Tracy Gregg, Port Observer Transcript
Karl Gronvold, Stbd Observer; D. Foster, Pilot

Time Depth Heading Observation
0847 Starting Maurice dance
0849.30 Maurice Dance stopped
0941 2667 255 We have bottom. Looks like there's a nice sedimented fissure right below.
0944 2676 299 x6822 y16232. Settling down on the bottom. It's heavily sedimented, sediment cover age 3 pillows, I guess. There's so much sediment it's kinda hard to even tell that. There are some, yes, I do see some striated pillows sticking out of the sediment. Sediment cover is uniformly deep. There's a stalked coral, looks like, out the window, looks like about 60 cm high.
0946 299 Same xy. I don't see any glass anywhere, and the sediment cover is uniform. There are just individual pillows sticking up out of the sediment cover, and there's certainly a heavy coating of sediment on the pillows that are sticking out. I do locally see some buds on the pillows, and there's a little itty-bitty sea cucumber swimming past my window. But again, no glass, and even the buds don't appear to have any glass.
0954 2677 We're doing a little look-around for a quickie sample where we first landed. We're not getting terribly good fixes here, so we're gonna keep our eyes open and I'll try to be extra-good about recording time-depth-heading.
1001 2677 Dudley just picked up a bud from one of these heavily sedimented pillows--sediment cover age 3. We're now picking up and moving. I gave him a heading of about 100 to get to way point 2. I've got the port camera set on 15 s rep rate except when we're stopped and collecting a sample and then I'm moving it to 60 s.
1005 2665 106 Just passed over a narrow fissure that was perpendicular to the sub direction, and was about 50 cm wide.
1007 2664 106 Just passed over another narrow fissure, about 30 cm wide in the sedimented pillows and lobes. And there's a lot of sediment out here--not much relief. This is sediment cover age 3 or 4, even. Well, maybe not 4. I guess if it were 4 we wouldn't see anything.
1009 2663 107 Passing over a fissure that's about 30cm wide that's trending roughly to about 7:00, more like 8:00. Coming up across a paired set of fissures: one very narrow, about 10-20 cm wide; the other approaching a meter wide, through massive lavas. I can see down the wall. It's nothing but filled pillows down into the wall of the fissure. It's trending at about 8:00.
1012 2663 093 Passing over a fissure, running about 7:00. Fissure about 50 cm across. We're in a very, this is sediment cover age 3.5. Very little poking out.
1013 098 Crossing over another set of fissures now. Very chewed up terrain. Omigosh there's a huge, HUGE crack in the floor. The crack itself I'm guessing is 8 m or more, approximately 5 m wide. It's sediment covered. I look down the wall and I can see many, many thin sheets. I don't think they're bathtub rings. Sheets on the order of 5-6 cm in thickness. The trend of that was about 9:00.
1013 2662 096 Crossing over another fissure heading directly away from me, about 9:00 as the sub goes. About 70-80 cm wide.
1014 2662 099 A large, we're crossing over a large fissure that's about 5-6m across. Here it's splintered, so there's a little horst in the middle of it. Couldn't see the depth; it was filled with talus. Because of the talus I don't think it was more than 2m deep where I was looking. Again, same trend.
1015 Crossing over another smaller fissure
1016 2662 098 Passing over another fissure, this one trending about 8:00 as the sub flies. Still heavily sedimented, sediment cover 3. But I can see that we're over lobate sheet flows that have local collapses, collapses on the order of 3m across and very shallow.
1016 099 Passing over a large fissure about 6 m wide. Passing over another one. I can look into the wall. I can see that the wall is made up of a combination of sheet flows and collapsed lobate flows. This is a wide fissure but not very deep--only about 5 m deep and probably at least that wide.
1017 2662 099 Back into pillows, decorated pillows poking up out of the sediment. Still same sediment cover.
1018 2661 098 We're passing over still 3.5 sediment cover over bulbous decorated pillows. There are anemones and stalked crinoids, but more importantly, there is rare hydrothermal staining on some of these pillows. I've seen it on 2 or 3 pillows in localized pockets of white, orange and yellow hydrothermal staining.
1019 2661 099 Just passed over a very small fissure, about 10-20 cm wide, trending about 9:00 using sub heading direction as noon. Passing over another fissure, this one about 60 cm wide. Same heading as the rest.
1020 2660 095 Passed over another fissure, just a few cm wide, 10-20 cm wide. there are anemones out here, stalked crinoids. I just saw another sea cucumber swim by. Still in sediment cover age 3.5-4 decorated pillows.
1021 2659 096 Just passed over another crack heading about 8:00.
1022 097 Passing over a pair of fissures; narrow, they're really just cracks separated by about 2 m and trending about 9:00.
