Revelle: The Pulse of the Ocean

      After several days of exploring nearby sites, we’ve turned attention to a small hill on the side of the continental slope where computer simulations have suggested that large internal waves and energetic turbulence would be found. Using the computer controlled guidance system in the ship, we’ve taken a number of repeated transects across the top of this … Read More

Revelle: Breaking undersea waves make you a fish sandwich

The giant subsurface waves the T-team are studying are triggered thousands of kilometers away. After beaming through the Southern Ocean, the waves break against the continental slope, mixing the deep ocean. But, like bath-time with a hyperactive toddler and an especially slippery rubber ducky, these waves occasionally slosh up and over the edge of the tub. In the relatively shallow waters … Read More

Revelle: Video Q+A With Kids

—Julia Calderone, The Revelle The Tasman Tidal Dissipation Experiment//Supported by the National Science Foundation

Revelle: Wellness In the Waves

There’s a science to staying healthy on a boat that dishes endless supplies of savory meals, pastries, snack foods and deserts. We’re confined to a 284-foot ship with a daily commute of scaling a flight of stairs and walking a few dozen feet to our workspaces. This, combined with a typical 16-hour workday, makes an exercise routine a necessary part … Read More

Revelle: Mooring’s Back!

Most research cruises leave their moorings in the water for months or years, but not these guys. They’re recovering a mooring they just deployed seven days ago. After it’s back on deck, they’ll pull off the data and will re-release it again in a few days. All in the name of science! The instruments on this mooring have been gathering … Read More

Revelle: A Mooring Milestone

We hit a huge milestone on Monday: we dropped mooring number 15, the last of our planned long-term moorings, as the sun set over the Tasmanian Landscape. All of the ingredients of the moorings—40 oversized spools of cable, 15 giant orange buoys, 50 thousand pounds of anchors, clusters of spherical glass balls enclosed in oversized yellow “hard hats,” and hundreds … Read More

Q & A with TTIDE

Standley Middle School, San Diego: Ms. Pfaff’s class asks “Could internal waves reach shore and cause a tsunami?” Great question.  Because internal tides are so deep in the water (hundreds to thousands of meters), they do not cause tsunamis.  The internal wave is caused by some promontory or mountain on the ocean floor, and this doesn’t generate the same intensity … Read More

Revelle: More Moorings, Sun and Some Fish

We took advantage of a sunny, temperate weather window on Sunday to deploy moorings T1 and T3. We loaded each of the moorings with 36 temperature sensors, which spanned half a kilometer of line, and three CTD’s, instruments that use a band of sensors to measure the water’s conductivity, temperature and density. For each of the moorings we’ve deployed so … Read More

Revelle Progress Update: Storms and An Aborted Mooring Deployment

We’re currently hovering close to the northern site as we prepare to deploy moorings T1 and T3. A perfect storm (dare I say it) of high winds and choppy waters forced us to abort Friday’s deployment shortly after we threw the upper float of mooring T1 over the side. The wind was howling at 36 knots at the start, and … Read More