NOAA OAR AOML Special Publication 2004-001

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January 2004

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**US Department of Commerce**

**noaa** NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION

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Oceanic and Atmospheric Research

Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory

Miami, FL

NOAA OAR AOML Special Publication 2004-001

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M. J. Bello and A. Y. Cantillo

(Editors)

January 2004

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United States National Oceanic and

Department of Commerce Atmospheric Administration Oceanic and
Atmospheric Research

Donald L. Evans Conrad C. Lautenbacher, Jr. Richard D. Rosen

Secretary Vice-Admiral (Ret.), Assistant Administrator

Administrator

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For further information please call or write:

Alejandra Lorenzo

NOAA

Oceanic and Atmospheric Research

Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory

4301 Rickenbacker Cswy.

Miami, FL 33149

305 361 4404

COVER PHOTO: M/V Horizon in Kodiak, AK (1951).

Disclaimer

This report has been reviewed by the National Ocean Service of the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and approved for
publication. Mention of trade names or commercial products does not
constitute endorsement or recommendation for their use by the United
States Government.

**TABLE OF CONTENTS**

LIST OF PLATES i

Abstract 1

Preface 1

Diary and transcription 5

Acknowledgments 5

References 6

H. B. Stewart M/V Horizon Record 7

Photographic Section 27

Data Section 51

Miscellaneous Documents 55

LIST OF PLATES

1\. Dredging in the Gulf of Alaska after surveying the Mendocino
escarpment in 1951. 2

2\. Cross-section of the Stewart manganese nodule, a very large piece of
white calcareous ooze, thickly coated with black ferromanganese oxides,
cut into three sections to expose the interior. 3

**Harris B. Stewart, Jr.:**

**Northern Holiday Expedition**

**1951**

M. J. Bello[^1] and A. Y. Cantillo[^2]

(Editors)

NOAA Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory

Miami, FL

Abstract

> Intensive exploration of the seas using modern technology began in the
> 1950s, when the US Navy funded research to increase knowledge about
> the oceans. Harris B. Stewart, who eventually became the first
> director of the NOAA Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological
> Laboratory in Miami, FL, joined the 1951 Northern Holiday Expedition
> of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography when he arrived at the
> Institute to attend graduate school. The main goal of the expedition
> was to survey unexplored sections of nautical charts and perform a
> complete survey of the Mid-Pacific Mountains. Dr. Stewart\'s papers
> were donated to NOAA by his family upon his passing in 2000 including
> the field diaries written during his career. The field diary written
> during the Northern Holiday Expedition contains descriptions of
> day-to-day ship activities including the retrieval of a 100-pound
> manganese nodule and the charting of the Scripps Seamount.

Preface

Intensive exploration of the seas using modern technology began in the
1950s, when the US Navy funded research to increase knowledge about the
oceans (Shor, 1983). Institutions such as Scripps Institution of
Oceanography, La Jolla, CA, were on the forefront of such work. During
the summer of 1951, scientists from Scripps sailed to the Gulf of Alaska
aboard the M/V Horizon on the Northern Holiday Expedition. The
scientific leader of the Expedition, Warren S. Wooster, explained that:
\"A holiday is an old nautical term that designates a piece of work left
unfinished.\" The main goal of the expedition was to survey unexplored
sections of nautical charts and perform a complete survey of the
Mid-Pacific Mountains. Harris B. Stewart, who eventually became the
first director of the NOAA Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological
Laboratory in Miami, FL, had just arrived in La Jolla to start graduate
school at the end of June 1951. Wooster asked him to join the scientific
party and Stewart did not hesitate.

One of the highlights of the Expedition was the retrieval of an
extremely large manganese nodule weighing over 100 pounds. The nodule
came to the surface wrapped in the hydrographic wire. Stewart noted in
the scientific log:

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Plate 1. Dredging in the Gulf of Alaska after surveying the Mendocino
escarpment in 1951. Left Henry W. Menard, right Harris B. Stewart.
\[Courtesy of SIO Archives/UCSD. Glossy print, black and white, 8 x 10
in. caljsioa \_mc1871190003 \_m.jpg. H. William Menard Papers, 1938
-1986. Scripps Institution of Oceanography Archives, La Jolla, CA.\]

> \"Great manganese globules measuring as much as 5 inches in diameter
> were pyramided on the top of the specimen . . . We are restraining
> ourselves (with difficulty) from breaking off a chunk to see if it is
> MnO2 all the way through. It looks as though it might be, but we will
> preserve it as it came up till older & wiser oceanographers have
> looked & marveled.\" (Log book of Northern Holiday Expedition,
> Geological Data Center, Scripps Institution of Oceanography) (Shor,
> 1983).

A detailed account by Stewart of the retrieval of the manganese nodule
can be found in Kerr Kuhns and Shor (2003) and is reproduced here
courtesy of SIO/UCSD. It is interesting to note the similarities of this
account with that in the original field diary.

> The Big Catch
>
> For the first week after Kodiak, the expedition settled down into a
> routine of station observations, mid‑water trawls, continuous
> measurements of the various parameters that were recorded in the lab,
> and an occasional dredge or sediment core. Routine, that is, until the
> night of 10‑ 11 September.
>
> Somehow the bottle‑cast stations for four straight nights had ended up
> on my watch with Al Smith, Jose \[Barandiaran\], and Charlie Denkle.
> That night the other three secured after the deep cast was in, and
> Bill Riedel came aft to help me take core No. 10. We put the big
> Phleger corer over in 2750 fm (16,500 feet or just over three miles)
> of water. The dial in the hydrographic winch reads in meters, so it
> would take about 5100 meters of wire to reach the bottom if the corer
> went straight down. That night, however, even with only a light wind,
> Horizon was apparently drifting fast, for we soon had a wire angle of
> forty‑five degrees. The corer certainly was not going straight down,
> so it would take more wire to get it to the bottom. We felt we would
> know when it reached the seafloor, for there was a clever device
> called a ball‑breaker on the cable just above the corer. When the
> corer enters the bottom, tension on the cable is relieved, and a heavy
> mass of lead with a sharp point slides down within the ball‑breaker to
> puncture a glass sphere that implodes with a pop that we can hear on
> the hydrophone that dangles over the side and is connected to a
> loudspeaker on the after edge of the boat deck. We had the winch
> operator let out 100 m more, then 200, 300 until we had 6300 m of wire
> out, and the winch drum was down to the last layer of wire, but still
> no pop from the ball‑ breaker. So we had the winch start the long
> voyage home for the corer.
>
> With about 5900 m still out, the winch ground to a groaning,
> complaining halt. I climbed up to the boat deck to talk with Don
> Derringer ‑ now in full beard ‑ who was running the winch. He
> increased the power, and the drum turned slowly. As the ship rolled to
> port, the winch stopped. On the starboard roll, there was enough
> release of tension so a few feet of wire could be recovered. At this
> slow pace, we figured it would take at least three hours to bring the
> corer back aboard.
>
> Bill and I did a bit of dip‑netting in the light from Mac\'s
> floodlight, but dawn was coming, and the squid and sauries were not
> interested in being caught. Derringer\'s watch was over, and George
> Fenton had assumed the winch seat. I was sitting on the hatch cover
> hypnotized by the regular groans of the winch with each roll and
> enjoying slightly libidinous thoughts when I was startled by a loud
> splash sound followed by a heavy dripping sound. I turned and there
> above where the wire left the water and even with the overside bucket
> and rising slowly toward the sheave was a great gleaming black mass.
> It was still dripping as it rose slowly upward. I knew that if it
> reached the sheave we would be in trouble, so I screamed at George to
> stop the winch. He did when the \"thing\" was only inches below the
> sheave. I jumped into the bucket. At first glance, I thought it was a
> large turtle. It was round and about the right size. But once in the
> bucket, I could see that it was an immense rock that somehow had
> become entangled among the many meters of 5/32nd‑inch wire that must
> have lain on the seafloor. The winch had stopped, and it seemed
> strangely quiet without the straining whine that changed pitch with
> every roll. George shouted down, \"What is it, Stew?\" I was looking
> at it and still couldn\'t believe it. Three or four turns of wire in a
> perfect clove hitch had secured a large manganese concretion. I held
> my breath for fear it would come loose and drop back into the sea. Who
> would believe me if I said we had brought up a big rock in the
> hydrographic