1023 2661 096 Another crack about 10-20cm wide. There's less relief now, and the sediment. Fewer pillows poking up, so I'm gathering we're traveling over mostly lobate flows that have been sedimented.
1023 092 Another pair of cracks heading off at 9:00.
1024 2662 095 Flying over a fairly featureless sediment plain. The occasional collapse pit, which again makes me feel like we're traveling over lobates. The terrain is very undulating. The collapse that I see is very small, just enough to tell me that we're traveling over hollow lobates.
1025 2663 094 Another crack. We're coming up to a larger collapse here in the lobate terrains and it looks like the lava channels that we've seen but it's very heavily sedimented.
1026 2665 095 There's a large fissure, about 6 m deep and about 8 m across. The ground dips away, now it's sloped away from that fissure. That was an uplift. There's an uplift around the fissure. The other side is sedimented lobates again. Here comes a smaller crack, only about 50 cm wide, trending at 9:00.
1027 Another large fissure, about 8 m deep and about 5 m across. I can see in the wall that the wall is composed of thin sheet flows and collapsed lobates. Interestingly, some of those sheet flows that look like sheet flows are clearly selvages within a collapsed lobate, so we need to be cautious when we see these things in walls. Coming over sedimented folded sheets, another crack trending about 9:00. These are chaotically folded sheets, again, sediment cover age 3.
1029 2667 094 There's an extinct hydrothermal chimney out my window. I can't see the full extent of it, which means that it's at least the height of the submarine (without the sail). And it was built on a much larger mound. The chimney itself was probably about 5 m tall, and built on a much larger mound. I think you can see some of the relief in the sit cam.
1030 2667 093 These xy's look like they're probably correct: 4961, 16977. Just passed over a large fissure, trending about 9:00.
1031 Heading over another crack, okay, it's a fissure about 10 m wide and only about 2-3m deep in this sedimented lobate terrain. I would still call this age 3. Lobes flowing, definitely flowing towards me. They're elongate, flowing from the direction the sub is pointing towards us, which is good because that means they're flowing away from the axis. I still don't see any glass. Actually here, the sediment cover is lighter, because I'm seeing the full expression of the lobes. I would call this sediment cover 2. The sediment is complete, but light: I can see the expression of individual lobes. So when we passed that hydrothermal mound, we did pass over some sort of contact. I don't think we're going to sample this though because it's not glassy at all. I don't think it's lava lake.
1034 2674 084 Passing over--This looks like a tumulus! Passing over from lobate terrain to a big, smooth bulge in a sheet flow, flat with clefts on top--I think that was a tumulus. And it's long. That crack is extending as far as I can see away from the sub. I think that was a big tumulus, surrounded by these lobate terrains. It looks like we're coming up to another one. Another "heave upward" in a sheet flow in these lobate flows. Of course, the sheet flow is actually just a large lobe. It's sub-length, which is 18 feet, 6 m with a vertical relief of about 4 m. It's a big huge swell in the lobe. And it's just a big fat tumulus. I see a long eel-like fish; I have no idea what it is. So we're entering a terrain where the lobes are much larger and I see some glass. I see glass. But not everywhere. So we have an interfingering of older and younger lavas here. Not everywhere is there glass.
1044 2679 Dudley just collected a sample of this, I'd put it at sediment cover age 2.5 lobates and pillowed flows. I asked him to stop here and take a sample because for the first time we're seeing glass. Having not seen the lava lake flow before, my eyes are not calibrated--just wanted to cover my bases here. We're going to head now into the graben, probably within a couple hundred meters or so, and begin our southward traverse.
1045 2677 078 Just passing over chaotically folded sheet flow surrounded by broken up lobate flows.
Heading up what looks like a talus slope. Rubble that is fist-sized to head-sized and now I'm seeing outcrop, which is a smooth sheet flow, featureless, with a dip of probably 30 or more degrees. More talus, rounded talus, I'm wondering if this is a constructed pillow slope. We're climbing up a wall here, and it does look like some of this talus is lava drips, not blocks. Very fragmented surfaces. Now I'm crossing over a crack, fissure, with more talus. We're starting to get to some of the fissures in the western wall of the axis. Crossing over a horst now. A very deep fissure now. Massive flow, massive flow at the bottom of the fissure, massive flow about 2 m thick. It's got nice, I wouldn't call it columnar jointing, but it's got pseudo-columnar jointing topped by a crust of, the rest of it, the total relief is about 6 m. Bottom part is massive flow, upper part is combination of thin sheet flows and lobate flows. Another fissure here, a massive flow on the bottom about 2m thick. More fissures. The surface that we're flying over is alternating sheet flow and broken up--what are all these things in the water? They are little animals. They look like little lobsters almost. They look like little crabs! Are they baby crabs? A series of parallel fissures all trending 9:00. A jumbled sheet flow on the bottom. The fissures are on the order of 5m wide at the top, maybe only a meter wide at the bottom. Relief on the fissures, really hard to tell because of the chaotic nature of the terrain, probably on the order of 6-8 m.
