Latitude: 48 degrees 1.5 minutes North
Longitude: 129 degrees 5.76 minutes West
Sea Temperature: 14.398 degrees C
Depth: 234 meters
Air temperature: 13.568 degrees C
Humidity: 92.02
Wind speed: 8.5 meters/second Wind direction: 55 degrees
Barometer: 1005 millibar
Speed: 5.8 knots

We have been at sea now for many days, a number greater than 10, and today for the first time during normal waking hours, we saw the sun shine for more than 30 minutes. The wind was brisk and the cumulus clouds abundant but the day was beautiful and crisp. The sea took on a softer blue, with lattice-like ripples on the surface and patient, gracious swells.

I caught my first glimpse of the sun-filled day on my way to the ROPOS lab, an early morning check on the current dive before my watch. I can't seem to get enough of looking at the ocean floor. I set my alarm for all different hours of the night, fully intending to view every dive as completely as possible and often end up angry at myself for silencing the digital chirps and sleeping until a more sensible hour. I am grateful for the opportunity to stand a regular watch as we dive and get a real kick of being a participant and not just a spectator (I am the frame grabber on my watch, saving still images from the running video captured by the cameras on the submersible). But I cherish the time I spend in the lab as a mere friend of the expedition and a civilian. During those times, I can lose myself totally in the tubeworms, palm worms, crabs, sea spiders and infrequent fish, coral and sponges, the shifting architecture of basalt pillows, tablesand columns, the carpets of sediment, and the sulfide towers that loom up in clusters out of the darkness of the hydrothermal landscape.

This dive today explored new territory, in and around the Mothra field, as yet not fully described or charted beyond the sonar images. It stands in sharp contrast to the dives to recover the chimneys. ROPOS moved ever so slowly and meticulously back and forth along precise headings and parallel lines, up the cliffs and through the valley, in and out of the fissures and the fields. Today, we would travel the blue highways of the mid-ocean ridge, not the interstate. We acknowledged every feature and every site. We welcomed every detour and delay. We climbed an escarpment, turning right and then turning left, to get a better view down the valley. Crabs, tubeworm casings, and or fallen sulfides -- each a telltale sign of hydrothermal activity, led us off the appointed path to hunt for new structures and vents, which we did in fact find. This dive had purpose and focus and spirit, but nowhere near the psychological weight or tension of caging a many thousand pound object deliverable on the end of an 8,000 foot line and bringing it to the surface.

But now the deliverables were in hand. We had recovered four samples, four wonderfully different samples: Phang, dead and hardly porous; Roane, more alive and more porous; Finn, a black smoker, very much alive with a significant channel, and Gwenen, alive and covered with a significant bloom of biology. An astonishing accomplishment, the last two being plucked from off the bottom in less than 48 hours and just hours before the Tully had to return to shore.

I was with them all on Saturday, looking, touching when few others were looking, fascinated by the complexity and beauty of it all, and stunned by the thought of where they came from and how they made it to the fantail of the ship. That morning, at the last minute, I had an opportunity to go to the Tully. I donned my Gortex finery and climbed over the side of the Thompson, onto the rope ladder to the Zodiac waiting below. These short trips, from ship to ladder, from ladder to boat, from boat to ladder, from ladder to ship, are white knuckle transfers for me, complete with racing heart and trembling limbs. The drill is to step at the moment of harmonic convergence, when all is well with the world, the boat is close to the ship and on the crest of a swell, the boat rises to greet the ladder. Each leg of the journey is a private odyssey, only conceivable because with every move I make, a seasoned crew member stands ready, calmly offering instructions and answering any misstep with a strong arm and a quick grab by the nape of my personal flotation device. As I sit in the Zodiac, looking across the tops of the waves to the Tully, I think about crossing busy streets as a 4-year-old, often unable to synchronize my crossing to the apparent chaos of the cars whizzing by and suddenly being lifted off the ground by a strong and loving hand to safety onto the distant curb. There are many times these days when I feel like a little kid.

Myles Gordon