Hess Deep Home














Expedition Dispatches


Dispatch No. 11


Tuesday, April 6, 1999 21:31:42 GMT
From Monte Basgall, Duke University Senior Science Writer
Location: 2 degrees, 21' N; 101 degrees, 21' W
Weather:

  • Wind: 8 knots
  • Seas: 1-2 feet
  • Skies: partly cloudy
  • Air temperature: 84 degrees Fahrenheit
  • Seawater temperature: 87 degrees Fahrenheit

  • It was April 1 - April Fools Day - on the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution research vessel R/V Atlantis.

    A magic marker message on Atlantis's mess deck relayed bad news: the April 12 return to Manzanillo, Mexico, had been "delayed" (not true). Item No. 5 of a typed weather advisory on the lower deck bulletin board outside Atlantis's main laboratory casually forecast "huge rogue waves to wash over your ship sometime between local apparent noon and midnight as the result of a mammoth meteor hit" (definitely not true).

    Aisha Morris in Alvin.


    Back up on the mess deck, Duke University's youngest participant in the Hess Deep expedition was having breakfast at an unusually-early (for her) 7 a.m. as she prepared to board the Alvin, Woods Hole's high tech deep diving research submarine.

    "I had dreams about Alvin springing leaks; then I had dreams that the dive was postponed," said Aisha Morris, a tall senior-year undergraduate geology major, who wore an oversized Woods Hole T-shirt with Atlantis's picture on the back.

    Shortly before 8 a.m., Morris perched atop a capstain on the aft starboard (rear right) of Atlantis's main outside deck, joking about having a "dance party" in Alvin's tight confines on the way down. Then she followed Duke structural geologist Jeff Karson, the Hess Deep expedition's chief scientist, up the ladder leading to the sub, gave a short wave, and disappeared inside.

    Sometime after her return (when she was doused with ice and seawater in an Alvin dive rookie initiation rite), Morris was still wide-eyed about her exceedingly-rare adventure to that dark world of crushing pressures, unfamiliar creatures and exotic geology.

    "It was amazing!" she exclaimed. "It kind of blew my mind away just to see the things that I had been looking at in pictures.

    "To go to the bottom of the ocean - three kilometers (almost two miles) below the ocean - and to see the dikes, to see the volcanics..." Morris added, referring to two of the geological features being intensely studied by expedition scientists. "I wasn't able to touch them," she continued. "But Alvin touched them, and I was in Alvin.

    "It was really neat. I want to do it again - as many times as possible."

    It was about two years ago when Karson, who heads the Division of Earth & Ocean Sciences at Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment, first approached the personable African-American student from St. Paul, Minn. about going on the trip to the Hess Deep underwater canyon, where expedition scientists are studying the evolution of new ocean crust along a mid-ocean ridge called the East Pacific Rise.

    By then she had already gotten hooked on geology while taking an introductory course taught by Duke professor Ronald Perkins. And the persistent Karson kept asking Morris "if I wanted to do a senior thesis," she recalled. Finally agreeing, she spent last summer going through all the photographic records Karson made in 1990 on his previous Alvin dives to Hess Deep.

    Karson wanted her to make as careful an inventory as possible of Hess Deep dikes, the now fossilized passages through which magma once flowed towards the East Pacific Rise's crest. "I went through all the films and videos twice," she said. "I was also taking physics, and holding down two jobs."

    After she said she largely shoved that project aside (Karson thinks otherwise) to participate in last fall's Duke in Venice undergraduate study program, Morris resumed it with a vengence in January, first reviewing all dike pictures for a third time, then laying out all her findings on computer spread sheets that she found difficult to get to work.

    After about 1 million years of wear and tear at the ocean's bottom, dikes exposed along the Hess Deep face resemble columns of stacked stones. Still in draft form, her study found most dikes observed in 1990 were less than a meter (3.3 feet) wide and leaned at angles of 60-70 degrees to the east. Her review has provided vital information for scientists on the current Hess Deep expedition, who over the past three weeks have been constantly comparing the earlier Alvin dive results with their new ones.