1049 2665 074 I seem to have passed over a series of fissures and now we're in this sea of little animals floating in the water column, and we're in a chaotically folded and jumbled sheet flow.
1050 072 Just passed over another large fissure heading about 9:00. About 1.5m across and 10 m down, no, not that far, about 6m down. Here's another crack here. Again, we're flying over this jumbled sheet flow. I'd give it a sediment cover age of 1.5. There's a lot of Mn coating on this lava. Another large fissure about 2m across and about 10 m down. Massive flow at the bottom. Broken up folds, no glass. Another fissure.
1051 2666 054 5199, 16386. Yet another crack, very deep. Series of fissures again.
We just passed out of the jumbled sheets and the last fissure, and we're now over heavily sedimented lobates again.
1052 2667 054 Now passing over flat, featureless sheet flow which is cracked on the surface. It's bowed upward. Maybe its another tumulus. Massive flow. I can see pseudo columnar jointing. Surface of it is locally jumbled, in the distance I see jumbled. There's an octopus out my window, sitting down on this flat sheet flow. I see jumbled all around. I think this is a flat patch in the jumbled.
1054 2557 Just got a call from the surface saying that we are due north of way point 2, so we are in the axis. Dudley's turning to a heading of 18-something. I have an xy of 5227 16700. Says we're about 300m north of our way point, and so we have been in the axis. I think al those fissures and this jumbled sheet flow are part of the axis--and maybe part of the lava lake flow. I see local hydrothermal staining in this flat sheet flow, just a little patch of yellow and white in the crack.
1056 2669 191 Traveling over a flat sheet flow. I'd give it a sediment cover age of 2, 2.5 maybe. I see cracks, and there's hydrothermal staining associated with these cracks. And as Dudley points out, there is a snow of all these little unknown animals. They look like little baby crabs with tails. They're round, they're about the size of my thumb. We're flying over a mixture of folded sheet flows, locally broken up, and lobate flows.
1100 2668 We've been flying, according to the surface, which gives us our range and bearing to way point 2, we are in the axis now, though we never really passed over a wall, which I guess I didn't expect considering the topography here. We are in the middle of a chaotically folded sheet flow. I've asked Dudley to take up a piece of it because it may be lava lake, I don't know. I don't know if it extends this far north, but we'd better take a chunk because Ken did not get this far south. Xys have not been good.
1106 2668 194 x5465, y 17138. Dudley scooped up a sample of folded sheet flow, dumped in the basket 3B and we're heading on now to way point 2.
1107 2667 195 Heading to way point 2. Our prediction is that the feature we're going to that's around way point 2 is a lava channel, flowing to the north, in which case lavas should be flowing towards us.
1108 196 If the thing we saw in the sonar was in fact a lava channel distributing things to the north, then the lava should be flowing towards us. But this stuff is so broken up it's very hard to get flow direction although... There's a lot of relief on the order of 1-2 m on this broken up folded sheet flow. Right here on my side, there's a lava channel, that's flowing towards us. The folds are intact so I can get a flow direction. Beautiful folds, beautiful large folds. They're all broken somewhat but the individual fragments are on the order of 1m long and 30-50 cm across.
1110 2668 192 Out my window I still see this beautifully chaotically folded flow with large flow fragments, and Karl says out his side it's dipping very steeply away from him. So I think we're on the margin of some flow here. Since we're going south, that means the flow is extending to the east but not west.
1112 2668 194 Just passed over a large drop-off. I wouldn't call it a fissure, but now on the flow is a different lava terrain. It is smoother, we've lost the folded stuff. There's some jumbled terrain on the floor that looks more heavily sedimented; of course, we're flying farther up. We just passed over that feature. This is older, definitely older. Well, older--it has more sediment on it. I would give this a sediment of 2 whereas the other stuff was 1.5. Jumbled flow, chaotically, WOW--really twisted up. This is an obstacle in a lava channel that I'm seeing right here. It's got lava wrapped around it at different levels, indicating a minimum flow depth in this lava channel of about 3 m, just in this little lava channel that we're passing over that's about 4 m across. And here's the other side. This channel that we're crossing over looks like a spill-over.
1115 2672 243 We just passed way point 2. We passed over a vague contact. It was really a combination of a bathymetric and a sediment cover contact. The bathymetric high, the shallow area, was this younger, beautifully folded but broken up flow with channel systems in it. Once we passed over that, we're now in slightly more sedimented terrain. I would put the shallow stuff at about 1.5 sediment cover, and this tuff closer to 2. Both Karl and I saw evidence of large channels in that system, so we're convinced that that Moai feature that we see in the sidescan is in fact a lava channel distributary system. We're now heading to way point 3, which will zig us back across this feature. We didn't bother taking any samples because I believe that sample 3 is the same stuff.
