That is a great question, Jane, and one that even I didn’t know the answer to until two days ago. I had a good idea, but you never know until you are there. Living onboard a research vessel is a little bit like being away at summer camp. When I arrived, I only knew my colleagues from the University of Delaware. Instantly, I was meeting all of these new people from around the country and world with whom I’d be living for a month. There are 55 people on board the ship including Alvin crew, Atlantis crew, and scientists. As far as the actual ship goes, we have everything that a house would have and everything that a science lab would have. There are cabins, heads (bathrooms), scientific labs, computer labs, the bridge (where they drive the boat), exercise rooms, lots of stuff. We have a galley, which is what the kitchen is called onboard a ship. All of the meals are delicious and are served at the same time every day. Life on the ship is very structured. Even though it is a sizeable ship, the rooms are all fairly small. Everyone has a cabin that they share with one or two other people. The ship is so large that I keep getting lost trying to find my way around. The hallways are very narrow and you bump into people a lot. Because the ship is rocking back and forth, things fall down a lot and doors slam if you don’t remember to secure them. The stairwells are extremely steep so you always have to hold onto the rails even when the ship is at the dock. For entertainment, we have a ping-pong table, a VCR and DVD player, a library, workout equipment, and lots of other people with whom to chat. Even with all of those to pass our time, we still spend most of our time working. A 24-day cruise may seem like a long time, but it’s the only 24 days out of the whole year when we can do the work that we are out here to do, so we have a lot to cram into that time. But to answer your question in one word, fantastic!

Hi Kaitlyn! Like you I have always wanted to be a marine biologist. When I was a little kid, I lived in a house right on a river and spent all of my time exploring the beach and fishing and collecting things. My mom used to embarrass me by telling people how I used get dead crabs from the beach and then hide them in our playroom! I love being a marine biologist. I get to tromp around the water and learn things about really neat animals. I’ll be honest with you – sometimes it’s kinda boring. There is often a lot of time spent waiting for an experiment to run or fixing things that aren’t working. I like trying to figure things out though. Depending on the focus of your research, you may have to travel quite a bit, in which case it is difficult to be away from home so frequently. My favorite part, aside from spending time on boats or out in the field, is when something that you have been working on for a really long time, like an experiment works for the first time. When I get the results that I was hoping for, it is such a thrill! It’s a lot of hard work to be a marine biologist and the money isn’t always too great. If you love the ocean and the animals, you should do it!.

Hello, Heather and Megan! In the deep sea, the pressure is much higher than that at the surface. Pressure is measured in atmospheres. At sea level, the pressure is one atmosphere. The deeper you go down into the ocean, the more atmospheres of pressure there are acting on you. Pressure increases by one atmosphere every ten meters. So by the time you are down at the site of the vents, the pressure is tremendously higher than at surface. The increase in pressure affects the cells of an organism. This is important because the cells are the location of important enzymes and metabolic processes. Remember that while cells are able to communicate with the extracellular environment, or the area around the cell, their membranes are made so that most things cannot leave or enter the cell randomly. Organisms that live in the deep sea have evolved special mechanisms that allow them to live in high-pressure environments. Such adaptations to this environment include: membranes that are tightly packed, different gas exchange mechanisms and different enzymes. Remember that the other extreme condition that organisms in the deep sea have to adapt to is low temperature. Sometimes adaptations allow the animals to deal with both factors.

Hi, Jessica! I love learning about science, and I hope you do too. It's so important to our lives and fascinating, as you can see from our expedition. Keep following along with us on the Web site, and you'll see how "deep" our studies go! Thanks for your questions.

I'll be going on my first Alvin dive soon, so stay tuned. I'll be writing a journal to tell you all about it.

Hi, Zach — Sorry it took me a while to get back to you. The temperature of the deep ocean is pretty cold, not much above freezing. The pressure where we will be diving (over a mile down) is more than 250 times what we feel on land — or on the ocean surface, in my case!

The ocean and sky are spectacular out here. Diving in the sub is a little scary, but I really want to do it. It will be so exciting!

