PICASSO final test

It was an ok day today. The people leaving left at 10 instead of 11am, as they had about an hour's boat ride to get to the dock. I was happy to stay on the big boat, as the little one was jumping around all over the place on the waves. They had all gotten into plastic clothes and had their bags in plastic bags, so guess they were ok.

After that we all kind of stood around not doing much. I had a good nap, and read up on some siphonophores. I've finished sorting the plankton samples and we're going too fast to get more now. I guess I'll look at the ones I have already, before they digest themselves up and disappear. But right now I'm feeling a bit queesy, and the 5pm fish dinner is aproaching, so I'll avoid locking myself up in the lab for now. Maybe after dinner.

Another use of a good fishing rod : CTD depth calibration.

And a little comic note : the ship rules when in port at Guam or Saipan (where they have water discharge restrictions) :

" All toilet stools are permitted, but don't use hand washer"

I don't even want to speculate about that one.....

After dinner proved to be full of excitement! Yoshida-san has managed to fix the ARGOS transmitter, and we had the first PICASSO check with only the scientists in charge. Although Yoshida helped out and the engineers were there to help out. A couple more things need adding or re-ordering on the checklist, but otherwise things seem good. I am even getting the hang of what to check, and helped Dhugal do a mini test last night. Not understanding the japanese commands makes checking things a bit difficult of course. As soon as he’s got the check-list stabilizes Dhugal will write it in English, but it’s a lot of work for nothing right now.

Everyone was so happy of the evening’s work that they all retired for raw tuna at 11pm, but I thought I’d go to bed instead. We have a big day tomorrow, with 2 PICASSO dives planned, untethered, and without the engineers helping out. Actually they’ll probably be helping out anyway, but they won’t be the ones driving. If you have the man who made it driving, there are always less bugs. Also he is the one who built the control room, so of course he knows where and when to press.

It’s marmalade this morning, so will go down early!

PICASSO test

Guess I’m a bit mixed up in the days... seems to be the 2nd already. Anyway, good day yesterday, with the PICASSO testing (not a success, but they know what to fix), the laser testing (a success), and the satellite testing (didn’t hear anything about it, but it must have been miserable, squating on the top of the boat in the rain and wind...).

At 8am we started the PICASSO tests, and at about 10 it was launched. Everything went fine for quite some time, except for a bit of ballast problem on the back. Then the controls stopped woring, but the ship was still receiving images from the cameras... And so of course the ballast release didn’t work (as the controls didn’t work), but if you cut the fiber-optics cable it automatically releases the ballast. So that’s what they did, and up came PICASSO. Turns out they had gotten a kink in the fiber-optics cable somewhere that blocked only the downwelling message.

I got to see how you fix a fiber-optics cable, which was cool, but it seems you have to be careful to align the minute little ridges otherwhise it gets kinked. They spent the afternoon fixing some other minor bugs (on the bottom the depth said it was about 3m underground...). I got to look at the video they made on the trial (lots of siphonophores and some sea-pens on the bottom), and continued sorting my net sample. I found some more siphonophore bells which I will have to identify today, and a neat polychete with what look like white squid arms with bright orange spots on them, and some other larvae.

In the evening we had a going away party for the 2 who are leaving today. It was fun to see a japanese party. And it was quite short, as they get drunk and go to bed rather quickly. We had lost half after an hour and a half about. There were lots of little snacks too, and most of them weren’t bad. I tasted japanese beer. It’s not bad, but doesn’t taste at all like what I’m used to. I also had a glass of red wine from Chile, complete wil screw-top bottle. It pretty much lived up to the expectations I had of a wine that comes in a screw-top bottle.

Today will be a calm day, with resting for the laser guys and a planned PICASSO dive which is mostly just for the paper work, as they plan to cancel it for meteorological reasons. We will still do the pre-dive check, as it’s good to get everyone used to it. And I will be sorting and identifying my jellyfish.

Will be a nice day, if the ship doesn’t move around too much. I haven’t gotten sick yet, although the sight of raw fish at 5pm for dinner is not always easy to bear. I usually have a good breaky (they have monster bread slices, the thickness of 2 normal slices), and a good lunch, but dinner is still a threat. Tonight there will be no anchoring, so we will sail up and down the bay all night, and that may become really fun. Shall see....

30th of Jan... losing count of days already....

Big day today! Firt, some bad news, as the bay we were planning to go to has 20 knot winds and so we can’t do anything there. So we went to Suruga bay, just west of Sagami bay. It is deeper, but the shallow bit is closer to land and so more protected on all sides.