1118 2670 244 x5403, 16941. Flat sedimented sheets. Sediment cover age 3. I can see very little relief. There's an undulation to the topography. I see anemones, stalked crinoids, hydrothermal staining in the cracks. Yellow and white hydrothermal staining. Old serpulid worm shells. Now we're coming up a wall, covered with talus. And on top of that wall is a sheet flow. Crossing over a fissure with massive sheet flows in the wall.
1119 2668 246 Back into the jumbled sheet flow. We're climbing up, up, so this is back over that Moai feature. So that whole feature is just a big jumbled sheet flow. We're crossing over, I don't know what this is, this is kindof a crack but kindof a channel. [Karl: this is the channel again.] Yeah, I think you're right, but it's awfully narrow.
1122 2662 247 Still heading over this jumbled sheet flow. There's a large crack, fissure about 10m wide and about 8m deep trending at about 10:00, that at least locally marks a boundary between lobates and jumbled, but not regionally--we're back in jumbled again. I see a sponge, a coral, and a feather-duster thing, an all those little crabby things in the water.
1124 2662 246 Karl's got some hydrothermal stuff out his side. We're over, I'd say age 2 lobates, 2, 2.5 lobates now. We've lost that jumbled flow stuff. x5235, y25659
1125 2664 x5200 y16830. I just gave Dudley the go-ahead to go to way point 4 even though we weren't quite at way point 3 yet because we are in sedimented, Macdonald age 2-3 broad lobes and sheets. Some local fissures with folded lava on the floor. It looks like lava draped out of the fissure wall, into the floor of the fissure . Fissure was about 2m deep and about 1m wide. We're now crossing back over the axis, over the graben floor, to way point 4.
1128 2666 117 Heading over a drop-off that I think may be the channel in that Moai feature, although on the other side of it, now as we're coming out of it, it's sedimented sheet flows. So that was a flow margin again. So now we're on sediment cover age 3 smooth sheet flows. So that was the margin of the jumbled flow, just a tongue of the jumbled stuff. This sheet flow is fissured and in the fissure, it looks like it's made out of multiple thin sheet flows, and now we're in sedimented lobates.
1129 2669 117 Over age 2.5 lobates with hydrothermal staining in the cracks, a lot of these little crab-like things in the water.
1130 2671 116 Age 2-3 sedimented lobates with lots of piles of hydrothermal staining in the cracks, local anemones, all those crab-like things, stalked crinoids, and lots of piles of hydrothermal staining on top of the sediment. And I'm crossing into jumbled sheet flow.
1135 2672 122 We're a couple hundred meters away from way point 4, which means we're still in the axis even though we're in sedimented lobate terrain. I would give it a sediment cover age of 2.
1138 2676 123 Looks like there's slightly less sediment out here. We're coming up to a little fissure which has pillows in it all the way down. Big crack, I can't see the bottom of it. And now we're in sheet flow on the other side of this fissure. OK, I think we're coming up to the east wall, and that's what all these cracks are.
1139 2679 124 Just passed over a cliff about 8m down. Sheet flows on the bottom.
1140 2682 123 Still flying over these sheet flows that were at the bottom of that drop-off. They are chaotically folded, locally jumbled.
1143 2685 Well, we're turning around now. Dudley's settling down to get a sample of the sheet flow that was at the base of that cliff we dropped off on.
1149 2688 Dudley's just picking up off the ground after collecting a piece of folded sheet flow. I think we're very near the east wall of the axial graben. This is the sheet flow that was at the floor of the large drop-off.
1151 2680 119 Coming up a large wall. Can't see the bottom of it. Filled with massive pillow and lobate flows. Coming over the top now. Capped with a massive sheet flow that's about 1.5-2.0m thick. Flat on top.
1152 2672 116 Now over lineated and chaotically folded sheets. Flowing either away from, or towards that wall. And now passing into lobates. All about age 2, age 2.5 maybe.
1156 2674 120 We're heading up a talus slope, a little bit of a cliff. I think we'll get to the top of this thing, if it's not too big, an then turn around. I'm seeing pillow fragments, lobate outcrops. Definitely a tectonic feature--pillows and lobes are just sheared off. Getting some good thicknesses though.
1158 2659 117 x5691 y16477. We climbed a cliff. We're powering up a cliff to get a piece of rock and then we'll head down to way point 5
1201 2648 x5747 y16586. Just climbed up a wall. We are apparently 100m to the east of way point 4, so we're on the eastern wall of the axis, so we're going to turn to way point 5 and start heading down the axis.
