Chikyu cruise, the end

After 10 days of work at sea and the last dive of the ROV yesterday night until this morning, we headed back to Okinawa today and we will disembark tomorrow morning in Nakagusku port.

Actually now is almost the busiest time of the cruise as everybody needs to pack, clean, prepare the samples for shipping and finish writing the cruise report.
Despite the several technical problems we encountered, we could still get quite some work done. For us, from now on, the "real" work will start as all the data and samples we obtained now will need to be analysed and published. So we all have many hours in the lab or sitting in front of our computers awaiting. But still when doing the boring job it will be nice to remember the nice times of this cruise.

The ROV about the enter the water 

for his last dive of the cruise.

Cape Hedo, in Okinawa Island viewed from the helipad. 

Actually as everything on this ship, the helipad is pretty big as it can receive helicopters carrying up to 35 people when it is necessary to change the crew at sea. People even use it to run around, when they prefer to enjoy fresh air rather than the gym.

And as comfortable as this ship is, we are all looking forward to find back our homes and loved ones.

Chikyu cruise, day 10

The cruise is slowly finishing with the last core being brought back on deck at the moment, and tomorrow we will head back to Okinawa. But today I will tell you more about the life onboard (and make you think that scientists are just spending their time doing nothing and having fun).
Basically the Chikyu is extremely comfortable and absolutely everything is made so you only need to care about your research. Each room has its own toilet and shower. They have bunk beds but during this cruise and because there is lots of space on the ship, we can all have single cabins. Everyday, someone comes to change your towels and make your bed. Like in a hotel!

 My cabin

Even with a small desk space

Initially I felt this is a bit too much, but then I realised that actually scientists on board are a minority. But if you look at the crew and technicians on board, well those guys are doing the real tough job, moving cranes and steel pipes around, fixing and unfixing anything and everything. And all this wearing full protective equipment outside with 30 degrees in any weather. "Full protective equipment" is a really thick suit with long sleeves, reinforced shoes, helmet and glasses. Scientists need to wear that too when going outside, and I can tell you than it only takes a few minutes to be drenched in sweat with this portable sauna. Then if you consider that most cruises are 24h/7 days a week work for 2 months, you can imagine that a freshly made bed helps the crew to relax after a 12h shift and keep being fully efficient for the whole cruise.

So let’s continue the tour of the life on board, not only everyday you get fresh towels, but also you don’t need to worry about your laundry, each cabin has laundry bags, you simply put the laundry bag with your dirty clothes in front of the door. A few hours later, they are magically back in front of your room washed and neatly folded.

I already spoke about the food, and after 10 days, I am still not fed up of the food on board because not every day, but every meal is different with a mix of western food, ethnic food from wherever, and Japanese food.

Did I already mention that the food is really good?

 

After dinner, it is nice to socialise a bit playing with colleagues if we have a bit of time.

If you are more of the reading type, there is a big choice 

of books and manga both in Japanese and English 

 

But after all this food, the gym is an essential place unless we aim at a sumo career back on land.

As you can see the gym is pretty well equipped 

But then after a long day working, hard workout at the gym, a shower is very welcome...

Or what about a sauna first?

And after a sauna, of course a bath is great...

...but a jacuzzi is even better. 

And after all this, you are just perfectly relax to sleep well and deep until your next shift!

P.S. It may not look like when reading this blog, but actually for the essential part of the day we are working, and often we are just too tired to enjoy half of those things... I even started to skip some meals, and that means a lot!

P.P.S. The adventures are not finished as while writing this blog, the core broke (I guess that fits into "technical problem") and now the ROV (who works for once!) is trying to look for it...

Chikyu cruise, day 9

Today the first core was made, not my little sediment push cores of a few centimetres, this time they are making a “real” one, going down 100 m or more into the rock. People were quite excited.

However, the area is very restricted for security reasons.

 

 

The first person to go near the core needs to wear full oxygen mask to check the level of toxic gases (radioactivity was measured directly at the bottom before coring, because hydrothermal vents have often quite some natural radioactivity). Then when he gives the ok sign, then other people can approach and start processing the core.

This is the part that actually cores into the rock. 

It is not very sharp but it is very efficient.

Then the core is cut into smaller section, more easy to process.

After this step the core will be cut into two parts, one part will be untouched and kept a reference, and the scientists will work on the other half. Tomorrow I will try to sneak into the lab and take a few pictures of the core processing. But only if I am not too seasick as the swell of the typhoon number 10 is slowly reaching us, and the captain plans that tomorrow afternoon will be some serious shaking... 

 

In the meantime, I think I should get some food into my belly to keep it stable in the rough sea...

Chikyu cruise, days 3,4,5 ... 8

Well so much for updating the blog everyday...

Overall it is a great experience to be on such a ship, a certainly quite a unique one for a biologist. Maybe, like me, when you were small and you had your small shovel in the hand, you were dreaming of digging a hole so deep you could reach the magma (usually this step comes after an adult explains you that you cannot dig your hole until you reach the other end of the planet because there is some very hot magma inside the earth). Well now I am on a ship that can do exactly that (well at least in theory as there are still a few technical problems). In theory, this ship can reach the inside of the Earth that is 10 km under. So for example, if the water is 1000 m deep, then it can dig a hole 9 km into the sea bottom!