All the engineers on board were busy building/repairing : 1. a small plexiglass house for the satellite transmitter they’re testing, 2. one of the LED light for PICASSO, that had been found to be full of mud from the previous cruise, 3. the ARGOS transmitter, so they don’t lose sight of PICASSO. And as well as all that, Dhugal, Jamie and I did some plankton nets off the side of the ship. We did some surface ones first, which were so surface you could have caught flying fish in them. We mainly got all the ocean crud and a bit of phytoplankton. Then we used the deep-sea reel for a more or less vertical plankton net, when the ship had stopped. It took much longer than they had planned, as it always does, but we got some good stuff. I’ve been sorting the jellyfish out of the samples, and last night we looked at some of them.

Another important point of the day was the PICASSO pre-dive check. It was done all officially, with walkie talkies to communicate, even though everyone was either right inside or right outside the container. They found some interesting glitches, but nothing very wrong. You just need to remember that the “release ballast” actually magnetizes it, while the “magnetize ballast” releases it...

Last night we put down the anchor in a small bay on the side of Suruga bay, where the JAMSTEC deep-sea foring vessel is already ported. Everyone got to take photos, and some photos of Mt Fuji too, that you could just glimpse though the clouds at times.

It was a fun day, and went by really fast. Today, we have the shallow water PICASSO test, in “ROV but tied with a rope to the ship” mode. At the same time we will have the satellite being tested on the top of the ship, and then the laser communication system tested in parallel with PICASSO this afternoon. And I still have a bit of plankton to sort through if ever I get bored.

Cruise 1

We’ve been sailing all night, but didn’t have too much trouble sleeping. They have typical japanese beds here, so a matress that’s about as snuggly as a wooden floor, and a bean- or pea-filled pillow. I think I prefer the german eider-down pillows and matresses.... Breakfast this morning was “continental” : bacon, omelette, salad and a melon slice, with toast. The japanese breakfast is rice with soup. I think I’ll stick with the continental, as it will mean one meal a day without rice.

We are sailing through the inland sea between Honshu and Shikoku. The smaller island is attached to the bigger one by what must be some of the World’s longest bridges. We passed under one this morning and even the Japanese crew were all excited, as it’s first time most of them have been on the inland passage. The bridge was really impressive, looking os if they had glued lots of different bridges one to the other, to make the final bridge long enough. And that very impressive bridge is called Seto-o-hashi, for big Seto bridge. Wonderful....

The inland sea is very cute, with tons of mall islands all over the place. It looks a bit like Maine, without the fog. There are a few monster cargo ships, but not nearly as many as there were leaving Beppu. That must be a regular shipping line, as there must have been 10 cargo ships in sight constatnly. Now there are only 1 or 2, with small flotillas of fishing ships. The fishing ships all have “wind sails” of different colours so it’s quite pretty.

They are installing the PICASSO system this morning but as they can only fit 4 people in the container at the same time life is pretty calm for the rest of us. It will be lunch soon, and then maybe we will install the microscope this afternoon. Otherwise I’ll just stand around with camera and sun glasses looking like a tourist.

Best thing.

MR-X1 and PICASSO (left)

This afternoon I looked at Dhugal set up the laboratory. They have a high-tech anti-vibration table for the dissecting microscope, but apparently it can be done just as easily with 2 planks of wood and some tennis balls. After that we got to observe the absence of whirlpools. It’s actually more fun than it sounds. The wrirlpools appear in a very narrow straight between the big island of Shikoku and a smaller island on the Honshu side. There is another bridge over the straight : Naruto bridge. And the currents going in and out cause whirlpools. The captain of the ship had planned it so that we only say the absence of whirlpools, but we did get to see some smallish ones, and some change in water colour along the frontal zones.

In order to pass the bridge at the right time, and because they never get to do the inland route, we made a little detour into a cute bay in a medeum island. We went nearly to the end of the bay, quite close to the shore, and hooted the horn. It turns out that’s where the captain’s mother lives and she had come down to the dock to wave at the boat. A fun excursion.

Beppu

Met up at the airport with another fellow from JAMSTEC, who does all the diplomatic stuff, and a cameraman that does TV coverage of deep-sea stuff, both diving and on boats. The flight to Beppu is about the same as from Nice to Paris. Except you get to see the sea on both ends. In order to be paid by JAMSTEC they had to take first call tickets, so had quite an enjoyable flight.

Beppu is a small-ish town, spread along the coasts and around several hills. Most of the mountains behind Beppu are bald, from intentional burnings, so it looks a bit strange. The town is all built on a huge hydrothermal zone, so there are pipes here and there, especially in the hills, that discharge steam. I guess people living here get used to the rotten egg smell.

We wandered around the town a bit looking for a nice restaurant, and finaly chose a japanese style beer garden. We had tons of different kinds of meat on brochettes, with different sauces. It was very good, and practical too, as I haven’t quite mastered eating meat with chopsticks yet.

Our hotel was very nice. There was a spa on the top floor, but I chose to wander around the town a bit in the morning instead. Unfortunately, there are so many power and telephone lines strung everywhere that it is almost impossible to take good photos of any landmarks. I suvived breakfast of chinese noodles and bacon, but passed on the runny omelette and salad. I also had a fake croissant and some fruit salad, just to make a smooth transition.

