Daisy Chain and First Dive

The past 12 hours have been crazy here on the E/V Nautilus! After we finally left port in Palermo, the tech crew started prepping the ROVs for the first dive of this expedition off the coast of Italy in the Tyrrhenian Sea.

Luckily for me, I got to be part of the prep process! Grad student Josh and I helped deck chief Mark make the daisy chain. The daisy chain is a combination of ropes and cords that connect Hercules to Argus. The chain must be done in a way that will not affect the ROVs and will prevent the cords getting tangled.

Hercules is put in the water first, then followed by Argus. By tying them together, waves rocking the boat will rock only Argus and the rope will remain neutral and therefore so will Hercules. Since the rope is so long, you have to lay it out all around the deck so it doesn't tangle when you put the ROVs in the water.

Dives can last over 24 hours, which means the crew must change out every 4-8 hours. Luckily for me, both of my watches are from 8-12. Mrs. Duffy has a watch from 8 pm - 4 am! During my watch, I am a data logger in the control van. I get to capture pictures and record information that we see during a dive. As an educator at sea, Mrs. Duffy answers questions sent in to the web page and makes observations from the control van.

Everyone's hard work finally paid off! Around 1:00 AM on Thursday the ROVs took their first dive on this expedition!
Our dive to the Eolo sea mound will end when we decide to recover the vehicles (most likely around 8:30 AM tomorrow). Today we have taken a variety of samples such as rocks and bacteria around the ridges and craters of the submarine volcano. Temperature samples were recorded as well. We also collected white tube worms on the sea floor to analyze in the lab.

As of right now, Mrs. Duffy and I will be on shift at 2:00 PM Virginia time so tune in to Nautiluslive.org and send us questions!


Courtney

Below are comments that were left by Courtney on the previous version of this blog:

Cofer:
Great job with the updates Courtney. I have enjoyed reading them thus far. How does it feel to be involved with "real science"? By the way, how did you and Duff rank in the "diving contest"?


Captain Nemo alias Dr. Ballard (unauthenticated)

Dear Courtney,

I really enjoyed reading your blog and hope your trip is everything you wanted it to.

Have a great time.

RDB