BOWLS Cruise Blog

Day 2: 1330 hours
June 23, 2014
43° 52' N 127° 34' W

Recovering the first of the landers

Today our goal is to recover from the excesses of yesterday, before we use the all-too rare opportunity provided by this cruise to do it again. Yesterday, we arrived over our first lander (1600 m below) after 5.5 hours at sea, then sent an acoustic signal that woke up the dormant electronics in the lander. Then a very specific sound pulse was sent to separate the weights of the lander from its floats, allowing the lander to rise to the surface where we waited. Procedures like this always sound to me like Science Fiction, with appropriate levels of suspense, unearthly sounds and a measure of Black Magic, but at the appointed time the lander surfaced and when the ship sailed along side, it was snagged and brought onboard. That makes it sound too easy – it took six guys, the heavy-lifting A-frame, calm seas and 30 minutes to wrestle the 1.5 m to a side triangular lander onboard the ship; all the while we were in nervous anticipation of what animals had colonized the wood and bone cradled by the lander inside all but opaque mesh bags.

This octopus, Graneledone pacifica, was found in the first lander

As the sun was setting, we got our first peeks inside those bags (pictured above). The wood and bone that had been placed inside 15 months before with as much excitement as a child hangs her stocking on Christmas Eve were in most cases alive with animals. Wood-boring bivalves had so heavily eaten some pieces of wood that they crumbled. Zombie worms of Osedax sent frilly appendages out of the mottled bones of a long-dead (and legally scavenged) dead whale in the aquarium onboard the ship.

Our wishes for the wood and bone were met. The thrall of scientific discovery and the mysteries we will be able to unravel with those specimens in hand meant that we didn’t hit our bunks until 0500 this morning. Next lander is due on deck in 2 hours. I expect different animals in the wood in this one, and maybe, just maybe, another octopus!

Janet Voight

Field Museum – Chicago.

Last updated: 06/24/2014