I'm ok

There was an 8.8 magnitude earthquake near Santiago, Chile this morning that had my family worried due to the news of tsunami concerns.

We're all OK and I'm safer at sea. Why? Well, here's a quick lesson in how tsunamis work, thanks to wikipedia:

"While everyday wind waves have a wavelength (from crest to crest) of about 100 metres (330 ft) and a height of roughly 2 metres (6.6 ft), a tsunami in the **deep ocean** (where we are) has a wavelength of about 200 kilometres (120 mi). Such a wave travels at well over 800 kilometres per hour (500 mph), but due to the enormous wavelength the wave oscillation at any given point takes 20 or 30 minutes to complete a cycle and has an amplitude of only about 1 metre (3.3 ft).[10] This makes tsunamis difficult to detect over deep water. **Ships rarely notice their passage.**

As the tsunami approaches the coast and the waters become shallow, wave shoaling compresses the wave and its velocity slows below 80 kilometres per hour (50 mph). Its wavelength diminishes to less than 20 kilometres (12 mi) and its amplitude grows enormously, producing a distinctly visible wave. Since the wave still has such a long
wavelength, the tsunami may take minutes to reach full height. Except for the very largest tsunamis, the approaching wave does not break (like a surf break), but rather appears like a fast moving tidal bore. Open bays and coastlines adjacent to very deep water may shape the tsunami further into a step-like wave with a steep-breaking front."

In sum, the energy would have passed underneath us and would have appeared to us much like a normal wave.

No pirate attack.

We’ve successfully evaded pirates.

PIRATES?! What?! Yes, pirates.

In order to bring the crew member back to safety, we had to go to an old port in Callao, Peru. Apparently, there are quite a few shanty towns near the port and locals will hop on ships and raid them for food, etc. There were some recent raids, so the crew took extra precautions and we were on lockdown from 5:30 until we cleared the port last night.

However, preparations for the port left us feeling a bit agitated, but also humored us. You see, our ship has no guns. Our protection? Fire hoses.

A conversation up on the bow went something like this:
Ronnie: (walking by Julie, Shannon, and Allen with an axe in his hand) Hello.
Shannon: Getting ready for the pirates?
Ronnie: We have to lock all of these up, actually. We're only using the fire hoses. That's a fight we're going to win - fire hoses vs. guns.
All: (laugh)
Ronnie: But we do have enough PVC to make a spud gun!
Shannon: So we'll defend the ship with water and potatoes?
Ronnie: Pirates: Ahhh!! I'm all wet and potatoey! Screw this! I don't want to mess with these Americans!
Allen: That's why they call them "freedom fries."

The ill crew member was placed in the hands of the Peruvian Navy and has since been cleared to fly back to the states where he can get medical care.

Operations Suspended

We are currently en route to Peru. A crew member is getting off the boat due to medical reasons so we have a 60 hour transit there and back out to sea. It's going to be so sad to see land only to move away from it again! :( And it turns out we might be spending an extra day at sea because of this, so no land for my birthday. Sad face.

But I do hope the crew member gets home safely and is ok. We will still get two stations in before we're done since we are ahead of schedule. And it's nice to have the time off to catch up on data analysis and sleep.

Oh, wonderful sleep.

Animal update: There were whales off the port side today, but too far away to really see. I saw a shark the other night. It was just a big gray moving blob in the water, but it was pretty large.

That's about it for now!

Home stretch?

I haven’t posted in a while since things have been so busy and tired. If I’m not collecting samples, I’m filtering, running the samples, helping others with random tasks, or analyzing data (on “off” days). And I’m definitely not as busy as others seem to be! I’m not sure how some people are still awake and haven’t gotten sick!

Tonight we played “Settlers of Catan” and I went up to the bow to check out the sky. It was a bit treacherous getting up there in the dark with the ship rocking and really cruising (+ 12 knots). The wind was also blowing fairly hard so that added to the danger. We saw some waves splash into the starboard side and decided to head back in on the port side to avoid the slick walkway. It’s the first time I’ve seen a wave splash up that far on the ship!

