I decided to get an early start this morning, literally throwing my body out of the top bunk at about 0740. I took a quick shower and got dressed to try and catch any part of Alvin’s launch today. Mostly, though, I just felt like having breakfast and didn’t want to miss the cut-off. I had blueberry pancakes, some fresh fruit, and a small helping of home fries. There was also a strawberry smoothie, which was quite tasty.

On my to-do list was to edit a movie filmed in Alvin, make an activity for the Web site called "Ship Shape" (coming soon), and to start the second Extreme Experiment. Another major task for the morning was to read all of this week’s entries for Vent Poetry. There were lots more this week than last week. Good job to everyone who sent a poem! Some were very creative and well written. I will make my final decision tomorrow and post the winners by Monday. I especially want to thank Hepsi Zsoldos of Talley Middle School (Wilmington, DE, USA), who has several students entered in the contest. Hepsi was one of the Education Coordinators last year, and I appreciate her continued support of Extreme.

Having gone through my checklist, I was off to lunch to refuel before the afternoon meetings. These consisted of the fourth science seminar and the daily science meeting. Dr. Colleen Cavanaugh gave a presentation on “The Most Abundant Protein” — RubisCO (Ribulose 1,5-bisphosate Carboxylase/Oxygenase). It is an enzyme that is important for life because it helps assimilate carbon. As usual, Colleen was very animated, which helped to keep the attention of the room full of people. Her talk was followed by an extended round of questions, which she seemed eager to answer. A brief science meeting completed the session. We are counting down now with only three dives left at this site (9°N), and two to three more will occur at 13°N. Dr. Tim Shank will write a synopsis of the relevance of adding this other site to our schedule, so keep a look out for it by the middle of next week.

I was banking on taking a nap right after the meeting because I had a bothersome headache. However, my plans were altered when we heard word that the sub would surface more than an hour earlier than normal (usually about 1700). Pat Hickey, the Expedition Leader, was the pilot today. Due to his 15 years of experience (more than 500 dives), he’s especially efficient at completing the dive plan in record time. So, I delayed my nap until about 5 p.m. (1500).

I slept for about an hour and got up in time to make it to dinner. The menu was a pre-Christmas meal with roasted chicken, mashed potatoes, broccoli casserole, and CRANBERRY SAUCE! That really made me long for being home for the holidays. I can’t wait. My mom has already asked me what I will be cooking when I come home. Now that I’m older, we can share some of the duties of preparing the feast, as well as have quality time together in the kitchen. I am really looking forward to it this time, especially since I missed my chance at Thanksgiving. (Many of us spent Thanksgiving Day flying to Manzanillo for the Extreme expedition.)

By the way, Anthony and I played our round in the ping-pong tournament today. He won the first game, I won the second, and we were neck-in-neck for a while during the third. I finally lost my composure and let him STEAL that game from me. Worse than that, I practically gave it away. I just didn’t have my “game face” on, I guess. They were really good games, though. Oh well, I’m out of the tournament, so I will just have to watch others play.

Well, I’m wrapping up my work for the night. I think this is the earliest yet — it’s only about 9 p.m. (2100). Just a few finishing touches left. Once I’m done, I think I will go join Eddie and Dave Sims on the deck to fish for squid.

Before I go, here’s an explanation for why Styrofoam cups make such great deep-sea souvenirs. The material of the cups has air pockets in the structure. The high pressure of the deep sea compresses gas, and basically pops the pockets, squeezing the air out. The result is that the cups shrink to a mini version of themselves, generally maintaining their shape. This is why deep-sea organisms have fluid-filled tissues rather than gas-filled ones. Fluid is much less compressible. Otherwise, they would not be able to survive the pressure. So, having discovered this about Styrofoam cups, we all spend some of our free time using colorful, permanent markers to commemorate our dives to the depths of the ocean — for our family/friends and ourselves.

Today would have been a fairly typical day at sea ... had I not made my first dive to the bottom of the ocean. Late Friday afternoon, Craig Cary, our Chief Scientist, offhandedly asked me if I wanted to dive the next day. The question took a while to register; I had been thinking that, given my position as a lowly graduate student and the relatively scant number of dives left for the cruise, I might not make it into Alvin. Fortunately, I was incorrect, and I must stretch out my hand to Craig and to my adviser, Colleen Cavanaugh, to thank them for working me into the schedule. I eventually answered Craig — I definitely wanted to dive.

At 9:00 p.m., I went to the library to be briefed for Saturday's dive. Craig was there, as was Brian and our pilot, Pat. Brian, a marine geochemist from the University of Delaware, has dived in Alvin at least seven times, and Pat is perhaps the most experienced pilot on the Alvin team, having made approximately 560 dives. I knew that whatever inexperience I might bring to the dive would be offset by having these veterans aboard. Our meeting lasted about 45 minutes. We mainly chatted about the dive plan, a step-by-step list of what needs to be done during the dive. Craig puts a new plan together every night based on the needs of the science parties onboard. Unfortunately, time is short, and there is only so much that can be done on one dive. Consequently, an effective dive plan requires an enormous amount of compromise from the researchers. In addition to being an invaluable opportunity for scientific exploration and learning, cruises are excellent lessons on the importance of working cooperatively with others. A good dive plan embodies this message.

