Here are our prior photos:

Marine Mammal Observers:

After reading the comments in these pages, you can most certainly pick up that the people we meet here are some of the most interesting people you could ever meet.

Laura Morse, for example, has made four trips to the Antarctic and at least one trip up through the Bering Sea, not to mention her work in the tropics. Yet, she never really talks about this; more often she listens to others and is modest about her travels.

This picture is one example. I now use Laura as my "Golden Standard" when I look at my own photographs. She sent this to me with the note that she has other pictures of the Cape Petrel that are actually better, but she took this yesterday and thought it might be more appropriate for the web site.

What can I say? Isn't this absolutely beautiful?

I know that this expedition is primarily focused on geophysics and petrology, but isn't it cool when there is a balance of interests in the sciences and we can also benefit from Laura and Howie's expertise and abilities!

Minke Whale

Just after pulling up the dredge one day, the Bosun yelled "whale" and there it was. Howie Goldstein was already taking his awesome photos and the whale breached right beside the boat. This is only one of the photos that he took of the 30 foot long Minke Whale. It is actually not common for Minke whales to breach like this, so the observation was particularly important.

Later in the day, I was talking with Laura on the back deck and she pointed, yelled "BLOW" and headed for her telephoto lens. I will post more later in the blog.

All total, we saw three whales during the day and had other sightings the afternoon before. Then it turned windy again; it is much more difficult to see whales when the water is covered with whitecaps.

"Grapes"

No, not exactly, this is a classic example of manganese crust. This crust is actually made up of various elements - mainly manganese, some iron and lots of others - which rains out of the seawater and collects on rocks lying on the ocean floor. It grows extremely slow - a few millimeters in a million years!

Here is a word that you will like. BOTRYOIDAL. This does mean from Latin a clump of grapes, and this rock looks like that. We discuss things like this every day when we have the daily meeting with petrologists. All right, actually they discuss things and mostly I listen to all the new words that I am starting to learn.

These petrologists really like to "conferentiate". (This means to have a conference and is also not a real word. It is, however, perfectly understandable and we had good fun with word-play in the meeting yesterday.)

Planning Time

Here our science team studies our bathymetric maps to determine the best location for our next survey. The geophysicists make these maps from the instruments on board the Revelle. This team of petrologists includes: (from left to right) Ines, Soumen, Fred, Malcolm, and Evy.

Once this planning is complete, the bridge will be notified and we will proceed to our next location.

updated July 24, 2007 from the Indian Ocean

Read more about our front page photos:

Dredge 33 Rocks!

We wrote about this last dredge before turning toward Singapore. I have to tell one short story though. We did a short video for a conference, and I asked scientists candidly why they liked geology. Jackie, one of our two scientists from South Africa, said without even a pause, "Geology Rocks!" It was great and became a part of the specific science terms that I will remember the most about geology.

And this one rock was our grand finale. Read more about our last day on this day of the Blog.

Curved Rainbows?

Why is this? They actually form a full curve when the conditions are right. Are the curves always the same size? Why?

One of the science team investigators asked this as we  were talking on the back deck the other morning, and said that it would probably be a good question to ask students.

I agree.

Send us your answers. By the way, there is a larger picture of this on the science challenge page.

Sunset Deck Work

After a long week of science work, three of the team watch as the sun sets over the transom. (Holly, Meghan and Fred)

Click here for more July photos