Day 5 and Sounding!

It's very interesting being at sea. I find that when I am not working I have a lot of time for contemplation.  This is important for someone like myself who's about to enter his senior year as to what it is that I truly want to do? I find Marine Geology by way of sound fascinating, and this cruise (aside from the fact that I have been writing/fine tuning script for the last 4 days) only affirms that this is what I would like to make my lifes work. Now for some science! Below are images created by the EM-122 multi-beam sonar. The first is a 3D rendition of the latest pings as we progress south to Panama. The second is a side view of the sonar propagation through different levels of the water column. Lastly I have a screen shot of the SVP (Sound Velocity Profile) of our latest XBT. To plot it the temperature is measured as a function of time to a depth of 1000 meters. A salinity profile is then applied to the curve and from it we get sound speed through the water column. This is not an exact measurement, however, we do our best to be careful in it's deployment as a small difference when integrated over the depth may lead to large errors. As I said in the ship tracker we crossed the East pacific Rise yesterday evening and my shipmate Andy can't wait to talk about it. So enjoy the screen shots and bye for now.

~James