I haven’t been sleeping well due to a combination of the mattress, a busy mind, and waking up constantly. I’m excited for land and a large, comfy bed. Oh, how I cannot wait for the luxuries of land. And home.

Everyone on board has hit that point of “getting over” the ocean within the past few days and wanting land again. 10 more days… and 10 more days of being 24! Ahh! Land will be a pretty great birthday present.

Heading East

Just when I thought I’d never feel sea-sick again, we started moving East, into the swell and back towards Peru/Chile. The acupressure bracelets are back on and I just stuck a piece of ginger gum in my mouth. I’ll go down for some ginger cookies in a moment. So the boat is now rocking front to back and side to side instead of just side to side. Blaaaahhh…. I do wish there was more pop hanging out in the fridge. We also have a bit of a balance issue that they are trying to fix. So that is certainly not helping the situation.

We had a cast for samples at 5:30AM this morning. When we’re on a station, we often sample at all hours of the night. Usually there is a pretty good distribution of early mornings/late nights, but some people are stuck with bad sampling times and long filtering sessions following the return of the bottles. I returned to my room around 7:30 and plopped down for a nap. I forgot we had a safety drill today and was woken at 10AM to an alarm and intercom message. Oops! But there were about 5 others who arrived to the main lab with groggy expressions.

I watched the retrieval of the shallow traps from this station in the early afternoon. It was nice to explore the upper decks of the boat and catch some sun. I then filtered samples and prepped some slides for someone at USC. I wish I could look at the slides here and see the little critters!

Today was Mardi Gras, so there was some creole-inspired cuisine tonight for dinner.

We booked a tour of Lauca National Park (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauca_National_Park) – so excited! I hope we see lots of llamas and other camelids!! :-D And volcanoes! I’m getting pretty pumped for touring northern Chile and southern Peru!

Hope you are having a great day wherever you are in the USA!

Where we are.

The Atlantis (our ship) is along the red line.

"Sampling the ocean for particulate matter... one liter at a time." – Allen Milligan, OSU

Out here, the ocean is about 4000m deep. That’s over 13,000 ft all covered in water! So just think of how little we are actually sampling: in 1 cubic mile, there are 1.1 x 10^12 gallons of water, or 4.16 x 10^12 liters of water. Which means that in a typical CTD cast, we sample 240 liters, so we are sampling 5.76 x 10^-9 % (or 0.00000000576%!!!) of the water in 1 cubic mile. And that’s just a cubic mile of the ocean… and the ocean is much larger than that. It’s crazy to think about how little we are actually getting at to try and describe this HUGE system.
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In other news….

Does anyone want to join me down here March 5-19 for traveling in Peru? I'd be up for whatever and I'm leaving S. America from Cuzco on the 19th. Let me know!
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We're at 10S, 100W now, something like more than 1000 miles away from the Chilean coast. The water has transitioned in color to a grayish-blue as more life has appeared. We've been finding a lot of interesting macroscopic things in the plankton tows and I’m actually seeing more of a color on my filters, meaning I'm gathering more chlorophyll on the filter! Hooray! We expected this because we are in warmer waters. This morning around 6AM when I was helping grab samples, there were many creamy orange squid swimming around the boat. It’s crazy to see those things! Mmm, calamari!
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Go USA! We were already up to 4 medals this morning. It's hard to believe those are going on... We're so separated from the world out here sometimes. It's been weird not being able to watch the news and keep tabs on current events regularly.
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Sometime within the past few days I gained my sea legs. I don't know when or how, but suddenly, I ceased noticing the movement of the boat. I don't need to wear the accupressure bracelets any longer and don't feel the least bit sick at all.

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Some people have asked about the food here. OMG, let me tell you: I am seriously going to gain a few pounds during this cruise. The cooks are AMAZING and spoil us with all sorts of perfectly-spiced and prepared meals AND desserts. Here is a sample: creamy gouda polenta, fresh-baked French bread, chicken cordon bleu, blueberry cobbler, creamy asparagus soup, spinach noodles with walnuts and ricotta, and a cream puff filled with tapioca pudding. They’ve also prepared Indian and Thai food, homemade pizza, and always prepare veggies in a deliciously edible form.
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Ok, signing out! Happy Valentine’s Day!