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Plate 2. Cross-section of the Stewart manganese nodule, a very large
piece of white calcareous ooze, thickly coated with black ferromanganese
oxides, cut into three sections to expose the interior. The scale is in
inches. Identification of this nodule as the one retrieved during the
Northern Holiday Expedition has not been possible but it is probable.
\[Courtesy of SIO Archives/UCSD. Negative, black and white 4 x 5 in.
caljsioa \_mc18850029 \_m.jpg. H. William Menard Papers,1938 -1986.
Scripps Institution of Oceanography Archives, La Jolla, CA.\]

> wire, but it had dropped off and fallen back overboard? On the Mid‑Pac
> Expedition \[1950\] scientists had been excited by fist‑sized
> manganese nodules dredged from Sylvania, Hess and Johnson guyots, and
> here before me dangling on a wire no thicker than a lead pencil was a
> piece almost three feet across. I shouted for Bill Riedel and he came
> up into the bucket with me. We decided to have George lower it enough
> so it could rest on the rim of the bucket. He did, and as the ship
> rolled, I hung onto the rock as though my life depended on it. Had it
> gone back to the bottom, I think I still would have been hanging on
> when it landed.
>
> Bob Haines brought out a wire come‑along, hooked it to the wire and to
> the bucket rail so that it took up all the weight of the outboard part
> of the wire. George then reversed the winch, and Bill and I carefully
> ‑ even lovingly ‑ lowered the specimen onto the floor of the bucket
> and carefully unwrapped the wire that had held it so securely through
> its three‑mile rise to the surface. We felt that without a doubt, it
> was the finest geological specimen ever recovered from the deep sea.
> We carried it into the lab, grinning like Cheshire cats. We knew we
> had a real trophy.
>
> The Horizon nodule, as it is now known, weighed over 100 pounds. It
> was made up of a manganese oxide crust over a rock called phillipsite
> and topped with a pile of separate manganese nodules. It is a
> spectacular specimen and now resides in the museum of the Scripps
> Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California. Scripps Gets a
> Seamount

Another highlight of the Expedition was the survey of the Scripps
Seamount, an 11,400-foot mountain, 18 miles across at the base, standing
\"in lonely grandeur on the sea floor\" in the Gulf of Alaska. Its
summit a mile below the surface. Stewart described the discovery of the
Scripps Seamount in Kerr Kuhns and Shor (2003) reproduced here courtesy
of SIO/UCSD.

> In the Gulf of Alaska, Bill Menard and I surveyed ten seamounts, eight
> before our brief stopover in Kodiak and two more after we left. Three
> of the ten were new discoveries. These were surveyed in detail and
> their locations determined. Later, the results of these surveys and
> the supporting data were turned over to the US Coast and Geodetic
> Survey (USC&GS) so the seamounts could be shown on the nautical charts
> for which the USC&GS is responsible. The largest of these new
> discoveries was found some seven hundred miles northwest of Hawaii,
> and it was a big one. It was flat‑topped and rose 11,400 feet above
> the seafloor to within 900 fm (5400 ft) of the surface. That\'s a
> mountain over two miles high that rose from a base only eighteen miles
> across. We thought this one was big enough to justify being named
> Scripps ‑ a designation being saved for a really big one, and this was
> it! It is now listed in the Gazetteer of Undersea Features, names
> approved by the US Board on Geographic Names. It is listed as Scripps
> Guyot at 23° 50\' N, 159° 23\' E.

Diary and transcription

The Stewart family donated the papers of Dr. Stewart to NOAA\'s Atlantic
Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory upon his passing on April
25, 2000. Among the Stewart material are 13 field diaries written over
several decades, most during the time of great ocean exploration. The
diaries will be transcribed and published as a series.

The Northern Holiday Expedition field diary is a bound notebook with a
green cover, and measures 5 by 8 inches. Entries were made in ink and
pencil, and include sketches of equipment and animals. Unnumbered
sections of the diary contain black and white photographs, several of
which are missing, and data. Loose material, including cruise
instructions, newspaper clippings, notes, letters and a photograph, were
found inside the diary.

The diary was transcribed by hand. Minor editorial changes were made as
needed. Indecipherable entries are noted with \"\[xxx\]\". Editorial
comments are noted in brackets and capital letters. Numbers outside the
margin of the transcribed text are the page numbers of the original
diary. The diary and ancillary material were scanned and the graphics
files, in JPG format, are stored in the CD. In some computer systems, an
active link to the appropriate graphic file is part of the page numbers
found outside the margin of the transcription text.

Acknowledgments

The editors wish to thank H. M. Stanford, J. Gray and A. Lorenzo for
their comments, and D. Day and the Reagents of the University of
California for their assistance. The transcription of the diary was
funded through grant no. 02-432R from Environmental Services Data and
Information Management (ESDIM), NOAA/NESDIS/GeoSpatial Data and Climate
Services.

References

Kerr Kuhns, K., and B. Shor (editors) (2003) Scripps stories: Days to
remember. In celebration of 90 years. Scripps Institution of
Oceanography, La Jolla, CA. Downloaded from
\<http://repositories.cdlib.org/sio/reference/93-35/\> January 2004.

Shor, E. N. (1983) Scripps in the 1950s: a decade of bluewater
oceanography. [J. San Diego History]{.underline}, 29(4). Fall. San Diego
Historical Society, La Jolla, CA. Downloaded from
\<http://www.sandiegohistory.org/journal/83fall/scripps.htm\> January
2004.

**H. B. Stewart**

**M/V Horizon**

**Record**

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Thursday - August 2 -

It is now Thursday Aug. 2nd, and we have been at sea since 4:30 Saturday
afternoon July 28th This is the first time that I have had
simultaneously the time and inclination to start what I hope will be a
pretty complete record of this cruise.

The first three days - through Monday night are - so far as I am
concerned - better forgotten. It was moderately rough weather, and I was
one sick cookie. The nights were spent in hellish wakefulness as I was
rolled from one side of my dresser-drawer bunk to the other while my
head and feet were ultimately raised and then dropped to be brought up
with sickening suddenness. It is only during motion such as those of a
ship or plane, sudden changes of direction, that one is made rather
uncomfortably to realize that one\'s body is made of parts of varying
rigidity. The bony parts would start back up as the fleshy parts were
still on the way down. Lying on my back, I could feel my innards pressed
against my spine, then they would rise as my body started down. It was
all damned uncomfortable. Added to that was the noise of the engines - a
noise I now am quite used to - and the noise of loose gear that was
knocked against steel bulkheads with every roll. To make my misery quite
complete, I was thoroughly seasick. From Sunday morning till Tuesday
noon I had but one small meal and one apple, all of which I saw a lot
sooner than I had planned. There were others in the same boat - so to
speak - and we now are all recovered and roll with the ship in the best
nautical tradition.

Above the murk of misery that comprised those first days, quite a few
interesting facts merit a brief note or two.