1204 2659 230 We're heading to way point 5. I think what we're going to do is keep our eyes open to see if we see anything that looks like a contact as we head south, and if we see a contact, sample it. Otherwise we're just gonna stick close to the middle of the graben if we can and head south so we can get to that lump.
1205 2662 236 Passing over that cliff. We just went over that cliff and the bottom's way down there.
1206 2675 235 Over sedimented lobates
1207 2677 236 Over sedimented lobates
1210 2679 235 Still over sediment cover age 2 lobates with the occasional pillow. The lobes are broad, with vertical relief on the order of 70 cm, and on the order of 1-2 m across.
1212 2677 234 Passing over a fissure oriented about 10:00 about 1m wide and I can't see the bottom
1213 2681 236 Contact between chaotically folded sheet flow, quite thick, steep flow front. Flow front dipping on the order of 25-30°, onlapping onto the lobates on the margin. Total relief on the jumbled flow is hard to say, but on the order of 4 m or more. Coming up on the top of it.
1214 2679 236 Still chaotically folded. Just passed over a large crack in this massive sheet flow. I can see it's at least 3-4m thick. It looked like a local crack. The sheet flow is continuing but it's smooth here, not folded. Now I'm in lobates at 1215. That was a little local channeled stretch of jumbled sheet. It looked to me like it was flowing roughly parallel to the sub direction.
1215 2668 236 Here's another crack. A series of fissures; can't see the bottom of them, 2-3m wide.
1217 2685 233 Passing in and out of lobes, pillows and sheets. It looks like locally the sheets are kipukas within the lobes, and that the lobes are onlapping the sheet flow.
1219 2680 230 x5466 y16371. Flying over this smooth sheet flow that is locally tectonically broken up. It's sortof dropped in places, fractured in places, but it's a high. WOW, this is a big crack. Can't see the bottom of it but it's about 3-4m wide in this sheet flow.
1220 2678 236 This sheet flow is onlapping onto lobate flow here. The sheet flow is locally jumbled, but we're definitely getting into more lobate. I'd call this age 1.5. Dusting of sediment. There's hydrothermal staining in some of the cracks. Vacant serpulid worm shells, lots of anemones and stalked crinoids, and I saw a lone brachiurid crab.
1222 2676 231 Passing over lobes with local pillows now sticking up. I'd still call it age 2.
1223 235 x5369, y16288. We've been flying over these sedimented lobes, and it corresponds to a broad, shallow portion of the graben. I guess I expected to find here massive sheet flows spilling off over the edges but instead its exactly the opposite. It's these broad lobate flows, age 2, I don't really see any glass. Well, no, there is some glass on these things. Local pillows. There's lots of sessile organisms: anemones, some sponge things. Every once in a while we pass over a patch that has vacant serpulid shells, some small patches of hydrothermal staining. Certainly nothing's happening here now. And not a lava pillar in sight, that's for darn sure.
1227 2678 194 x5286, 16228. Settling down in the middle of these sedimented lobates to pick up a rock, and then I think we're gonna fly, try to stay within the graben here and fly to way point 8. I have a feeling if we keep trying to bounce off the walls we're going to get ourselves confused because the west wall is so poorly defined here. I'm pretty darn sure we're in the graben here, in the axis, and so we're just going to kinda fly southward, sortof south-southwest, to try to get to that mound before we run out of time.
1234 2678 156 x5288 y16212. Just picking up off the ground after collecting sample #5 from this sediment-cover age 2 broad lobate flows. We just got word from above that the weather is possibly not going to cooperate. So we're scrapping our original plan. We're going to fly over this stuff to way point 8 to see if we can find any contacts, any evidence of the lava lake. This may be the margin of the lava lake, I don't know, we'll see. And we'll just keep going as long as we can.
1234 197 Heading to way point 8.
1236 2678 199 x5268, y16135. Heading over broad lobates but we're getting a lot of pillows now. Some of the lobes are getting narrower. Mostly bulbous pillows now, pillows on the order of 3/4 to 1 m across. And some narrow lobes. Here, out my window right now I see a split pillow feeding a lobe, that's beautiful. Sediment cover age 2. Sessile organisms common: anemones, sponges, stalked crinoids, the occasional serpulid worm shell, at least I think that's what they are.
1240 2684 198 x5302, y16443. Still flying over a mixture of bulbous lobes and pillows. It looks like we're on a pillow mound; I'm not really sure how that happened.
1243 2684 198 x5211, y15896. Still over bulbous pillows and lobes. I see occasional patches of hydrothermal staining in the cracks.
