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October
26 - November 2, 2001 vol. 38 no. 43 We are sad to announce that Bill Higgins, 49, died suddenly last Tuesday, October 16. Bill had worked as the system administrator for the Climate Computing Facility from 1994 to 2001 and was a friend to all in CRD. He was an avid scuba diver and a certified dive master, having taught several Scripps colleagues how to dive. He also had been a popular volunteer at the Birch Aquarium where he would scuba dive in the kelp tank and feed the fish while talking with the audience. He is survived by his three children, twins Eric and Erica, 17; and Evan, 15; his brother, Donald; and long time companion, Kay Skelly. A memorial service will be held at the Martin Johnson House on October 31 at 2 p.m. (Art Miller and Dan Cayan) Calendar Friday, October 26 MARINE BIOLOGY SEMINAR - John Wares, University of New Mexico, will present "Comparative Phylogeography and Historical Ecology of the North Atlantic" in 4500 Hubbs Hall at 12 noon. (Kthamatr@ucsd.edu) Saturday, October 27 OH RATS! IT'S THAT TIME AGAIN!! Turn your clocks back...... GHOULS AND BUOYS, BEWARE! The Birch Aquarium at Scripps will be transformed into a Haunted Aquarium this Halloween and will extend its hours (9 a.m. -9 p.m.) This will be an event the whole family will enjoy, featuring crafts and spooky science exhibits, with creatures that glow, creeps from the deep, the ghost forest, and more! Other fun activities include a slime lab, pirate stories, and trick-or-treating. Bring a pumpkin to carve and enter it in our pumpkin carving contest. Be sure to wear your costume and hope to win some spook-tacular prizes! All ages are encouraged to come! Children under 16 should be accompanied by an adult. Pre-registration is HIGHLY recommended, as this event may sell out. Please call 858/534-7336 to register. Members $8, Non-members $10. *All SIO staff, faculty & students receive member price! www.aquarium.ucsd.edu Tuesday, October 30 ASTROBIOLOGY SEMINAR - (Hosted by NSCORT/Exobiology & Center for Astrophysics & Space Sciences) - Humberto Campins, Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, University of Arizona and Research Corporation will present "Expected Characteristics of Cometary Meteorites" at the UCSD Faculty Club at 2 p.m. Refreshments served. Host: Jeffrey Bada; Contact person: Lois Lane (phone, x41891; llane@ucsd.edu) TRICK OR TREAT! - Creep on over to 100 Endurance Hall (NOTE NEW LOCATION), 4 p.m. for the third annual SIO Kids' Halloween Party. There will be goblin goodies, frightful favors, and bewitching prizes for the best kids' costumes. (Sharon Franks, sfranks@ucsd.edu) Wednesday, October 31 ECOLOGY LUNCHEON SEMINAR - Ed Parnell, SIO, will present "Larval Planktonic Period and the Complex Control of Recruitment Pattern: A Tale of Three Species" in 4500 Hubbs Hall at 12:15 p.m. (Tonya Huff, tonya_h6@yahoo.com) Thursday, November 1 AOS SEMINAR - Richard Somerville, SIO, will present "Cloud Feedbacks: A Missing Key to Understanding Climate Change" and Dariusz Stramski, SIO, will present "Particle Analysis in Ocean Optics" in 330 NTV Building at 4 p.m. (amber@mpl.ucsd.edu) Friday, November 2 MARINE BIOLOGY SEMINAR - Richard Zimmer, UCLA, will present a title to be announced in 4500 Hubbs Hall at 12 noon. (kthamatr@ucsd.edu) Notice VAUGHAN HALL DEDICATION - Everyone is invited to attend the dedication of T. Wayland Vaughan Hall (formerly Endurance Hall) on Thursday, November 8, at 3 p.m. We are fortunate to have Vaughan's granddaughter, Delia Laitin, as our guest and hope you all will join us that day. If the weather is nice, the event will be held at the north end of the building across from the Old Director's House (Sea Grant). If the weather turns cool, the festivities will be held in the atrium of the building. As always, yummy reception to follow! (Jill Hammons, x43948) TIME TO SUBMIT OTHER WORKS FOR 2001 ANNUAL REPORT. Other Works is a section of the Publications appendix of the Scripps Annual Report. Any Scripps academic or staff member who has published works during fiscal 2001 (July 1, 2000-June 30, 2001) is eligible. Works might include scientific writings not eligible for the Scripps Contributions or articles of a non-scientific nature. Any serious publications are eligible for this general listing. Please send one copy of the publication to Technical Publications 0233B. (It will be returned to you after processing.) Deadline for the 2001 Other Works is November 1, 2000. Ship News FLIP - FLIP continues the program of