The ship is the motor vessel (M/V) Horizon, an ATA (Fleet Attack Tug)
originally converted, as I understand it, for the Fish and Wildlife
Service, but now owned and operated by the Scripps Institution of
Oceanography and used solely for oceanographic research. She is 143 feet
long, some 6 feet longer then the Littlehobo, and carries a crew of 19
in addition to the six of us in the Scientific Party:

Warren Wooster, Chemical Oceanographer

John Isaacs, Mid-H2O Trawl -

H. Willard Menard, Submarine Geologist

Allen Smith, Oceanographer - Hydrographer

José Barandiaran, Peruvian Navy

John McFall, S.I.O. \[SCRIPPS INSTITUTION OF OCEANOGRAPHY\] Photographer

Charles Simmons, Asst. Technician

and H. B. \[HARRIS STEWART\] -

Jim Eaun is our capt.

She is a good ship and pretty well rigged for this type of work, and the
open mess (come in the whenever you are hungry) and general casual air
are a must welcome contrast to the cold regulation-bound formality of
the Mawry and battle ships. This is my first jaunt on a civilian ship,
and if nothing else, the freedom from the ever-squawking p.a. systems of
the navy with their \"now hear this - - - - \" makes the comparison
worthwhile. The crew aboard is a fine crew, mostly ex-navy chiefs and a
smattering of youngsters from colleges in vacation.

![](media/image10.pct){width="1.0402777777777779in"
height="0.8201388888888889in"}But to start at the beginning: The ship
pulled in at the Navy Electronics Laboratory Pier at Point Loma Friday
noon - that would be the 27th - and I hopped aboard the finger lift and
began to take the gear and had been collecting down to the ship. By 4:30
most of it was there and still had to be put aboard, but I quit for the
day, as I still had all my own stuff to collect and had to move out of
924 So. Court. My suits are at Tom Parker\'s, Bill Riedel has my
typewriter and books, Jean Pierson my laundry, and my trunk is in the
back of XXX \[NOT CLEAR\]. Sat. A.M. I drove to San Diego to pick up
some low canvas sneakers at a surplus store, and then picked up Bill
Menard at his place in Pacific Beach. He left his car at Buff\'s place
in Point Loma, and I drove him to the ship, locked and left Mohit in the
parking place at N.E.L. and trust she is OK. The sea air will have
raised havoc with her finish, but it will cost less to have the finish
cleaned than to have rented a garage for two months, it\'s like renting
your wife to someone. \[SECTION CROSSED OUT\]

I finished loading our gear, and we shoved off late Saturday afternoon.
Had I realized that the good steak dinner in the mess that night was the
last meal I would look at with comfort for three days, I would have
enjoyed it even more.

At one point Sunday while I was bending wire at the vice back aft - wire
for the dredge - and swallowing hard to keep from being sick again, I
spotted a great cloud of spray that didn\'t at all look like the spin
drift that was being blown from the white caps about us. Even as I
watched, a long flat tentacle-like thing rose writhing some 15\' above
the surface of wave crests, it twisted and writhed and fell back into
the water. I shoved it to the others, and as it happened the next time,
I got a better look. About two feet broad, white on one side and black
on the other with small bumps along the edge, it obviously was the
15-foot flipper of some much larger animal. The cloud of spray that I
had seen that the other hadn\'t made me say whale, while the others were
still in the octopus - turtle stage of deduction. A glance at the books
kept aft showed that the hump-backed whale reaches 50\' in length and
has flippers just like this one that are 1/3 as long as it\'s body. I
was set up as on expert right off. We came about and spotted him still
cavorting or \"lob tailing\" as they call it - as a matter of fact we
had to go full right rudder to keep from hitting him - a collision that
could have done us a good deal of damage. As we neared him, now lying
flush with the surface, we could see his skinny back between successive
waves, he must have realized that we were a scientific ship and \"blew
off\" just as we changed course to avoid collision and sounded. We
rushed to the side as he went beneath us, but couldn\'t see him again.
Striped dolphins with a wartime camouflage-like pattern were with us
most of Sunday as we paralleled the coast. Sleek gray and white devils
that swam and dove over the crests in nice *en echelon* formations. When
one of the crew brought back a flying fish that had been washed aboard,
I felt indeed like Kon Tiki. Too, our working area aft was awash all
Sunday and Monday with green water coming over the gunnels but I am glad
we have engines and not merely the sail and bolsa that somehow carried
that crew across to Polynesia.

Monday afternoon we stopped very briefly at Frisco. The bridge was in
fog as it had been when last I passed under it on my way back from
overseas in Feb. of \'46.

We stopped to get John Issacs and some leads for the deep cast and I
just had time to bob up and get a book for Clare. I had felt badly about
not having done any more for her birthday than a telegram. The book on
Calif. is not much of a present, but I just didn\'t know what to send
her. We left S. F. late that afternoon, and as soon as the horns of the
piers for the Golden Gate bridge were out of earshot, we were at last on
our way.

There is a darned interesting hole at the entrance to S. F. harbor where
it is narrowest. It is like others in similar areas where tides from a
large area enter and leave on a constricted channel. There are several
between the islands of Japan and a good one at Gibraltar. We got a good
trace on the fathogram both in and out.

Since then we have been settling down into the routine of shipboard life
and the busy business of oceanographic work.

It has been almost constantly rough, though today was most pleasant
though still pitchey and rolley. It was as though the sea knew that we
were here to wrest her secrets from her and had decided that no man
would get her secrets without living intimately with her first, so she
took us to her bosom and drenched us all. Oilskins and bare skins were
the clothes on all decks and a green water came by the ton over the bow
to run the full length of the boat deck sending up geysers of foam at
every obstruction to some XXX XXX \[NOT CLEAR\] into the after working
area already under a swirly foot or so of white water . Well we lived
with her and survived and are now in business with plankton nets, deep
water trawl, bottom dredges, bathythermograph, Nansen bottles,
thermitow, fathometer and XXX XXX \[NOT CLEAR\] (plus my fish line)
trying to learn more about the oceans. What their bottoms are like,
their chemistry, temperatures of surface and depth, and their vast
populations. It\'s a great business, this oceanography. We are now at
the stage in oceanography that the U.S was in when the first expedition
began to fight their way west across the prairies, deserts, and
mountains. We have meager tools, spotty information, and an unbelievably
vast area unexplored. It\'s a big job ahead and fun to be in on the
ground floor.

I go on watch in 10 mts - watch being my 4-hr. turn as nursemaid to the
recording instruments back in the lab and we are due on station #5 about
3 AM, so I had better fold here temporarily. It is overcast with high
strato-cumulus clouds and a light streak in the west where sea and sky
meet in what was a fizzled out sunset. The sea is deep gray - leaden
color really - and a good swell keeps on a nice roll at the 11 knots we
are making. It\'s cool and damn pleasant.

For the record:

Take the case of the modern squid

He don\'t do what his ancestors did.

A million-year heritage was shot to hell

When he discarded his age-old shell

When the shell got heavy and made him sink,

He took it inside and invented ink.

So the Reynold\'s pen is nothing new

A squid uses ink underwater too.

Notes on Muenen\'s \[NOT CLEAR\] [Marine Geology]{.underline}:

\"Hemipelagic\"- a word full of magic

Is, at least, well define in this missile

But I find rather tragic the use of \"pelagic\"

As meaning the same as \"abyssal\".