1245 2681 177 x5203, y15846. I just asked Dudley to head more due south. I want to make sure we're staying pretty much in the center of the graben instead of hugging one of the walls. It may mean that we end up sneaking around way point 8 but I'll worry about that if we actually get that far south.
1246 2680 180 More lobes, broad lobes. Fewer pillows here. Some minor local collapses on the order of tens of cm. Holothurian, anemones, corals. There's a wall out my side, I can't see the full dimensions of it. It's some sort of drop-off--it's higher than us and we're in the low. Probably about 2m or so.
1247 2678 181 Coming up a rise. Lava's broken up on this rise. It's not talus, it's "in-place" talus if you will, things are sort of shattered here. Surrounding the rise are bulbous pillows and lobes.
This rise is a little kipuka I think around these younger pillows and lobes.
1249 2672 178 Some very large pillows out my window 2-3-4m.
1252 2665 183 x5217, y15682. There's a large fissure beneath me running about 1:00, about 3m wide and couldn't get a depth on that one.
1255 2670 182 x5225, y15576. Getting into fissured pillows. The fissures tend to be pretty narrow, less than 2m. All running about 1:00 in relation to the sub. There's a beautiful drained pillow. Local patches of hydrothermal staining.
1256 2670 200 I just asked Dudley to change the heading so we're more straight on course to way point 8. x5228, y15536. I think should keep us squarely within the axis as we travel down to way point 8. We're still on these broad lobes and pillows. I don't think this is lava lake. We haven't seen anything that looks like a contact.
1258 2667 198 Maybe a contact but it's really hard to tell. There's slightly more glass here, slightly less sediment. I think we'll keep going and pick up a sample in a few hundred meters. Local hydrothermal staining in some of the pockets.
1300 x5214, y15487. An extinct chimney complex covered with anemones about 6-8m tall, right smack in our path. It's not doing anything, but it's tall and skinny and we're having to go around it.
1303 2663 202 Just passed through an extinct chimney field. x5233, y15419. Lots of anemones out on these pillows and lobes. Sediment age 1.5 perhaps. Anemones, small zoaercid. Some decorations on some of the pillows. There is glass visible.
1304 2662 204 Still not far from this extinct chimney and there are anemones everywhere. There's one about every 20-30cm over the pillows and lobes, at least in the near field. Karl, do ya got lots of anemones out there too?
1305 2668 205 Just came over a little sulfide deposit. Dudley says, based on the water, which is kindof cloudy, he thinks there's probably still some activity going on around here. Just passed out of the anemone field, although there are still plenty of fish in the water. And yeah, I guess I can tell the water's getting cloudy because I keep thinking my window's getting fogged and it's not.
1307 2663 205 x5184, y 15300. Maybe. Still in lobes and pillows. Sediment age 1 perhaps. Just passed over something that looked very much like an Alvin weight except that it seemed rectangular instead of square, sticking up. And it looked like it was surrounded by the lava, not crashed into it. Perhaps a subtle distinction. This looks like new stuff to me.
1308 I think we may have passed a contact about 2 minutes ago into slightly younger pillows. They're certainly more decorated and they appear to have a little bit more glass on them and slightly less sediment cover.
1309 2668 203 Just passed over another extinct sulfide mound, and I see a little swimming sea cucumber out my window.
1313 2668 Just settled down to the floor to pick up a sample here because I think we crossed a contact near 1303 or 1302 of this glassy lava. We're not far from an extinct sulfide, so there may be some serious alteration on this particular bud. We're now continuing down the axis, looking for the lava lake.
1317 2677 202 Still lobes out my side and pillows. Karl says he sees some jumbled flows and collapses out his side.
1319 2678 201 Passing into broader lobates, sediment age 2, well, 1.5, Decorated buds on the lobes, but fewer pillows now. Vertical relief on the order of 50-80 cm but fewer pillows.
1320 2678 200 x5105 y15067.
1320 2676 203 x5098 y 15044. There seems to be slightly more sediment here. I'm not exactly sure where the contact was, but this is more sedimented than we've been. According to the bathymetry we're supposed to be in a little bit of a basin, but it doesn't seem that way. Of course, it is supposed to be a broad, shallow basin. We're continuing onto way point 8 which is about 900m away. We may make it.
1324 2683 205 Bulbous pillows, not heavily decorated, but there are some buds on them, and lobes. Sediment age 2.
1325 2684 200 Coming onto local sheet flows, just little patches of them, folded. Some local collapses in these sediment cover age 2 lobate flows. Collapses are small, on the order of 1-2m, and not very deep, on the order of 1m or less. But I can see bathtub rings inside them and they're very typical collapses.
1328 2672 202 Climbing up a rise in these decorated pillows and lobes. They are, we're definitely climbing up a rise. You can tell just by looking at the pillows; they're all elongate toward the front of the sub.