intensive CTD (0-750m every 4 min) and Doppler sonar (0-750 m every 30s) profiling of the upper ocean, as an aspect of the HOME Farfield Experiment. As hoped, the spring tide of last week arrived out here like a freight train, with 50 m low mode waves showing up on Thursday followed by an increasing variety of higher mode and higher frequency motions.Conditions remain energetic today (the 22nd), but will probably calm as the week progresses. We're getting an exciting view of the deep motion field with our high resolution sonar. The tendency of the low frequency shear field to be vertically advected by passing internal waves is even more pronounced at depth than in the upper ocean. It's interesting to visualize the major current systems of the ocean as corrugated, undergoing a high frequency internal wave chatter as they flow along. Our avian and aquatic populations continue to thrive. The booby flock has grown to over 50 birds and is starting to get out of hand. With all of the preening, squalking, tail-pecking, squabbling over space, and guano it's getting too much like...( a free FLIP t-shirt to the person providing the most interesting conclusion to this sentence. Send contributions to amber@mpl.ucsd.edu) The mahi still rule the aquatic roost although the diversity of the fish population continues to increase. A small (~12') whale spent about an hour with us on Wednesday. In its presence, the mahi immediately schooled, following behind the whale at close range.Incredible to watch. (Rob Pinkel, MPL) R/V Melville Weekly Scientific Report - R/V Melville is now returning to the Horizon Deep after a productive sampling effort in the Kermadec Trench. The seas at the Kermadec Trench were ideal for work and were accompanied by beautiful spring days. Two free vehicle traps set at 9,100 and 9,900 meter depths caught thousands of amphipods. In one trap alone we quit counting after three thousand. These were mostly the same species trapped in the Tonga Trench. A gravity corer from a water depth of 9,900 meters contained about 18 inches of sediment. The multicorer at this same depth and location yielded impressive cores with several ash layers clearly evident and two different species of worm, approximately 1 cm long, protruding into the water above the sediment. The temperature at this 9,900 meter depth was 1.8 C. A rock dredge along the Kermadec Ridge gave a small but adequate sample. Over forty pressure vessels contain samples for microbiological studies to be done at SIO. This week also saw the completion of 14 additional plankton net tows and the deployment of two SOLO floats. At this writing we are towing an Isaacs-Kidd Midwater Trawl over the axis of the Tonga Trench in the direction of the Horizon Deep where we will once again set traps for animals and deploy the multicorer before heading north towards Capricorn Seamount. The weather continues to be near perfect. (Art Yayanos) Revelle Weekly Scientific Report - DRFT05RR continues with collecting observations to determine the initial positions of seafloor geodetic markers at the Nazca-South American plate interface offshore Lima, Peru. This past week we completed towed vehicle operations on and just above the seafloor to measure the vertical position of seafloor transponders deployed earlier in the cruise at our two sites inland of the trench. We then shifted our efforts to determining the horizontal location of the deeper site using GPS and acoustics. GPS data collected onboard Revelle and at reference stations in Peru will be post-processed to determine the sub decimeter-level position of the interrogation hydrophone mounted in Revelle's instrument well and extending just below the keel. The travel time of an acoustic signal transmitted from the shipboard hydrophone to the seafloor transponders is measured every 20 seconds with a few microsecond resolution. To convert the travel-times to geometric ranges we are collecting CTD data (for sound speed) profiling from surface to 2000 m depth. Today (Oct. 23) we completed our 100th cast and over four-days of continuous GPS-Acoustic data collection. We plan to collect a total of five days at this site before proceeding to the second site and repeating the 5-day collection scheme. All aboard are enjoying the more routine watches that have followed the intense deployment mode of earlier weeks. (Dave Chadwell, MPL) CRUISE MAP INDEX/AREA/ CH SCI/INSTITUTION/ PORTS DAYS/AGENCY/ R/V Melville R/V New Horizon R/V Robert Gordon Sproul David Starr Jordan
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