August 7th- Tuesday, I think, but the day of the week has no meaning for
us at sea, so no one keeps track of it. We know the date for that is
marked on all the machines and on our course plot, but Sunday is no
different from Wednesday or Saturday. Often someone asks what day it is,
and we all feel silly at not knowing and the guesses usually have a
3-day range. All the bathythermograph, G.E.K., thermitow, and wind
recorder records are kept in G.C.T. (or Greenwich Civil Time) which is
now 9 hrs. ahead of us, and I always feel galled a bit to put down a
morning time in the middle of the night sometime. The feeling is one of
frustration, I guess. Here I am up at 4 am on a black rolling morning
jotting notations on a record, and when the record is worked over later,
it will read 1300 and I am getting credit for my lost sleep. By the same
token I feel as though I am getting away with something when I mark down
0100 at four in the afternoon. Strange, don\'t know why I have to get
personal about it.

It\'s a nice evening. Now 1930 and the sun is still above the horizon,
but not much. I\'m in the chow hall again. Chuck and Jack are playing
cribbage at the middle table and the sounds of 15-2, 15-4, and a pair is
and come dully through to my senses. The sea is calm with a good swell
running, and the starboard steel door to the chow hall is hooked
outboard, but bangs against the bulkhead at the top of every roll and I
can feel the shudder every time it hits. John Isaacs his midwater trawl
down to 2100 fm (that\'s 12600 damn feet- over 2 miles) and the big
winch aft is screaming with the strain of bringing it in. The sun is now
set, and the western sky is a riot of color. There is a row of stately
anvil topped cumulo-nimbus thunderheads along the western horizon edged
in gold. If a strand of altostratus has been dyed deep purple and great
spokes of pink radiate out from the spot on the rim where the sun
slipped gently into the sea. Looking out the port door I see the horizon
line rise past the opening and then sink below it giving me alternate
door falls of sea and sky.

I have the 12 to 4 this morning, and if I had any sense I\'d go below
and get some sleep, but once I have brought this book up and am writing
in it, I like to keep going. I feel it is going to be a sparse record,
and I want to get as much down on paper as possible before I peter out.

![](media/image11.pct){width="2.6in" height="0.7069444444444445in"}When
stations come at night (we are approaching #10 now) we always do a good
deal of dip-netting for the marine biologists back at Scripps. Batting
along at 11 knots it\'s hard to believe that the sea is as teeming with
life as we find it once we lay to make a station. Two nights ago I was
helping Al, who was in the bucket removing Nansen bottles from the deep
cast. I would carry them into the lab and place them in the rack. We had
one of Mac\'s photoflood lamps lashed to the rail so it shone down into
the water and I suddenly saw two white streaks go through the water
about 5\' below the surface. We soon identified them as squid - about
18\' long and broke out the dip-nets. They had come up to get the
amphipods that were scooting along the surface and occasionally the
squid in a short fast dart would break the surface and then scoot down
again. There were 8 or 10 of them, and they stayed just at the outer
edge of the lighted area. Occasionally they would come nearer the ship
always wary, but I netted one in the coarse meshed net and dropped him
on the deck. He had a pink-silver back that was almost opalescent, and
there was something hideous and evil about him as he writhed there on
the cold damp steel of the deck in a spreading pool of dark brown ink.
His directional fins folded and unfolded around his tail convulsively
and his tentacles thrashed the air. To test his grip I placed the edge
of my canvas shoe into his head, and he grasped it with his tentacles
and dug out the rubber with his single claw-like beak. I instinctively
withdrew my foot and he was pulled along with it for a foot or so and
then dropped back to the deck with a wet slurp and continued his futile
writhings as the colors on his back faded fast. The first one we put in
formalin to preserve him, and when one of the crew netted another, we
saved him for bait the next day. They travel fast back-end to - the
original jets - but can also move forward when they are moving in to
something. Last night John caught two, and we put one right back on a
hook and left it. Simmons\' frantic shouts brought us to the starboard
rail near the bucket, and there about 5\' below the surface was a big
squid - easily 4 feet in body length - with his tentacles around the
smaller one and back tracking with his prize. We tried to hook him but
couldn\'t. We could see the big pink shape there below the surface
approaching the bait, take it, and then back off, but if we pulled on
the line, he let go. Again the big squid would come out of the black,
turn and move in fast to grasp the smaller squid in its tentacles. Each
of us watching shuddered each time it grasped the bait and were grateful
to be only watching the battle going on below us.

These waters teem with small saurys \[NOT CLEAR\] (sp?) and last night
on station with the light over the port rail of the after working area,
I was able to net as many as 24 at a single sweep of the fine-mesh dip
net. They look blue when seen from above; but once in the net, it\'s
clear that they have a blue streak down the middle of their backs and
are a bright silver over the rest of their bodies. They ranged in size
from 1/4\" to about 2\" long, and swim with quick darting motions. Some
curl into a semicircle and then straighten out only to curl again like a
blue worm in its death throes. Siphonophores are also common in these
net dips. They seem to float along, and I have yet to find how they
locomote. They are completely transparent-looking like globules of clear
protoplasm - with one small pigmented arc of dark yellow - probably the
gonads. Through each runs a hollow tube or siphon \[NOT CLEAR\] hence
the name. Most of them are colonial - probably tunicates - and chains of
12 or 15 are common, looking like a shining crystal bracelet when they
are brought out of the water. Once in the formalin, you can see that
they have broad bands of less transparency circling their bodies in a
crisscross pattern.

![](media/image12.pct){width="3.879861111111111in"
height="1.3069444444444445in"}

Too, we netted a few of the only insect that has adapted itself to the
sea - small sea spiders. It is amazing the way an apparently barren sea
seems to spring to life once you stop the ship at night, put a light
over, and do a wee bit of looking.

Today we passed through an area of broad well-defined slicks. They were
obviously not wind caused, and it was significant to note that the
Thermitow that had recorded a homogenous area of surface temp. all the
way from Frisco took marked jogs on the record as we passed through the
slicks showing that slick areas have a different surface temperature
than non-slick areas. Whether it is cause or effect, I do not know. The
Thermitow is actually a thermometer that streams behind the ship at
about 25 yds and by means of a unit and rubber-covered cable conveys the
temp. to a recording instrument back in the lab. This has a continuous
roll of graph paper and a pen that moves horizontally with temp. changes
as the paper moves vertically past it. On the paper are recorded dates,
times (GCT) course and speed changes and anything else (such as slick
areas) that will help in interpreting the information later on.

The \"gooney birds\" - actually the black-footed albatross - have given
us a good deal of enjoyment during the past week. Seldom seen when we
are under way, they appear from nowhere once we are on station or towing
the mid water trawl at a slow 1-4 knots. They are a uniform dark brown
except for some white on their upper tail feathers - obvious only when
the feathers are spread as they land - and a small band of white around
the base of the bill that is missing in some birds and up to 2\" broad
in others - it may be a function of their age. Wingspans are up to 6
feet, and with legs and webbed feet tucked under them and tail-feathers
streamlined, they make a very graceful bird in flight. An occasional
apparently effortless motion of their wings keeps them gliding for some
time as they skillfully bank and turn just shimming the waves. They lack
the awkward laboring flight of the duck that they closely resemble once
they are floating on the surface. At the request of Scripps, we take
count at each station of the number around the ship - I think 39 is the
record to date - counted by Bill Menard atop the big A-frame. (squid -
hunt and trawl about to come in - continued later).

