Listening… and hearing!

Crisis avoided. I dropped my beloved iPod behind a pretty inaccessible staircase late last night. I was walking upstairs with the iPod hanging loosely in a pocket on the left arm of my fleece. My hands became tangled in my headphones and ripped the iPod out, sending it tumbling. It fell about 10 feet so not only was I worried about retrieving it, but also worried about it working again. You don’t know how vital music is until you are miles from land, in the middle of nowhere, doing monotonous lab tasks all day. Really. We’re not even halfway through the cruise. I.would.have.suffered.

But thankfully a crew member was able to rescue it this morning and when I came up to the lab, it was waiting for me! And it works! I will be extremely careful around those stairs now. And really cherish the music.

It was humorous that the entire crew knew about my mishap by lunchtime. I received several questions about it throughout the day. We have a great crew and I’m glad I gave them something new to talk about. ☺

Meanwhile, my good karma hasn’t spread to one of the science teams (yet). They sent down a sediment trap to 4000m below the surface early this morning and haven’t heard a response from it since about 3000m. It reminds me of the engineers and scientists at Mission Control, waiting for the ‘ping’ from a Mars lander, notifying the team of its arrival on the surface. The chief scientists are shifting around plans for the day to really try and send an abort signal down there to release the trap so we can move onward. The trap was supposed to be down at the sea floor for a year, but at this point, they just want it back.

... They just head it! The room erupted with shouts, just like I witnessed once at the University of Arizona over receiving science data from Phoenix, a Mars lander. Everyone is smiles, now discussing the next move: to leave it down there or not? I believe the consensus is that it’s good down there, that the communication box up here was just too weak. So we’re steaming back to the station.

There are so many things to still write about here: relaxing on the bow in the sun, watching the deep blue waves, wind whipping my hair; climbing up on the bow at night to see a different and illuminated night sky (we’re in the Southern Hemisphere); watching the bioluminescence sparkle as the ship cuts through the water at night… I’ll have to write more about these (and other details of life here) later. I don’t want this post to get too long. But there is so much to tell!

Also, you can read about our cruise from crew member Katie’s and grad student Jeremy’s perspectives on Scientific American’s website: http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/expeditions/

Hope you all are well!