My dearest Anais,

Today we pulled another huge rock off the sea floor. This one is special, though, so I'll tell you about it.

It's hardly the beginning, but I'll start with last night. ROPOS was sent to the ocean floor to tighten the cables on Roane, the structure we just recovered today, and to look for another one to bring up. This was necessary because yesterday one of ROPOSıs arms, with its mean-looking claw, failed before we had finished with the cables. We were very concerned because the cables were not evenly distributed over Roane, and we were afraid that maybe we were going to lose part of it. We had also decided not to cut Roane with the chain saw. We could see, from the video camera mounted on ROPOS, several cracks running right through the whole structure, so we figured that it would be easy to break off when we began pulling. We worked on the bottom until about 5 o'clock this morning, when ROPOS began it's hour-and-a-half journey back to the surface, so our recovery could start.

A few hours later, a couple of us were on our way over to the Tully using one of the small boats. (Remember, the Tully is the Canadian ship used for raising the rocks.) The line, one end of which had been attached to Roane, was floated to the surface, to be picked up by the small boat. We were all watching anxiously from Tully's decks, as the floats were untangled and passed to us. Fortunately, today is very calm, making everything we do a lot easier. The line was threaded into the sheave (remember, the huge pully mounted on the A-frame...The A-frame, hmmm, did I explain that to you? That's a large steel frame mounted on the stern of the ship. If you use your imagination, it looks like an A. It swings in and out, like an A on its feet, and that is how things are launched and hauled onto the fantail.) Anyway, the line then gets fed into a huge winch. Now this is no ordinary winch. It is a humongous winch. It belongs to the Navy, and I suppose they use it to recover planes the crash in the ocean. The winch started pulling, 600 feet of line came up, just pulled by hand, no force, no nothing. Then the slack gets taken up and the line goes tight: There is something on it, what a relief! The line, if you recall from one of my last letters, can hold about 60,000 pounds and the winch some ridiculously large weight as well, although for the moment I have forgotten what that is. But the A-frame...this huge steel structure, can only handle about 30,000 pounds. This is only half of what our measely-looking line can handle! To continue, the winch starts pulling. It reaches 5,000 pounds. Needless to say, we are all very sure there's something on the end. The winch pulls more, 10,000 pounds, then 12,000. Now we're all very, very sure--wow, it's a hunk!

The force creeps up, 15,000 pounds, then 18,000. Still, nothing is really happening, the winch is turning very slowly. Wait a minute, maybe this is a little too big. In fact, we begin to realize that either we have one really huge piece or else the thing won't break off on the ocean floor. Definitely this is beginning to seem like a pretty serious problem. We can't really pull too much harder. If Roane is still attached, and if it doesn't come off with a little bit more pull, we will have managed to anchor ourselves to the bottom of the ocean! In that case, our only alternative will be to cut the line. On the other hand, if it has already been detached and actually weighs 18,000 pounds in water, whatever we have on the end of the line is going to weigh a lot more out of water! (This, by the way, is an experiment we can do at home some day. Things weigh less in water than in air. Do you know why? Anyway, when I'm home next we'll try this out and see if we can figure out why.) If Roane weighs 18,000 pounds in water, its probably going to be too heavy to bring onto the ship because of its greater weight out of water.

Recovery of Roane.

At about 20,000 pounds, it looks, in fact, like we might be in trouble. A decision will soon have to be made. Then, suddenly, something gives. The structure must have broken off the ocean bottom and is coming up! That, of course, is exactly what happened. An hour later, as practically everyone on the ship is looking out over the fantail, the end of the line is in sight. Where I am standing, on the deck above the fantail, I see first one piece, about 15-inches high, emerge from the water, attached to a fragment of cable. And then, slowly, a second, very massive piece comes into sight. As it reaches the surface, the water around it appears to be boiling; on deck it's steaming. Geez, after nearly two hours in near-freezing ocean water, the rock is still hot! We've reached into the depths and plucked a piece of an active hot spring off the ocean floor. Anais, no one has ever done that before! We get it on deck, and the bottom of Roane is 90 degrees C, still almost hot enough to boil water. And it has tube worms and God knows what else hanging onto its outside. Definitely alive, this piece. It probably weighs about 4,000 pounds.

Pulling in the line after the recovery of Roane.

Of course, as soon as it was secured, we all crowded around to admire our catch. The very first thing to be done was to take a core from the interior. If there is any bacteria living inside, we want to sample them right away before they die. And also the biologists started collecting the animals living on the outside.

Anyway, that has been my day, and it's only 1 o'clock. Now to get the line back to the Thompson and get ready for the next dive. We still need to get another sample. I miss you and Maman very much and hope you are having fun learning to horseback ride..

All my love,
Papa (Ed Mathez)