(That net trawl was - so far as we know - the deepest trawl ever made in
the sea 2280 fathoms it went down - the haul? - about 3 qt of what looks
in the cod-end bucket under the lights out on the fantail like an
amorphous mass of black, red, and clear jellies and broken small fish
bodies. The red is from the shrimp - mainly euphausids and some red
jellies. The black from the lantern fish, viper fish, and others, and
the clear from weird jellies. I will try to describe the trawl and trawl
haul when I know more about them and have a jar of the little devils
before me.}

But to get back to the \"gooney birds\":

As soon as the ship is stopped or going slowly enough they glide in
gracefully for a pretty silly-looking landing. They pull up sharply just
above the water, extend their webbed feet forward at an angle to the
surface, spread their tail feathers, and skid on their feet as they
loose flying speed. Then settle awkwardly onto the water and collapse
their wings by jack knifing them like a carpenter\'s rule along their
backs. Once on the water they can move along at about 3 knots by
dog-paddling their feet, and when they want to stay on the water but
have to go faster, they extend their wings and flap them just fast
enough to lift their bodies off the water and then they \"walk\" with
their feet - silliest looking maneuver I ever did see. Then they
collapse their wings and plane along on their bellies. They take great
delight in testing for taste every thing that goes over the side from
steak bones and milk containers to toilet paper and matches. No gooney
bird seems to trust any other gooney bird\'s judgment, and I have seen
as many as ten birds pick up a match in turn and each discards it when
he finds it not too tasty. They were coming in close this afternoon. I
was perched on the port bits reading a pocket edition of Mailey\'s [The
Naked and the Dead]{.underline} soaking up good warm sun, when Bob
Haines went by with a whole can full of steak bones and fat, stale
bread, and what-not left over from evening chow. I could hear the
gooneys off the fantail and climbed up on the other platform to watch.
They came right in to the fantail for the food, and how they did scrap
for it. Some sadist in the crowd suggested the age-old stunt of trying
two pieces to opposite ends of a good length of string and watching the
fun. I imagine Homo Neanderthals used to do it with vines, but it
sounded like fun to the now-bearded crew that had collected aft to watch
the fun, so we did. Two birds swallowed great chunks of meat and indeed
seemed surprised to find themselves joined to each other by 4 feet of
stout twine. They pulled at each other for a while till one disgorged
his end. The other bird though was having trouble. The whole pack had
drifted some 100 yds astern following the food and most of the boys went
back to their packet books or sunning. Only Mac and I stayed to see how
he made out. It didn\'t seem like fun anymore, and as we watched the
poor bird-wings extended-humping along trying to disgorge what was stuck
in his throat, we felt ashamed somehow, ever though we hadn\'t done it.

\"Poor devil\" I said, and Mac said \"Yeah\" without turning.

One by one the other birds lift as the food supply dwindled and came
\"walking\" back to the fan-tail. One bird stayed with the troubled one,
and then he too left him and came back looking for more food. The bird
was drifting farther and farther astern still humping with wings lying
flat on the water. Suddenly he succeeded and took off to glide up toward
the ship and the other birds. Mac and I looked at each other and just
grinned, we were glad he had made it.

It\'s 11:00 (oops, 2300) now, and most of the crew has retired. There
are a few around that are due for the 2400 watch - reading and brewing
coffee. We have speeded up to 11 knots again and are due on station in
about 40 minutes. It is a nice night tonight. The moon was up for a
while, a fat crescent of gold with a narrow path of golden sequins
running from the ship to the horizon beneath the spot where it hung at a
crazy angle like a Christmas tree ornament hung by a child and left at
the wrong angle where he put it so as not to hurt his feelings. It has
since been covered by clouds, but directly above are lots of starts. It
is cool and the gentle roll is friendly.

Notes penned after telephoning Reproduction Section at NEL:

Any man at NEL

Who likes a good seduction

Smiles when the pretty voice answers the bell

\"Good morning, Reproduction.\"

![](media/image13.pct){width="0.4305555555555556in"
height="0.18055555555555555in"}

Whales are here for corset stays

For eating, there\'s the albacore

If every pet has it\'s *raison d\'etre*

Then what is the siphonophore?

![](media/image13.pct){width="0.4305555555555556in"
height="0.18055555555555555in"}

The sample is ample, but coring is boring.

Lines scribbled at 924 So. Coast after tripping over Molly\'s Honey
Bubbles and falling on Alice an Nance\'s Caruso:

I know Girard Herschel Street

I know the cheapest place to eat

I know the church with the highest steeple

But, alas, I know more cats than people.

Mr. Pickwich and Honey Bubbles

Are just the start of my feline troubles

No wonder the population grew so

With promiscuous cats like Mr. Caruso

Oh, for Dick Whittington in reverse.

Than rats these cats are even worse

I think that I\'ll import some rats

To do away with these wretched cats.

![](media/image13.pct){width="0.4305555555555556in"
height="0.18055555555555555in"}

There is one thing I will bet

When we catch him in the net

That the little saury\'s sorry.

![](media/image13.pct){width="0.4305555555555556in"
height="0.18055555555555555in"}

Putty the poor siphonophore

For you can see right through him

The lucky fellow has balls of yellow

But what good are they to him?

Swim trunks by Jansen

And bottles by Nansen

Dredges by Dietz and Menard

August 23rd Thursday

I\'d feel guilty if the long hiatus since the last entry were due to
more indifference, but quite frankly I have been busy as hell; and when
break comes, I am so tired that the rack looms much larger than this
record. The first week after that last entry was a rough one from a
weather point of view. Sleep was impossible in a bunk that was
constantly changing directions with an abrupt violence that left you
almost breathless. I tried bracing my body crosswise, but it was too
hard on my knees and small of my back. Each wave left the ship
shuddering, as it shook off gallons of foaming sea. Showers were out of
the question, and added to the sleepless tiredness was the physical
tiredness of just trying to walk. I moved from handhold to handhold with
the short unsure steps of a drunk when he isn\'t too sure where the
ground was going to be when he put his foot down. A trip across the lab
could be a mountain climb or a down-hill run depending on when you
started. Warren has a game he plays that I have adapted - lean back
against the roll, and instead of leaning forward with the roll back, he
turns around leans back again, so he is ever leaning backward at about /
this angle. The meals continued good, but though not actively sick, I
took a little interest in food and felt generally enervated,
uninterested in what was going on, and very tired. Since then the seas
have abated some, though on some courses sleep is still utterly
impossible.

About the 16th we hit Gilbert Seamount, Bill Menard I left the regular
watch list and the seamount surveys became our babies - those and the
dredging. This at first I though would mean more sleep, - little did I
know. We put in 32 hours straight on Gilbert. I took soundings and Bill
plotted. 32 hrs in rough seas listening to pings with a reading every
minute. When it was over I slept for 21 hours straight. None of the
others - Miller, Holiday, Pratt, GA-5, GA-4 \"Surregor\"- has been so
long, but they always start to come in on the fathogram at night.
Holiday was a new discovery not recorded before, and it was - fun
thrilling really - to watch the trace come in on the fathogram. Like
doing a giant double-crostic: We do them on a maneuvering board -
actually a large compass rose with 1\" divisions and it makes plotting
easy. Gilbert we did like this with hydrographic stations at A, C, and
D.

![](media/image14.pct){width="0.4465277777777778in"
height="0.38680555555555557in"}

![](media/image15.pct){width="2.8069444444444445in"
height="2.1868055555555554in"}

On the others we have varied this pattern to fit what we find. I plotted
GA-4, and did it this way. It was a quickie and the long line on 270°
gave us a check on the drift.

![](media/image16.pct){width="1.8701388888888888in"
height="1.2402777777777778in"}

On each of these we have also dredge. The dredge is a sled frame with a
chain bay attached (prevents dumping) and a heavy rope bag inside of
that. Behind it are two pipe dredges with canvass bags to catch any fine
sediments that may be there. On Gilbert we lost both bags, so I devised
a baling wire framework to go around the bag. It worked, and we have
done pretty well since.

