EPIC blog

All is well on the EPIC front. So, in the interim, I decided to offer this not-so-brief tangent on one of my biggest obsessions, the seafloor. Did you know that only a quarter of the ocean floor is mapped in high resolution? I was flabbergasted the first time I learned that we have better maps…

Today is a very special day. Quincey Nielson, the youngest member of our science party, is officially one year older. Quincey recently graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Solid Earth & Planetary Sciences from Georgia Tech. We celebrated with delicious cherry chocolate cake. Happy birthday Quincey! In addition to birthday festivities, Luis Salas, our classical…

It is now Day 13 of 27, the halfway point on our EPIC voyage. Phase 1 of the project is complete. We spent the last few days successfully recovering all 22 OBEM from the first batch of deployments. The video below shows off an ideal recovery, sped up by 4x. Kudos to Amílcar for a…

It’s been a productive week of ship time. Early this morning, we completed our first batch of deployments, a total of 11 OBS and 33 OBEM stations! One of our deployments was even graced with a rainbow. We will now begin recovering 22 of the OBEM. The remaining 11 OBEM are co-located with OBS and…

Meet our two fantastic deployment teams! The day team operates from noon to midnight, while the night team operates from midnight to noon. The day team members are: The night team members are: We have had a productive last 24 hours, having now deployed 13 OBEM and 2 OBS stations! Things started off slower than…

Welcome to the first blog post of the epic East Pacific Imaging Cruise (EPIC). Our science party consists of three scientists, four technicians, and ten students. Yesterday we left port from Puntarenas, Costa Rica aboard the Research Vessel (R/V) Marcus G. Langseth to carry out our research project, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).…