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FATHOMING THE GULF STREAM - Nature's Pharmacy and Eyes In The Sea MISSION DISPATCH 8 • 08/26/02 Today's Weather - images courtesy of NOAA & RSMAS Dispatch by Brian Cousin - HARBOR BRANCH Oceanographic Institution After two days on the Charleston Bump, the R/V Seward Johnson departed for the Lophelia bank some 85 miles off the coast of Savannah, Georgia, and about 80 nautical miles from our coordinates on the Bump, Transiting through the night, we reached Site 3 at about 07:00 Sunday morning. On the bridge, John Reed 
and
Ms. Paula Keener-Chavis, National Education Coordinator and marine biologist with NOAA's Office of Ocean Exploration,
team up to take fathometer transects of the bottom, Small peaks about 30 feet high appear on the fathometer, and
John requests that Paula record waypoints on the sub tracker as each one is revealed. A few moments later a new
rise begins appear from the right-hand side of the display, and reveals a significant feature about 200 feet high.
Reed selects a dive target in a notch at the foot of the 200-foot rise - waypoint number 9. He and Don Liberatore
calculate how far from the 1,660-foot deep target the sub should be lowered into the water. The Gulf Stream current
is moving at a swift 5 knots at the surface. "We're right on the axis of the current," Liberatore says,
"not off to the side."
A combination of calculations and instinct figure into the equation, and a point one-and-a-quarter miles upstream of waypoint number 9 is chosen as the launch site. 
In the wet lab,
Dr. Shirley Pomponi is preparing small pieces of sponges for taxanomic evaluation. Each piece is
deposited into its own shallow well in a small plastic tray, and a few milliliters of household bleach is added to
dissolve the structure, leaving only the sponge's indigestible silicon-dioxide spicules in the bottom.
"You only need a small amount because there are thousands and thousands of spicules", Dr. Pomponi explains. "Spicules
are microscopic skeletal elements, they come in various sizes and shapes, and they're present in most sponges. The
types and arrangement of spicules in each sponge are often key indicators of the sponge's identity."
After a little more than an hour in the bleach, the spicules are ready to put under a special compound microscope and Pomponi makes the determinations. "The tubular sponge we collected turned out to be a species of sponge called Auletta; the sinuously curved spicules, along with the sponge's tubular shape, confirmed my preliminary identification." 
The
Johnson-Sea-Link II is back from dive 1 with a good collection of hard-gotten samples. The current on the bottom was generally
over a knot. Pilot Craig Caddigan says, "We hit the bottom only about 150 feet off the numbers, but it took about
45 minutes to go a distance like from here to the engine room hatch." The distance he is referencing on the after
deck is little more than 20 feet. "We wound up lifting off the bottom and did a controlled drift until we saw
something we wanted to collect. Then we dropped down and fought the current back to it." If the bottom had consisted
of rugged terrain, such maneuvers would have been too hazardous to undertake for fear of collision or entrapment.
Disappointing for Dr. Tammy Frank, the current was too strong to allow deployment of her benthic traps. Dr. Widder may have to leave the Eye-in-the-Sea on deck if the current conditions are not favorable at the time of the second dive. Arte Roman is the mission's Educator on Board, a marine science teacher hailing from Olympia High School in Orlando, Florida. "I was always interested in bioluminescence," he says. I wrote to Dr. Widder out of the blue and asked if there was any way I could volunteer in any of her work. She invited me to help on a teacher resource guide she was putting together to get a teacher's perspective about content. Later she said there might be an opening on this Ocean Exploration cruise, which has a significant education component. I was really pleased at the opportunity to go." 
Arte's objectives on the cruise are to assist Dr. Widder as much as possible, write dispatches for the Ocean
Exploration web site (http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov)
and answer questions from his students in the "Ask An Explorer" section of the site. Meeting NOAA's
Paula Keener-Chavis on board has been a great opportunity as well.
Arte believes his experience at sea will have real benefits for his students at Olympia High. "There's that connection for them - someone that they really know is out at sea. It brings the experience closer and makes it real. It's also good when students know that you have some exposure to upper level research in a profession - that you're teaching from experience instead of just out of a book. They place more trust in what you tell them, and the answers you give them." If Arte Roman's and Paula Keener-Chavis' labors are fruitful, more and more teacher's will be sharing exciting experiences with students at their school - and that's good for education, all around. 
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