    "She is the first undergraduate I have ever brought on a research cruise," an admiring Karson said today during a brief lunch break from work in his Atlantis stateroom. "She has been on an independent study project with me so she can graduate with distinction from the Division of Earth & Ocean Sciences. She has worked incredibly diligently, and very carefully, all year. She has really earned her place out here."

    The first thing about Morris that really caught Karson's eye," he added, was her quick reply to a standard professor-student question about life goals. "Without blinking, she said she would like to study the geology of Mars, and that she would like to go to Mars," he recalled.

    "I liked the spirit and enthusiasm I heard in that statement," he said. "Seeing the geology of the seafloor is like going to another planet. I thought it was a good fit. This is a great opportunity to really launch a research career."

    Yes, Morris said yesterday during her own break from work, she really DOES want to go to Mars. She is currently investigating universities with the strongest planetary geology programs, and expects to to attend one after her planned year's breather before graduate school.

    "It's really hard to go into space from what I hear," she acknowledged. "Competition to get into the astronaut program is really keen. I guess it would really help if I were in engineering. But I'm not interested in engineering. I'm interested in geology."

    Nevertheless, she "definitely" plans to apply to the astronaut corps, though not before getting her Ph.D. "That's why I enjoyed going down in the Alvin: going somewhere not very many people have gone and seeing something not very many people have seen," Morris said.

    "I feel really, really blessed to be able to participate in something like this as an undergraduate. It's just amazing," she repeated.

    After Alvin reached their target area along sloping wall of Hess Deep, Morris scanned about almost impatiently for the first signs of the objects she has studied for so long. "It was so cool to see the dikes," she said. "But then when we moved up and saw the sheet flows, I thought about it and said "Wow!"

    Not to be confused with rows of dikes, which are themselves called "sheeted," sheet flows are the hardened horizontal remnants of sheet-like rivulets of lava. These flows once emerged in high volumes out of unusually big-diameter dikes, which they sometimes then spread out on top of, she said.

    Unlike "pillow lavas," which look just like their names imply, sheet flows could not cool fast enough to harden into compact clumps. Instead, the flows spread out over available surfaces, with lava continuing to flow inside them even after their outermost skins had frozen.

    Their cores thus became the equivalents of the lava tubes tourists visit today in above-sea-level volcanic settings like Hawaii, she added.

    Before the Hess Deep expedition began, Morris had read a study on how sheet flows are created. Then, looking through Alvin's slightly downward pointing portholes on the first day in April, "we saw these large dikes below this sheet flow," she recalled. "It was really neat to see visual confirmation of that idea, even though I had never seen any sheet flows in any of the Alvin pictures from the 1990 dive."

    Morris is ironically missing class lectures in petrology, the science of rocks, to participate in Hess Deep. But her petrology instructor, associate professor Alan Boudreau, "gave me an assignment I could do out here," she said. "It basically has to do with mid-ocean ridges, and different petrological aspects of the cruise. I am describing some of the rocks we brought up."

    In between studying rocks, standing scientific observation watches, helping update the official Alvin dive map, and serving as Karson's official "enforcer" who ensures Hess Deep scientists complete their Alvin dive reports, Morris is also trying to discipline herself to finish writing her thesis on dike dimensions and orientations.

    "It has to be done before I leave Hess Deep," she said a bit nervously, "because I have to present it back at Duke to the senior thesis committee." She spoke just four days before the Hess Deep field work ends late on April 8, when Atlantis will turn north for a three-day transit back to Mexico.

    Among all her four years at Duke, Morris rates Hess Deep as her "number one" undergraduate academic experiences. Even though she is far removed from the university, "you're still in discussions with professors, and they can explain to you what they know," she said. "And its all directly in front of you, as opposed to sitting in a classroom and looking at the board. The trip is so amazing, and I'm learning tremendous amounts of geology."

    There has only been one major down side to her month at sea, and it is not missing Duke's spring break from classes. "Spring break wasn't a big deal at all," she said. "Actually, my friends and I are going to go somewhere at the end of the year anyway."

    But missing the collegiate mens and womens basketball tournaments "hurt my feelings more than spring break," she added. "I'm a big basketball fan, and I had friends playing in it, and I miss the game."



    Webmanager <jrattray@duke.edu>