The derrick on the ship reaches the 

height of 130 m above the sea.

In this cruise we do not go too several kilometers below seafloor but we try to make several holes in an hydrothermal vent field (like a field of hot water springs) to understand better how things work inside of the rocks. Instead of going deep, we put some very sensitive sensors on the drilling head to measure many parameters directly while drilling. But because those sensors are fragile, if the temperature is too high we need to stop drilling.
So far despite the troubles with the ROV, we could drill a few holes, and I could even get some samples for my research, so from now on, whatever happens, at least I will not come back with empty hands.
I really appreciate those samples because it is actually really not that easy to manipulate a ROV. I like to imagine that the ROVs we use are some kind of mini ancestral deep-sea Goldorak (which I just learned from Wikipedia that it is the French name of "ＵＦＯロボ グレンダイザー") but clearly the anime robot looked easier to manipulate.
As the pilots are not used to make this kind of sampling, it is quite an adventure. Especially when we find sediments, often it is more sand than some sticky mud, so if the cores are a bit shaken, then very easily all the sediments fall from the core and we can start again. As all of this takes a lot of times, the geologists and other researchers do not like so much our ROV operation as they feel it is a waste of time and they would rather drill more holes. But with many scientists on board it is all about compromises to make everybody happy.

As I said in the previous post, work is 

done 24h/24h on board

So scientists also need to be on duty 

24h/24h in case samples or data arrive.

But now my shift is over and it is time to go the gym and then to go to bed...

Field survey in Kanagawa

While Frederic is enjoying his cruise, I went out to my field survey in Kanagawa.
Unfortunately, I was so busy diving, collecting, and fixing specimens... had no time to take photos.
Anyways, the survey went well!
To proove that the place was nice, I paste a photo taken last time.

Beautiful sunset with Mt. Fuji.

Chikyu cruise, day 2

As it happens too often in deep-sea research, today’s theme was “technical problems” (but fortunately nothing big). A test dive for the ROV (Remotely Operated Vehicle) was planned between 2h30 and 5h30 in the morning. During this dive I hoped we could get some extra sediments for my research. Unfortunately when I arrived in the lab at 5h, the only thing waiting for me was the information that the dive was cancelled due to “technical problems”.

 The ROV being fixed...

Well in this case, there is not much else to do than go to the breakfast and start an early day of computer work hoping the ROV will get fixed soon. Because we are on a really tight schedule for the drilling (the main objective of this cruise), we decided to skip the test dive and prepare for drilling. And guess what, after a first preparation dive there was a… “technical problem”. However, things now seems fixed as at the time I am writing this blog, the ROV is back down and the driller is now looking where they want to drill. I have no idea about drilling, but it looks either quite difficult to aim, or they are very picky on the location, but at least something is going on.

We can follow the operation "live" from the office room where we spend most of our time when not busy with samples or preparation of the sampling.

As I said previously, when you wake up before 5h00 to just realise that you could have actually slept longer, going for breakfast is a good way to at least get some kind of elementary satisfaction. And on the Chikyu, the meals are great. Because the work is going on 24/24 there are 4 meal times per day (5h-7h, 11h-13h, 17h-19h and 23h-01h). And as there are many people working on this ship, it is buffet style! And quite international food to accommodate the tastes the crew coming from many different countries. Actually it is very different from the other Japanese research ships because here the main language is English among the crew (and I really appreciate that).

So let's see what the food looks like...

Let's start by a bit of salad

Then a bit of meat or fish depending how hard was your work. On a ship, often scientists need to be careful, because meals are made for the crew and technicians who do physically hard work and need lots of calories...

The choice of side dishes is as good as in a nice hotel!

Actually, here the diner time of someone is the breakfast time of someone else, so at any time you also have a choice of bread, cereals and yoghurt for those who start their shift.

For me, maybe the most dangerous is this shelf with a lot of nice cakes! 

(Actually for me absolutely all this food is dangerous as I want to try everything)

And in case you had the mental strength to ignore the dessert shelf, this self service ice cream will break your last bit of resistance. But it really is good ice cream!

Well actually now it is meal time! So time for me to stop writing and refill all the calories I burned while writing this blog. And maybe tomorrow I should introduce you to the gym we have on board...

Chikyu cruise day 1

Today I boarded on the Research vessel Chikyu for a drilling cruise to my hydrothermal vent site. It is quite rare for biologists to board on this drilling ship because its purpose is mainly… drilling! And this activity interests mainly geologists. But in this cruise, before the drilling we will make a biological survey and now I discovered this very fancy ship and I will try to share my experience in the next posts.
So let’s start by the beginning: what is the Chikyu? Simply it is a gigantic ship (over 200 m long) made for drilling deep into the seafloor.

Because the ship is so big, it could not enter in the port in Nago, so we had to use a small tugboat to reach it.

From far it does not look so big...

But getting closer then we realise it is a BIG ship...

To give an idea of the size, the arrow points at one person standing on the helipad

In the coming days, I will try to find a few minutes to show you the inside of this unique ship and our research progress...