The NeMO 2001 scientific crew of the Ron Brown/ROPOS expedition.

NOAA Ship Ron Brown/ROV ROPOS
Science News

Science Report - Tuesday, July 31, 2001
Bill Chadwick
Ship's position: 47 38.0'/-126 43.6'

ROPOS was working at the ASHES vent field on dive 632 until about 2 a.m. when it was time for us to leave Axial seamount and head home. The ship is now heading back to Victoria B.C. and the transit will take about 28 hours, so today the science party is packing up all their instruments, computers, and samples so they are all ready to off-load when we get into port. The science party also had a final meeting to share results and discuss future plans. It is always interesting to see how many interconnections there are between experiments in different disciplines and the unexpected ways one person's data, that was thought to be unrelated, is suddenly found to help another person to answer a question they are investigating.

ROPOS was a work horse again for us this year with about 14 hours of bottom time per day, amazingly productive considering all the diverse operations we were asking it to do. We are very appreciative to the crew of the NOAA ship Ron Brown and the ROPOS group for their great support during NeMO 2001.

And finally, thank you, the NeMO web site visitor, for following along with us this year. We hope we've been able to share a little of the excitement of the science going on at an active underwater volcano just offshore the northwest coast.