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...
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