After the meeting. I decided to call it quits for the night — 6:30 a.m. would be coming much too soon, especially since I've been working until 2:00 a.m. each night, and not waking up until 9:00 a.m. Fortunately, Tara, a post-doc in Colleen's lab, offered to take over my responsibilities (filtering water for bacterial DNA — it doesn't get much more exciting than that) for the evening so I could get some sleep (THANK YOU, TARA). So I packed up warm clothes and notebooks that I would need for the dive, stuck them in a pillow case to be loaded aboard in the morning, and then headed to bed — after a few chocolate chip cookies of course. Unfortunately, I missed the showing of "Christmas Vacation" in the lounge — I love that movie. Oh well, another night, I guess.

I was right — 6:30 came way too early. I wouldn't have had trouble getting up if I had actually fallen asleep at a reasonable hour. But no, I just tossed and turned on a hard bed in a warm room until about 2:00 a.m. Well, five hours of sleep is better than nothing. And adrenaline compensates for lack of sleep — my excitement for the dive woke me up pretty quickly. A strong cup of coffee didn't hurt either (though it did come back to haunt me in the middle of the dive when the closest restroom was a plastic red pee bottle).

I made it down to the back deck around 7:00 a.m. The ocean was as calm as I had seen it for several days — like a sheet of glass in places. I watched the sun come up as the Alvin crew made final dive preparations. These guys, as well as the crew of the Atlantis, work amazingly hard to make hydrothermal vent research productive and safe. Kudos to all of them, especially to the ones who made my morning so effortless. At 7:45, Alvin was wheeled on to the back of the deck. Shortly after, Pat, Brian, and I climbed a set of stairs, took off our shoes (no shoes allowed in the sub), and climbed through the hatch at the top of Alvin. Within minutes, the hatch was locked and sealed, and Alvin was hoisted into the air and into the Pacific Ocean.

The experience was surreal. We bobbed quietly for a few minutes before beginning our descent. Outside of our portholes, light blue of the surface layers gave way to darker shades, and then quickly to blackness at about 100 meters. At this point, I laid back against the wall and took a look around the sub. Alvin is basically a metal sphere, approximately 6 ft in diameter, attached to the main body, which houses the engine, steering, and propulsion systems. Most of the sphere space is taken up by instrumental panels, similar in appearance to those in the Apollo lunar modules that first brought humans to the moon. In fact, the sub feels very much like a space ship — blinking lights, metal, and computer screens everywhere. The remainder of the space is occupied by three people — two scientists and a pilot. The pilot sits in the front of the sphere, where he can access all instruments and can look out the forward porthole (which is only about 5 inches in diameter) to steer the sub and operate the external arms and sample collection devices. The two scientists sit behind and to the right and left of the pilot. Each scientist has access to his or her own porthole and to the controls for operating external cameras mounted on the exterior of the sphere. The scientist on the port (left) side is the more experienced of the two (definitely Brian in this case) and, as a result, has more responsibility — he or she works closely with the pilot to guide the sampling process. The starboard (right) scientist is usually less experienced and is dedicated primarily to the operation of the starboard camera and the small water sampler (known as the Sipper) and to taking extensive notes about how, where, and which samples were collected.

All of these logistical duties overlay the emotional and visual experience of descending to the bottom of the ocean — it's hard to work when all you want to do is look out the porthole, even when the water is totally black. For me, this was especially true when the sub first cast its lights on the bottom. My first glimpse of the seafloor, ~8,000 ft below the surface, was incredible — like touching down on another planet. I was particularly stunned by the volcanic basalt — pillows of solidified lava, black canyons, crystalline shards. And then there was the biology on top of the basalt — strange eel-like fish, ghost shrimp that swim like squid, white crabs, fields of giant tubeworms, beds of mussels... Animals that I've seen only in books or in the lab — all of them directly or indirectly dependent on the hot water and minerals flowing out of the vents, and on the bacteria that use these resources to fuel life.

And we did our best to sample this strange world, taking temperature readings, chemical samples, samples of whole tubeworms and Alvinellid worms. All in all, we put in a good day's work, spending about five hours gliding over the bottom of the ocean. But a dive plan is a dive plan, and once every objective on a plan is met, it's time to head for the surface, which we did at 2:00 in the afternoon. An hour later, we surfaced in the warm water of the central Pacific. The Alvin team brought the sub on board within 20 minutes. Pat popped the hatch, (causing a rapid release of air pressure in the sub), and we climbed out of Alvin and down the stairs to the deck. As I expected, being a first-time diver, I was treated to a traditional post first-dive initiation: a drenching with warm hose water (not bad) followed by a drenching with ice water (painful). Oh well, how can you dive to the bottom of the ocean and not get a little wet?