There are two ways that we have water onboard. We have a reverse osmosis system, much like cities and towns. This just takes in saltwater from the ocean and turns it into freshwater. We also have an evaporator that works basically like a teakettle. They take heat from the engines and they run that heat into water to heat the water, but it won't heat it to boiling. They put it in a vaccuum, so it boils at a much lower temperature. This is the water that is fed into the Milleque water systems in the lab since it needs to be super-purified. This way those systems are purifying water that has already been slightly purified. As for body waste, there is a sewage treatment plant onboard that treats the sewage, which is then released. Once we are on station we are planning on doing a tour of the engine room for the Web site, so stay tuned!

My favorite part of my job is getting to work in the lab and in the field. I work on horseshoe crabs normally and the other day I got to bleed a crab (without hurting it) — it was the coolest thing! The worst part is when an experiment isn't working despite changing everything you can think of. It gets really, really frustrating. My favorite part of being on the ship is feeling like I'm really a part of the ocean. It's a very powerful feeling to be out at sea. The worst part of being out here is missing my friends and family. Other than that, I love it!

That is an excellent question. The crew of the ship and the crew of Alvin have tremendous amounts of experience in every situation possible. Alvin is checked thoroughly every day and any small problem that is found is fixed. In case of an emergency in Alvin when it is on a dive, the sphere pops out of the rest of the sub so the pilot and two observers can be safely returned to the surface. There is really no way anyone can get stuck down there.

There are 23 scientists on Atlantis for this leg. Everyone is studying different aspects of the vent systems. Remember that much of the biology, chemistry, and ecology of the vent systems is largely unknown. It is a relatively new science. Some folks onboard are hoping to just find out something about what they are working on, while others have specific questions. One thing that is really cool, I think, is that some of the scientists here are going to try to extract proteins from some of the animals in the vents that can withstand such high temperature in hopes to be able to use them to fight cancer and other diseases. There's all kinds of discoveries that are possible down there, including ones we couldn't even imagine. That's why this is such exciting stuff! For more specific answers, check out the biography section of the Web site and see what each scientist is specifically working on.

It's interesting, unique, and fun. It's important to science and can yield useful information that benefit science and society — and its cool.

Hello, Sarah — We have a foosball table set up in the main lab and can play when we aren't working. It puts a new challenge on the game. When the ship rocks with the waves, the ball tends to go where you don't want it to go. We end up laughing too much to concentrate on who's winning.

Well Lindsey, I really enjoy being a marine scientist. I feel that my work contributes to the scientific world on a broad scale. I get to explore the ocean and participate in adventures that few people ever will. Have funon the phone call!

Hi, Lindsey — Aside from the entanglement problem Titantic would present, it happens to be a whole ocean away from where we are. It's on the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean. We are in the Pacific Ocean currently off of the coast of Mexico and headed for our dive station at 9° N, 104° West. Check out our dive location under "Mission and Crew" on this Web site. You might also want to visit your library and do some research on Titanic and its exact location.

Hi, Bettina! So far we have not found anything because we're not quite at the dive site. But if you check out the daily log after Sunday, you'll read all about it. Enjoy!

I'll have to get back to you on this one, I haven't had the pleasure of diving in the submersible yet. Check back in a few weeks and I'll be sure to give you the entire scoop about the bottom of the ocean.

Well, I haven't gotten to go down in Alvin yet, but I did have my orientation last night so I got to sit in it and check it out. It was AWESOME!! And all of my friends who have been down in the sub love it and say it is the coolest thing they have ever done.

Hi, Jonathan! — The Pompeii worm is in the Animal Kingdom. It's an annelid and a polychaete.

Hi Laurie, Well, whales are not like humans. We don't know what types of feelings they really have, if any. We do know that some types of whales travel in pods. Usually, there are pods of males and pods of females and calves (babies). The pods come together during mating season. Some whales, however, travel by themselves or maybe in pairs. So some whales do travel together, but whether or not they miss their family members we'll never really know unless we can learn to speak their language!

Hello, Josh — Well, since you need Atlantis to have Alvin, it is all kinda clumped together. So it costs about $30,000 – $40,000 to run Atlantis each day.