![](media/image17.pct){width="4.959722222222222in"
height="2.620138888888889in"}

On Gilbert we collected an amazing assemblage of igneous and metamorphic
Rx \[ROCKS\] of all sorts - like a Geo 101 lab quiz - with varying
degrees of roundness - must have been 400 lbs of it. Some covered with
up to 1/2\" of manganese. They could only be ice-rafted from further
north. Details of other hauls will be listed later, but except for a
chunk of bone dredged up last night from Pratt along with the usual
assemblage, and some typical volcanic Rx from Miller, they have all been
pretty much alike.

![](media/image18.pct){width="1.8in" height="4.520138888888889in"}

We have also been doing a good bit of caring with the Pfleger corer. A
weighted head drives a removable barrel into the bottom. When pressure
is released on the cable, the tripper on the ball-breaker lets the
weight with sharp point drop on taped-in glass ball. The pop of the
bursting ball is clearly picked up by hydrophones on the surface telling
us when tube has hit bottom. On reeling in, a one-way valve seats on top
of the tube keeping water from running through tube, and care catcher of
light flexible copper keeps the core from oozing out. At surface in the
bucket, barrel is unscrewed and joint cork is put in top of plastic
liner and liner withdrawn vertically so as not to destroy sample.

We have gotten some good cores with it, although the one tonight had
nothing in the tube. The barrel was covered with light blue mud which we
saved, but tube was clear. I think the stopper valve must have been
stuck, although I loosened it myself before it went down.

![](media/image19.pct){width="1.6666666666666667in"
height="3.3201388888888888in"}

The dip-netting while we were on station continued to be good. José
Barandiaran, the Peruvian Lt. Cmdr., here as an observer, found a spear
somewhere has taken over the spearing department.

![](media/image20.pct){width="1.3402777777777777in"
height="0.9868055555555556in"}The other evening, it was especially good.
We were on Gilbert Seamount, I had taken a break from reading soundings
while Smith and Simmons were putting Nansen bottles on the Hydrographic
wire at one of the stations on the edge of the seamount. The sky was
overcast so no stars were visible, and the two spotlights on the mast
made the fantail working area a bobbing island of light in a 3
dimensional black sea. Over the port rail we had lashed one of John
McFall\'s photo lights that brilliantly illuminated a half circle of
black water below it. We had been netting saury\'s for a while when big
jellies began to flout into the pool of light. Tipped at an angle with
their streamers before them, they looked like run-away barrage balloons
that had taken their mornings along with them. It was José who first
thought of the spear - a 4 foot shaft of light steel with an barb at the
forward end, and an eye with 20-odd feet of light line attached.

![](media/image21.pct){width="4.120138888888889in"
height="0.4263888888888889in"}

In full beard, with a great mane of unruly black hair and deep furrows
of concentration on his brow, standing there with his spear poised for a
throw he looked like some modern version of his ancient Peruvian Tiki.
The spear made a hiss as it streaked downward through the water trailing
a comet-like trail of bubbles behind it, and two segments of torn
transparent jelly flouted limply to the surface. Then squids showed up.
\"Squids\", called John Isaacs excitedly as José pulled on the line
feverishly to retrieve the spear. Darting experimentally into the outer
limits of lighted water were two or three medium sized squid. Each sally
brought them closer to the ship. José now had his spear poised waiting
for them to get closer. His arm cooked back, fierce he looked, poised
and ready, his arm snapped forward and the spear hit the water with a
hiss and trail of babbles. We could see he had missed, a grunted oath
and he pulled in for another try. I\'d like to be able to say that he
speared squid after until he had a great pile of writhing gleaming
trashing bodies behind him on the deck, but slave to truth that I am I
must note that he didn\'t get a one- not one damn squid.

\[AT TOP OF PAGE 33\]

There is one thing you can bet

When we catch him in the met

That the little Saury\'s very sorry.

This is a noisy little world I\'m living in. When there isn\'t the
throaty throb of the big diesels (sp?) below, there is a moan and whine
of the winches, and always the high ping of the fathometer.

I can\'t write in here when it has been so long since I have written
Claire, so I will dash off a line to her. I now have two letters to go
to her, but want to write at least two more before we hit Kodiak. I\'d
like to have written her more, but there just hasn\'t been the time.

Kodiak, Alaska- Aug. 28th

We were to have left today, but waited hopping that replacements for the
core liners, lost overboard in the storm on the way up, would get here.
There was also a new B-T to replace the one with the busted unit, but it
too is not here, so we leave tomorrow at 0600 without them.

Land, I must admit, looked good as we made our first land fall early
Sunday morning. Off to port under a heavy low-hanging cloud bank, we
could see the dark line of land. As we neared the island, the bank of
clouds rose like a theater certain, and before us lay Chiniuk Bay with
Woody Island and Kodiak on our right and, ahead and to the left were
scattered, apparently haphazardly, the many buildings of the Navy base
at the head of Woman\'s Bay - wishful thinking. The channel is well
marked by a long row of buoys, and outside of them, as though to enforce
the rules of the road, low patches of dark rock jut above the surface of
the water. We now had land on three sides of us, and it was lush and
green.

To our right, Woody Island, where a Russian sawmill and a few shacks now
fallen to ruin are the only signs of the former Russian occupation of
this strategic island at the base of the Aleutian Chain. Just past Woody
Island, spread over the wide mouth of a rugged valley, lay the town at
Kodiak. In the early morning light, it looked white and clean, a group
of neat buildings gathered together for mutual protection from the peaks
that towered behind them. Straight ahead the naval base lapped up
against the foot of the mountains, and above it towered a steep green
triangular peak crowned with a wide halo of cottony cloudy. Behind it,
the jagged peaks of the Devil\'s Prongs were covered with a clean
tablecloth of cloud, while the smaller white dailies were spread neatly
over the floors of the surrounding valleys. To the left, past a ragged
headland, Woman\'s Bay stretched back toward the base of a steep green
ridge, and farther left in the distance, rose more steep peaks, and
there were great patches of snow in the valley heads towards their
summits. It was cool and clear and I sucked great lung fulls as I stood
up on the bridge and swept the island with the glasses I borrow from
Menard.

We turned left and headed into the entrance of Woman\'s Bay. I mentioned
to José that the place looked deserted - and indeed it did. It was still
some distance away, but we could see movement, hear no sounds to betray
that this was any more than the model it appeared to be from seaward. As
though to dispel our doubts, a small ship\'s whaleboat came around the
bend in the bay and chugged along the share, and above the muffled sound
of our own engines - now slowed to less than half speed - we could all
hear the roar of airplane engines being warmed up, and we saw a truck
leading a billowing cloud of dust along the foot of the cliff at the
water edge. I remember wandering about the dust because there was a
misty light rain blowing into my face.

The well-marked channel lead around a sharp promontory dotted with one
story while bldgs., sheds, and ahead of us, at the end of the bay, lay
several large hangers with ramps leading from water to the large parking
area. To the right, a light freighter and floating dry dock were tied up
to stubby piers, and we headed towards an empty berth at the fueling
pier and prepared to moor behind a navy tug - the type from the which
the Horizon was converted. Three sailors sauntered out along the pier to
handle lines, and I recall that no two of them were dressed in the same
uniform. Heaving lines snaked through the air from ship to pier,
somewhere below the enunciators clanged and the Horizon shuddered as the
engines were reversed and we nudged the great log floating at the base
of the pilings \[NOT CLEAR\]. Line were made fast, the engines secured
and we had arrived.

The water and power lines were put aboard, we got a telephone and a book
of base regulations, and changed our clothes in preparation for a trip
to town.