1329 2665 204 x5020 y14784. Climbing up pillow slope. Pillows and lobes, decorated. Sediment age 1.5. Beautiful drained pillows flowing downhill and elongate lobes.
1336 2651 298 Still over lobes and pillows. The slope is sloping towards stbd., but it's fairly gentle. As I look up out my window I do see pillows and lobes flowing towards me, but it's not a very steep slope.
1339 2658 207 Just came downhill off of a little pillow construct, and now the pillows seem to be flowing from the stbd side to the port side. That might have been a contact between adjacent pillow mounds.
1340 2658 206 We're now in primarily lobates. Still age 1.5-2, but few pillows. We're not climbing, but we might be coming to the crest of another pillow mound.
1342 2659 209 Still on a, I think we're on the flank of a pillow mound. It's sloping, it's definitely all pillows, and they're all sloping away, the ground as well is sloping away from me on the port side. And Karl says the pillows are elongate towards him on his side. So the summit is somewhere, lessee, we're heading south, so the summit is somewhere to the west.
1346 2661 211 Still sedimented lobes and pillows, mostly pillows and highly decorated with long, thin buds coming out of them. Now as I look out my window I'm looking up slope, and the pillows are flowing towards me.
1347 2658 221 x4845, y14278. Flying on the flank of a pillow/lobate mound. The pillows are flowing, the pillows and lobes are flowing towards me. They are elongate, up to 4-5m long but only maximum of a meter in diameter, and I think most of them are less than that; I think most of them are on the order of 70cm - 1m in diameter.
1349 2658 222 Climbing up slowly to way point 8. Oh look there's a galatheid crab and an anemone, lots of anemones. Coming up this pillow mound. There are a lot of anemones, the large translucent kind, not the little orange kind. [Karl: we're certainly on top of a slope.] And I think we're coming up on top of this lump, which is a big pillow mound. We'll get a chunk of it, and since we still have time, we'll head off to way point 9.
1357 2656 Just collected sample #7 from way point #8, on top, an ornate bud from a pillow on a pillow mound.
1359 2654 167 x4782 y14207. Dudley just collected a pillow bud from way point 8 which turned out to be the top of a pillow mound. We saw no obvious contacts to the north of that. North of that region seemed to be a plexus of overlapping pillow mounds which all seemed to be about the same age. We're now heading to way point 9 which is roughly SE of here. We'll see if we can see any contacts as we head toward the lava lake region.
1400 Just looked out my window and saw 3 of those dandelions, some anemones, more dandelions, sponge, anemones, saw a galatheid crab. The big anemones. I see some snails, a shrouded starfish.
1400 2655 167 We're still on top of this pillow mound. The pillows are on the order of 3-4m long and 1-2 m in diameter. None of them are 2 m in diameter, more like 1.5 m. Budded, sediment age 1.5-2. Intermingled with lobes, but mostly pillows. Total vertical relief is up to 2.5-3 m when you've got a couple of pillows piled up on top of each other. Doesn't look very glassy, though I do get some reflections. When we get really close I can see that there's a Mn coating on just about everything.
1402 2655 168 Karl says the pillows are definitely dipping away from him on his side, and now we're coming into some more lobes over here. The dip is not quite so clear. Looks like we're on a local high, maybe, or the slope is rising in front of us a little bit now.
1405 2657 168 Still over lobes and pillows. Looks like to me they're flowing towards me, which would be away from Karl. Decorated, and it looks like the decorations care where the slope is--they preferentially pop out on the downhill side of these things. Which I guess makes sense but I never noticed it before.
1406 2661 170 We're coming into broad lobes now that are locally collapsed. Some of the collapses are on the order of 1.5 m deep and 3m across. Still sediment covered.
2662 167 Karl says he sees a fault on his side, and there's a large drop-off on my side. Maybe about 10-12m of drop-off. Oh, no, my perspective is wrong. That's a fault, and I can't see how deep it is, but it's about 8 m wide.
1411 2679 170 Out my window there's another large fissure or drop-off. That would be a fissure. Very wide, filled with blocks of talus. It's a sub-length-and-a-half wide. Crossing it, coming onto broken up sheet flows--quite glassy when the sediment's been knocked off them.
1414 2680 171 Sedimented lobes. Pillows are rare. Lobes are on the order of 1m across, maximum. Most of them are elongate and skinny. They're flowing...hmm, they don't really seem to have a preferred orientation here. They seem to be flowing toward the direction the sub is heading. There's another fissure out my wall, heading about 2:00. I can see broken pillows in the wall.
1415 2679 172 Climbing up a little slope here. The pillows are elongate toward the sub. They are local patches of hydrothermal staining in the pockets between the pillows. There are lobes that are decorated. Mostly bulbous pillows.
