally get to sea, with all our equipment and people on board. Now, a nice relaxing 4 day transit to the cooler climes of the western subarctic gyre during which we could finish unpacking, chat with colleagues and plan…

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Dispatch 02 – A Birthday at Sea

Current air temperature: 21.5°C, 70.7°F Wind speed: 6 knots Seas: 3-6 feet I just celebrated my 40th birthday, July 22, at sea! Last time I had a birthday at sea was another significant year, my 21st birthday. That was my very first oceanographic cruise, and I have been on many since. You might wonder, “What…

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Dispatch 01 – July 22, 2005 Vertigo is a GO (again!)

Current air temperature: 21.5°C, 70.7°F Wind speed: 9.5 knots Seas: 3-6 feet How to build a seagoing lab in two days in Yokohama, Japan. That’s the challenge facing the crew of the R/V Revelle and their home Institution at Scripps, and 30 scientists from around the world as we readied for departure from Yokohama a…

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