Good question, Katelynn! The tubeworm has a gut and a mouth for a very short time when it is young. This allows bacteria from the surrounding environment to enter the tubeworm. Quickly though, the stomach (gut) and the mouth disappear and the tubeworm gets its food from the bacteria. This type of relationship is called a symbiosis, which literally means "living together." There are a few types of symbioses, commensalism, parasitism, and mutualism. The difference between them is whether both partners are affected positively, both negatively, one positively and one negatively, or one not at all. The bacteria in the tubeworm convert chemicals spewing out of the vents into food for the worm. The worm doesn't have to chew anything or store anything this way; it just takes food from the bacteria. The food is in chemical form so it just gets taken up. Symbiosis is actually an area of biology that has always fascinated me. If this sounds interesting to you, you should do some research or reading on it to learn more because it's really pretty cool and includes all kinds of organisms including crabs, plants, bacteria, fungi, corals — all kinds of things.

Hi Sam — Well, I personally have not gotten to head down in Alvin yet, but I've heard lots of stories from the folks on Atlantis since I've been here. It is pretty much supposed to be just incredible. You see animals that you have never seen before and it's dark and cold and you're in this tiny little sub with two other people practically lying on top of each other cause it's so small. After my dive I will be sure to post a long daily log about what it is like, so stay tuned!! You have a good day too!

Hydrothermal vents occur where two tectonic plates meet. The heat source below is extremely hot and there is a significant amount of pressure under the plates. Vent fluids are released very quickly and rise straight up into the water column. The vent fluids are very very hot and the surrounding water is extremely cold, so when the water coming out of the chimney hits the cold water, some of the minerals in it precipitate and form a chimney. There are four kinds of chimneys: columnar chimneys, black smokers, white smokers, and complex sulfide mounds. For a great discussion of this (it's pretty advanced) you can check out the book The Ecology of Deep-Sea Hydrothermal Vents by Cindy van Dover.

Hi guys! It's good to hear from you. We saw a whole bunch of dolphins the day we left, which are technically whales, but other than that we have not seen any whales or sharks. Supposedly both tend to congregate at station once we're there for a few days. I'll let you all know what we do see. Today I saw some flying fish — those were really cool!

Ya know what, Krystal, my ears are super-senstive too — whether I'm going up in a plane or I'm SCUBA diving. I always have to take something to clear out my ears and nose. I just saw some flying fish outside. Those were really cool. At first you think you are seeing little birds buzzing across the top of the water, but then you think for a second and realize that we are WAY too far out for most birds, especially ones that small. Other than that, there's not much to see, no land, no other ships really — one every so often. Just a whole lot of water!

Well, Kandice, I haven't gone down yet, but I'm a little anxious. I wouldn't really say nervous. I'm not afraid of anything that I could see — nothing could come even close to me while I'm in the sub! But I'm just anxious — it's a big deal eight hours in a teeny tiny sub. I'll let ya know how it goes.

Thanks, I'm glad that everyone is enjoying the Web site and watching our adventures. Have fun watching!

There is an oxygen system inside the submarine that has enough oxygen for three people for three days. Our lunch on the sub is two sandwiches, water, coffee, and some fruit. There are emergency rations like you would find in a life raft that taste disgusting, but are super-packed with protein and calories. There is a supply for three people for three days.

Once Alvin is lauched, the dive lasts about eight hours. Each dive is planned in advance and there is a dive plan that the pilot and observers work from. Everything we see down there is completely fascinating and looks nothing like what we're used to up here on land.

Hi Megan. That's not a stupid question at all. It's a very good one in fact. There is risk associated with diving in a submarine and being out in the middle of the ocean on a ship. However, these folks out here are experts and professionals and check and double and triple check everything and take amazingly excellent care of everything, and have anticipated anything that could possibly go wrong. So in the extrememly unlikely event that something did happen, we'd all know what to do in that situation. I could list about 25 things as the best part; the worst part, hmmm, maybe missing my friends and family.

Hi Peg! Glad you are learning a lot. I'm learning a lot out here too! The storm is turning in towards land and we have altered our course. We're getting some big waves and the boat is rocking a lot more, but we're fine. It's a good thing we altered our course, though, cause the storm is traveling right along our previous course! Hope life in Seattle is treating you well!