Making our way north

Date:	2011/10/20
Time:	19:09:08 GMT
Latitude:	9 ° 37.86864 N
Longitude:	104 ° 15.45162 W

During our current dive, we're maneuvering Jason on a very long transect along the crest of the East Pacific Rise. We began in the south at around 9° 4'N and are slowly making our way north. We expect to continue this transect, with a few small detours, until the end of our time on site. Our hope is to make it as far north as possible toward 10°N. The main objectives of this dive are to (1) recover instruments deployed on the seafloor, (2) map the shape of ridge crest at very high resolution, and (3) collect water column data along the ridge crest that may reveal the signal of hydrothermal activity. We are also collecting a few samples here and there when we come across interesting things on the seafloor.

The transits between stations are done with Jason well off the seafloor in an effort to maximize sonar data coverage, which means there's not too much to see besides the profile of sonar data as we encounter variable terrain. When we break off our transect to look for the instruments, however, we get to see the seafloor and make visual observations and collect photos and video.