Warren Wooster, Al Smith, Bill Menard and I decided to walk part way
took a bus stop behind the hangers where the yellow bus fills up for
Kodiak. The next one left in an hour, so we started to hoof it. We had
soon left the base behind, and once over the crest at a low ridge, were
in the foothills of the range. The triangular peak that I had seen that
morning from the ship rose above us, green and smooth- looking. An
eruption at Mt. Katmai (a hundred miles away) in 1912 had blanked the
island with volcanic ash and killed off most of the vegetation. The peak
was covered with tall grass underbrush. From the narrow road, it looked
like soft grass, but it would have been a rough climb though thick
brush. It had that same deceptive green smoothness that the hills had
around Sentani Lake in New Guinea, hills, that were covered with almost
impenetrable kunai grass. We crossed a rushing stream on a wooden bridge
a stream that looked as though it would be good fishing - and skirted a
small lake. Small spruce grew down to the edge of the water where the
backdrop at mountains was reflected in the mirror-like water.
Occasionally, an ever widening circle of ripples showed where some fish
had risen for a fly. It was quiet and peaceful, and the warm sun beat on
us and we all were sweating profusely. When a 39 Chevy overtook us and
asked if we wanted a ride, we decided to take it. Wed\' been at sea 28
days and the unaccustomed exercise was taking its toll, and our legs
could tell we had been walking a good deal more than is possible on a
140-foot ship. A man and his wife had been fishing and the 4 big salmon
on newspaper on the back seat had been caught in only 2 hours. We made
small talk and I peered through the dirty windows at the rugged beauty
of the country gliding past. Past another lake, around a sharp spur at
the mountain where the road bed had been cut into a hard cherty
formation, and down a long grade into Kodiak.

What had looked neat clean from the sea turned out to be messy and
indeed far from clean. Main St. in Kodiak is a group of tired looking
frame buildings leaning against each other for mutual support. Two drug
stores, one so-called hotel, a general supplies stores, barber shop - a
stucco bank, grocery store, 2 restaurants, and 12 bars. One block west
is the bay, and behind the stores and bars in the other direction
clusters of shabby houses are joined by unpaved rutted streets. There is
a sharp jog in the main street and it continuous on to the cannery on an
arm of the bay. Here was more, what I had expected to be like. The
cannery was built out over the water on pilings, nets were hung cut to
dry, and 8 or 10 small fishing boats bobbed at the side of the peer. A
rusty winch complained bitterly as a half-breed turned the handle that
raised a great net of fish from the bowels of a boat below. The catch
was deposited in a big wheeled bucket which he pushed into the clap
boarded building that housed the cannery.

We wandered back to the center of town, picked out the Casino as the
best bar, and went in. It was dark, and we waited and still our eyes got
accustomed to the gloom. Seated around a table in the corner with our
2nd beers in front of us, we felt at peace with the world and
conversation came easily.

It seemed awfully bright as we came out, and headed down the streets
toward the bus stop. One brief stop in one of the few shops in town was
enough to show us that there was nothing in Kodiak that we really
needed - just junk jewelry, head scarves block printed in colors too
gaudy and with Alaska in big letters across it. In the back were two
peep machines with photographs on the outside of full breasted nudes and
a sign saying that for 25¢ you could watch a movie of a day in a nudist
camp.

I\'m glad we had the walk in because you could see nothing from the
disheveled bus that bumped us back disgorged us and a handful of
sailors, at the terminal on the base.

Wrote a long letter to Clare that night while the others - well, some of
them, went over to the officers club. On returning to the ship, I found
that Bill Reidle, Charlie Denkle, Bob Wisner, John Cochrane had come in
by plane and I had four letters and two I think cards (to be opened the
19th) from Clare, plus clippings et al., and [The Sea Around
Us]{.underline} from the book store in La Jolla thanks to J. Peirson.

Unless your stomach was borrowed from Tarzan, limit your claming to
months that an R\'s in \[NOT CLEAR\].

Tonight we all rocking

In the cradle of the deep

But the rocking is too violent

For anyone to sleep

I think the cradle\'s broken

And just to make it worse

Tonight it\'s being rocked

By a very drunken nurse

I hate to be making platitudes

But I like warmer latitudes

Done in reply to Tom Costain\'s poem on Lascivious carriage last June.

\[PASSAGES CROSSED OUT\]

So this long when I am finished

From the world should not behind

I will keep the sex diminished

Won\'t trap myself as Boswell did.

Lives of great men all remind us

As their pages we or\'turn

That we shouldn\'t leave behind us

Journal that we ought to burn

Lusty thoughts will not be scriven

My libido I will restrain

Licentious thoughts from mind are driven

This log will virgin pure remain.

\" Listen Bub\", a voice is saying

\"To keep it pure is dumb as hell

\" you write of coring not of laying

and brother it will never sell\"

Wednesday Sept 12th

The deep cast is coming in on Sta #50, and since the other section has
this station I am back in the lab heckling. Bob Wisner plans a 16-hr net
trawl, so even though it is 1900 and we have the next station (Al, José,
Denkle, and I) it will be quite a while, plenty of time for sleep, and I
want to get this caught up. I\'ve written XXX \[NOT CLEAR\] and the clan
so with some time at my disposal and a clear conscience I taken pen in
hand.

It has been up until the last couple of days a dark, rainy, and
generally rough seas sort of a trip. We picked up one new seamount on
Sept. 5th that I surveyed, but until yesterday it was pretty routine
stuff.

No new BT\'s waiting for us in Kodiak, so we waited a day for
[them]{.underline} all to no avail. Warren wanted some more reagents and
we needed more core liners for the Pfleger corer to replace the ones
washed overboard on the first leg. None arrived, so we have secured the
BT - winch (use it occasionally for fishing only) and take BT-s only
with SIB 5-13 at 137 m on the shallow casts. I guess Warren Wooster and
Charlie Denkle are getting along in their oxygen phosphate analyses
without the extra reagents, but Willie Weedle (Tenunda, South Australia)
and I have had the skimp on the core liners. We\'ve made one 2-foot
core, and several regular length (6\') but now have only two liners yet.
We may have to extrude them from one liner into bottles on successive
tries, but we will scrape along.

We\'ve divided the scientific watches into watches, each of which makes
the station and then stands all watches till the next one when the other
crew takes over. It makes a much better arrangement and you don\'t have
to loose quite so much sleep. For some weird reason - perhaps we were
had - Al Smith, José Barandiaran, Charlie Denkle and I had only night
watches for the first 8 or 10 days out. I never did get quite used to
staying up all night and sleeping during the day. We still get them
occasionally at night, and for our last two stations it hasn\'t even
rained.

Yesterday though things began to pop. We had again the night station the
night of the 10th - 11th and Al and José secured after the deep cast was
in and Willie Weedle came on deck to help with the core. It was to be
core #10. We put the rig over in 2750 fm of water, that is three miles
down - would have taken about 5100 meters had the line gone straight
down, but even thought there was a very mild swell and wind was light,
we had a goodly drift that managed to work up a 45° wire angle by the
time 5100 meters of wire was out, so we took her on down to make up for
the big wire angle. I wish some one would work out or discover what a
wire suspended in water does as the ship drifts. It certainly doesn\'t
stay at 45° all the way to the bottom. I suspect it is a rather like
this \[SEE SKETCH\] but that is mostly guess work partly and because I
wanted to draw the sketch anyway. We let out finally 6300 m or all but
the last layer of turns on the winch drum, and still the ball didn\'t
pop. We had a hydrophone over volume set on, but no bloody pop. We
couldn\'t let out more wire because \"there ain\'t no more\" so we
started to haul it in. At about 5900 m the winch ground to a groaning
complaining halt. ![](media/image22.pct){width="1.0263888888888888in"
height="6.459722222222222in"}

Don Derringer was winch man - full beard now waxing the much-fingered
almost microscopically small tips of his mustache and I went up to the
boat deck to check with him. He goosed up the power and the winch began
to turn slowly, each roll to port put enough strain on the thing to stop
the winch. On the starboard roll a foot or so would come up, then the
ensuing part roll would loosen enough so that the next roll back we
could pull a bit more in. We had seen it do this before and knew it was
the way a winch reacted when it was pulling a deep core out of the
bottom, so our hopes rose. It is a three-hour job at least - or should
be if your wire has as many splices as this has - to bring a core up
from over three miles, so we settled down to some semi serious dip
netting and spearing.