Photo with egg basket in the pool.

At 10 we all went off to visit the 8 hells of Beppu : a combination of all the different kinds of hot springs possible. First off was the Monk Head Hell, as the bubbles in the mud pots look like little bald heads comming up. With that are the snoring rocks, a place where the demons came to shelter from the cold north winds and fell asleep on the warm rocks, and you can hear them snoring. Next are the green and blue pools, with tropical water lillies in them. There is a small shrine near the ponds. They hang baskets of eggs into the 150° waters to hard boil them. We tasted some at noon and they are not bad at all, even if the white is a bit brownish... We also had a small sweet-potato cake steamed in the hot pool vapour that tasted very good. There was also a red pond of disloved clay, supposedly good for skin problems. The next site has all mud pots and springs and coloured ponds, but the most fun was the little trick they played. The attendant would come out, light a cigarette, smile at you, blow on his cigarette, and the mud pot would start to smoke. It was really cool. He was standing more than a meter away, too.

Then there was a mini-zoo, with a nice hippo who would stand with his mouth open waiting for treats. There is also a mini crocodile farm, which did not impress Dhugal as he’s used to big crocodiles, but was still fun. The pool with the crocodile farm has a statue of the god of hell in front of it, and it sure is the most impressive of all the ponds, roaring, smoking and making a huge show. You can hardly even catch a glimpse of the water. And then for last the cutest little geiser, in a context of magnificant gardens and palm trees, that goes every 30min about. A very nice last sight.

Back to the docks at 4pm, where we met up with James “Jamie” Reimer and then boarded the Natsushima. I have a cabin by myself, with bed, desk, table, couch, sink... It’s about the same size at the whole cabin area in the sailboat we took with the Limoges sailing class. The dinner was very good too, so won’t die of hunger, even if they do eat dinner at 5pm which is a bit early, even for me. I h

ad a quick toor of the boat, and should get a hang of it eventually. They even have a seperate bathroom and shower for me, as I’m the only girl on board.

We will be doing 2 days of sailing before we start with the Picasso system. We still have everything to insta

ll as the previous leg of the trip was using the MR-X1 submersible. They were tryi,g to see if it could make sediment cores. Seeing the amount of circuitry and wires around the lab, it probably was not a great success. They will be comming on again once we have gone so maybe it will work better the next time around.

Tonight there are about 7 people up on the top of the ship crouching around with computers and plexiglas sheeting trying to get satellite internet. It worked fine for a while, but didn’t like google mail. Then the ship turned slightely and the chimney got in the way of the satellite, and they were getting cold anyway, so everyone packed up for tonight.

Oppama

Spent my morning off wandering around Oppama. It turns out there are cemeteries along the

edge of every hill (so a lot), and every cemetary has a nice little temple, with a nice little garden. The graves are all of dark marble with a little encense holder, and they are all very well kept up, with fresh flowers and small wooden prayer sticks. Most have a little cup or bowl, but I am not sure what they are for.

I am still fascinated by the amount of work everyone puts into their small gardens. Today's picture is of a garden outside a couple of flats, where the garbage pick-up is. Yet it still has trimed trees and a little pond and an ornamental toad.

Even the sewer plates are decorated. Most are iron coloured with flower imprints, but some are in colour, with a crowned cat doing various things. Maybe water for the fire engines? That's what the cat seems to be doing on this one.

Japanese curios

A photo of the JAMSTEC headquarters where I work. It's a bit like everything else around here. The buildings are all of the square white type, but the gardens are laid out with small paved paths running amongst the shaped trees and standing stones. There are also more sports facilities than I've seen in a while : a pool, volleyball and football fields, tennis courts, ping pong tables... All that for the 45 minutes beween the end of lunch and 1pm, when the loudspeakers play Big Ben for the end of the pause.

This evening, someone brought sweets to the lab, and so I got to taste... sweet bean patties filled with jam. They are not at all as bad as you might think. They mostly taste of honey, and not at all of beans. Still, I think I'll stick with the salty bean crackers. So far, everything I've had here has been very good. Unfortunately I'm not sure what most of it is, and I would not know how to actually make it.

Life here really is different from what I'm used to. The shuttle bus was a bit late tonight, so everyone was waiting outside for it. All in a row. Even when the bus was pulling up outside the main door the people would come out and walk in front of the bus in order to get to the back of the queue. Also when the bus arrives at the station people will stay in their seat untill all the rows in front of them are clear before getting up. And of course, everyone walks down the left side of the sidewalk, and stands on the left side on escalators. I tend to forget that every time I go outside....

And finally, a little note on the toilets. The ones at the guest house are the "simple" ones, with only a heated seat. At JAMSTEC, you have this choice :

Actually the one on the right is quite safe if you make sure you don't touch any of the buttons.