1416 2675 172 Large pillows now sloping away from me, almost directly away from me, maybe a little bit towards behind me, maybe a little towards 9:00.
1421 We just floated in the column for a while until we got a fix. Dudley says he sees an 8m tall dead chimney out the front. x4972 y13713. We're heading toward way point 9. Looks like broken up sheet flow here. Lots of staining. White and yellow hydrothermal staining.
1422 There's this wall out my window that's about 2.5-3m tall. I'm getting a good cross-section at the bottom. There's a massive pillow flow, about 1m. Followed by another meter of a sheet flow, followed by sheet flows that are varying in thickness. [to Karl] We just climbed out of a collapse, and now I have lobes and pillows.
1423 2663 203 Right below me there's this folded sheet flow.
1426 2668 215 We dropped down into a little low because we thought it might have been a lava channel, but the wall looks very tectonic to me. It's got broken pillows, I can see flow thicknesses, so I don't think that's what it is. Here's an extinct sulfide mound that I certainly can't see the extent of. Probably on the order of 10-12m at least. It's got corals and sponges growing on it now. There's another big drop-off here.
1429 2672 235 We dropped into a low that was floored with sheet flows. We asked Dudley to get a sample because I don't know, maybe it's the lava lake flow. It's folded to smooth sheet flow. Sediment age 2, 2.5
1436 We just picked up off the floor after picking up the last sample, which I believe is sample #8, and we are now heading toward way point 10. This is going to take us across the low part of the axis. We're taking a course of about 205, which should take us catty-wampus across the graben, and we should find the lava lake flow this way.
1436 2674 206 There's a broken up sheet flow out my window. I think some of it's talus. In fact, I think a lot of it's talus, but there are local in situ folds. So it looks like we may partially be flying over a jumbled sheet flow now.
1437 205 We've got a fault on Karl's side, there's sheet flows on my side. It looks on the sit cam that the trend of the fault is roughly parallel to the trend the sub is going.
1438 2680 209 Heading down into a depression. There's talus all over, some hydrothermal staining on the walls. I think this is probably some sort of down-dropped block.
1439 2684 207 Lots of hydrothermal staining on the walls of this depression, red, orange and white. Right now there's only stalked crinoids. Oh, I see dead tevnia shells. There was a tubeworm colony here. Riftia shells hanging there. Tevnia and riftia shells. Definitely nobody home now.
1440 2690 208 Now passing out of the talus, which is locally covering up these lobes and pillows which are flowing from the stbd side to the port side. Mostly lobes, fairly narrow.
1444 2690 I think we're a little bit too far east. We're still in lobes and pillows.
1446 2689 219 Still over lobes and pillows.
1450 2670 We're gonna be heading due south. I think we're sortof touching the walls of this graben, being still in lobes and pillows. I really wanna try to pick up this lava lake, so in a last gasp effort before we have to surface I've asked Dudley to head due south which according to my map, anyway, puts us close to the center of the graben. We'll just try to fly down the graben and try to stay in it until we run out of time.
1456 2684 163 Bulbous pillows in a collapse feature. There's talus out my side. It's a wall, definitely wall, lots of sulfide staining on the wall.
1457 2681 179 Pile of sulfides out my window. heavy sediment, lots of talus. Karl says he's got a drop-off on his side.
1459 180 There's a drop-off on my side lined with talus. I don't see any primary flow features.
1500 2675 180 Nothing but collapse on either side and everything's pretty much broken up: there aren't any real primary flow features.
1504 26766 225 We've been kindof following a series of collapses. Karl sees pillows at the bottom. Yeah, it does look like we've got lobes meeting the talus here.
1506 2681 We're in pillows and lobes at the bottom of a collapse or some sort of depression. There's been a series of collapses with lots of talus as we move farther south. I've asked Dudley to get a sample.
1509 2680 Just picked up sample number 9, part of pillowed flows at the bottom of this collapse. We only have about 10 minutes left,
1510 214 I have pillows, lobes out the window, occasionally fissured.
1513 2684 092 Last couple of minutes we're going to motor east just to see what happens.
1513 094 Coming up a talus cliff. I don't see any primary flow features; nothing really looks like it's in situ. Now we're finally getting some outcrop here--pillow wall, perpendicular to the direction the sub is facing.
2695 093 Coming down off the cliff, oh here's a pillar. Finally found a couple of pillars on the other side of that cliff. I think I now know where we were in the sidescan. I asked Dudley to grab a piece of one, not too specific, just to see if this is in fact lava lake composition
1521 2619 273 x4808 y12884. This is the site of sample. # 10 which I think finally is the lava lake. So the lava lake doesn't extend terribly far north.
1610 Just started Maurice dance.
1614 Maurice dance stopped.