Out to Sea

 Crew members
of the R.V Thompson
bring in the lines from doc

Members of the team
looking on as we
steam out of Puget
Sound.

The ship has left port and the expedition is underway! We're about to go through a 28 hour transit period to reach our first installation site, and we're experiencing that unique blend of excitement and panic that precedes a major undertaking like this.

 We've got just over a day until we reach our first exploration site. What does a team of scientists do in the time before they put things in the water? First, practice what they would do if an emergency means they need to end up in the water themselves.

Next: check, double check, panic a bit, and then triple check the readiness of the instruments. There is a lot of expensive equipment that not only needs to function well, but needs a team of people to get it deployed and ready to study the ocean bottom.

Fire drills, man overboard
drills, and abandon ship
drills are taken seriously
by the entire crew.

 Full body exposure
suit practice, the
height of maritime
fashion

The beacons let the ROV pilots know where the Millenium ROV is relative to the ship, a good thing when you remember it will be travelling over 2 kilometres below us!

 And finally, look forward to get to work on our first site: the Mothra vent field at Endeavour, 300 kilometers off shore. Let the adventure begin!

Monitoring and data logging
station nearing completion.

Composite photo of Faulty
Towers, one of the hydrothermal
vent areas around Endeavour.
Image made by Mitchell J. Elend,
University of Washington