M.E.S.H. Day 1 : 27-03-2015

Even when we are not at sea collecting data and geological samples we are a busy team. We need to make sure that the science team has everything because there are no stores in the middle of the ocean! The science team also needs to communicate with the expedition leaders of the remotely operated vehicle (ROV) Jason, and autonomous vehicle (AV) Sentry to make sure that the vehicles are properly equipped to do research. Today we planned out the basket arrangement on the ROV Jason (photo with the nets). This basket will contain all the tools we need to sample the volcanic rocks, take the temperature of the seafloor and measure the chemistry of the water. We have quite a few tools at our disposal: a slurp sampler – kind on like a submarine vacuum cleaner, scoops and pushcorers (check out the photos). There’s a lot of gear to fit in a 2 x 1 metre area!

We also loaded the equipment today that will collect cylinders of volcanic material from the seafloor. These are called ‘gravity corers’. Basically the way this equipment works is that a very heavy empty steel rod gets dropped off the ship and gets driven into the seafloor. The seafloor sediments, volcanic ash, sand and mud and ooze, are then trapped in the cylinder and get hoisted back to the ship. The ash (particles erupted from volcanoes that are less than 2 mm in diameter) from our eruption should be present in this cylinder. The thickness of the ash in the cylinder at different points around the volcano will help us to estimate how much volume of volcanic material was erupted in 2012. The answer to the question of the day is nine.