by Joanna Lott
aiting . . . waiting . . . waiting.
It's 9:00 a.m. We were scheduled to depart Manzanillo, Mexico an hour ago.
We are ready to go, but a ship ahead of us doesn't want to get out of our
way. So we wait.
We were lucky to be ready only one hour late considering the trouble we
faced last night. At 6:30 p.m. I arrived in Manzanillo — one of the last
of the 23 science crew members — to find that the Research Vessel Atlantis
was having engine trouble, and ALVIN, the submersible that takes the
scientists to their underwater laboratory, was in need of a replacement
window. If the parts didn't come in on schedule, we looked at a two day
delay departing Manzanillo.
The parts came, repairs were successful, and we are ready to ship out. But
still, we wait. As time ticks by, the chances that we will lose a dive
increase. There are 22 scientists hoping to make a dive to the ocean floor
in ALVIN, and for every dive we lose, someone's name gets crossed off the
dive list.
At 3:00 we are on our way, seven hours behind schedule. We know we will
lose one dive, but the excitement of the beginning of the expedition
replaces disappointment as we take a last look at the colorful hillsides
of Mexico — our last look at land for 22 days.
For many of us, the rest of day one is a blur. The scientists, who have
not yet found their sea legs, are easy to distinguish from the experienced
Atlantis crew. We stumble around like a bunch of drunken sailors, fighting
sea sickness, or suffering the side effects of anti-sea-sick medication.
Experienced sea travelers warned us that the first few days could be
rough, even if the sea wasn't. Dramamine, sea sick patches, and the
natural remedy, ginger, are passed around. Christian, an Austrian
scientist, was one of the first to lose his battle with sea sickness.
Stephan, a Penn State post-doc and experienced sea explorer, tells me he
chased Christian around with a banana in each hand, trying to get him to
eat something. Why bananas, I ask. "Bananas taste the same coming up as
they do going down," Stephan replies.
I lose my battle with motion sickness and sleep away the first few hours
of the voyage. When I wake, it's just water and sky. Varying shades of
blue broken in the middle by the horizon and interrupted only occasionally
by a fluffy white cloud. Blue sea, blue sky.
They tell me I will get bored — I think they must be joking.
***
he scientists are here to study life at the hydrothermal vent sites
located along the East Pacific Rise at our destination, 9 North, or, as it
is affectionately called, 9N. Teams of scientists from Penn State,
University of California Santa Barbara, William & Mary, Duke, and
researchers from as far away as Austria, Alaska, British Columbia, and the
U.K., are here to see what's going on a mile and a half beneath the
surface of the Pacific Ocean — a veritable laboratory at the bottom of the
sea.
Everyone has been busy since arrival setting up their labs. The Atlantis,
at 274 feet long, 17 feet draft, has 3,710 feet of lab space (Atlantis specifications). Everyone
pitches in to see that, when we arrive at 9N — whenever that may be — all
equipment is set up and ready to go. The researchers on board wear many
hats. As carpenters, welders, and general jury-rigging experts, what they
need, they build; what breaks, they fix.
***
he Dramamine kicks in around 5:30, and I am able to eat dinner. After
dinner I catch my first sunset at sea — pinks and yellows on the horizon
break up the never-ending blue, which slowly turns to slate gray. Soon
black night settles in. The line where ocean meets sky disappears, and
this 3,200 ton ship seems airborne, as the stars sway back and forth in
the great black sea of night.
Next Dispatch: Rolling Along