There were a few large sauries that broke water occasionally in short
jumps as they streaked around under the light. I saw one flying fish,
and a few 3 foot white-bellied devils just out of the range of good
vision. Then the squids came up - probably after sauries or copepods -
and I missed 8 or 10 goods ones with the spear. It was then early in the
morning,

Derringer had given way to Fenton on the winch, pitch black night and
given way to the first faint shuttle shadings at dawn and my thoughts on
fishing had given way to very happy if slightly libidinous thought of
Clare when I was startled by a splash followed by great dripping noises.
I turned and there where the wire left the water and rose past the
bucked to the sheave, a great gleaming black mass clung to the wire and
was still dripping as it rose slowly upward twisting lazily about the
wire. I screamed at George to stop the \*@!\$%# winch and jumped into
the bucket.

What I had at first fleeting glimpse thought to be turtle, I now saw was
an immense rock that had some how become fouled in the 5/32\" wire we
use for hydrographic wire and hauled all the way to the surface. The
winch had stopped, and it seemed quiet without the usual straining whine
that changes pitch with every roll, and I could hear the dripping as
water still drained from \"the thing\".

George shouted down \"What the hell is it, Stew?\"

I was looking at it and still couldn\'t believe it. Three or four turns
of wire were wrapped around it, and I held my breath for fear it would
come loose and drop back into the water - who would believe it when I
told them that \"we had brought up a big rock on the hydrographic wire,
but it - uh - came off and fell back into the sea.

I knew at once it was a real find and could now see that it was at least
coated on top with MnO2 - manganese dioxide- a typical encrustation
often found on rocks dredged from the ocean floor. Mid Pac \[MID
PACIFIC\] got some nice nodules from Sylvania, Hess, and Johnson guyots,
and they were ecstatic over specimens as big as your fist and here
before me dangling on wire no thicker than a lead pencil was a piece
almost 3 feet across. I shouted for Willie Weedle he came up into the
bucket. We decided to have George raise it gently and we would pull it
over and rest it on the edge of the bucket. Then the ship rolled and I
hung on to that thing for dear life. If it had gone to the bottom, I
think I would still have been hanging on when it landed.

![](media/image23.pct){width="2.859722222222222in"
height="3.7597222222222224in"}Bob Haines brought the wire comealong,
hooked it to the bucket rail and took enough strain off the outboard
part of the wire that we were able to un-wrap the specimen, and Bill and
I lowered it gently - even lovingly - to the floor of the bucket. It is
without a doubt the finest geological specimen ever brought up from the
ocean floor - certainly the biggest from that depth. It is the sort of
specimen that should be placed on the pedestal in a museum somewhere
with a brass plate identifying it and a velvet guard rail on highly
polished brass post to keep people from touching it.

We carried it into the lab, grinning like Cheshire cats, we knew it was
a real trophy, still couldn\'t believe it had come up in the
hydrographic wire, and were justifiably excited I\'m quite sure it is
pure MnO2 - not merely a coating on a large rock. It measures 25 x 18 x
15 inches and weighs we estimated 120 lbs - that\'s a big hunk. It is
because the bottom is all manganese that I think the whole thing is
pure. It seems to be made up of many individuals nodules of MnO2 that
vary in size from pea to baseball size - the largest just over 3\" in
diameter. Possibly each nodule has something as a starter for collection
at its cure. It is strange that MnO2 collects this way. There is not
even a trace of Mn to be found in sea water samples, yet these nodules
are found. Possibly it is collected by organisms as Pb by some snails as
and vanadium by some tunicates, but I rather doubt it. I think it is
probably to the \"gun barrel\" FeO2 concretions founds in the Cretaceous
sands of SE New Jersey. Why all the Mn for probably hundreds of cubic
miles should rush to one spot to be participated beats me. An
interesting problem, though, the \"Horizon nodule\" has another
interesting aspect that may be a hint as to its method of formulation.
There seem to be three distinct \"terraces\" on it and each composed of
different sized nodules, ranging from small to large from bottom to top.
I say \"bottom\" because that side of it was muddy a the \"top\" free
from mud and obviously the area of longest accumulation of MnO2.

Sept. 21st Friday

It is now 1330 I am up on the boat deck propped up against the
quarter-inch winch in the hot sun. We are now in + 9 time zone I think
of Clare as getting ready to make the train to Lakeville for the
weekend.

Time seems to move right along we left Sta #63 this morning - that
leaves only #65 for our section. I have been using what spare time I
have found to get caught up on my charts. Getting positions and courses
made quo from the chart house, putting them on the position plotting
sheets I brought along then putting in all our soundings come every 10
minutes - oftener when there is some thing of interest- it makes a lot
of plotting to do. I\'m up to station #52 so should finish OK -

But to continue where I left off last week:

The shape of the nodules making up the muss of each \"terrace\" is
different - getting larger more separate with each successive lager The
method of accretion suggested by this terracing in this:

> [First Stage]{.underline}: Collection of MnO2 in one location on
> bottom formulation of base of present nodule to a thickness of approx.
> 3\"

Between the first second stages the nodule was covered with sediment to
the extent of the present exposed portions if this first \"terrace\"
while more MnO2 continued to accumulate on the uncovered portion.

> [Second Stage]{.underline}: Collection of MnO2 on exposed portion to a
> thickness of 6\' more (or total of 9\" now).

Again sediment covered more of the nodule covered part of stage two -
leaving an even smaller area of bare MnO2 to attract farther deposits.

> [Stage three]{.underline}: Accumulation of more MnO2 on top of exposed
> portion of stage two formulation of the largest nodules. This for an
> additional 6 and\' the stage at which the specimen was recovered.

![](media/image24.pct){width="3.520138888888889in"
height="0.9465277777777777in"}

By the time it was aboard and the care up- a good one but anticlimactic-
it was them 6 in the morning. Reidle went bellow for some sleep I stayed
up as the watch until about 0800. The curious flocked back to see it,
and even thought I was relieved at the watch, I stuck around to ward off
souvenir hunters everyone wanted a piece of it. Hit the hay about 11 AM
dead tired was awaked about 3:30 to come back and see what was happening
to the bottom. I then ran a 3 hr survey (100 snds) of what I am quite
sure is the west ward extension of the Mendocino Escarpment. It shoaled
to 2420 fm and then dropped off to 3000 ft in a few minutes- that is
over 3000 ft and is very similar to the scarp further. This extends the
scarp westward to 1500 miles, but is same 73 mile south of the depth
recorded by the USS Caimar as sent to Menard by Bob Dietz on his trip to
Hydro on route to Europe. The contours look like this:

![](media/image25.pct){width="4.3597222222222225in"
height="3.920138888888889in"}

29° 35\' N. 147° 42\' W

Then the night of Sept. 18th and 19th I celebrated my 29th birthday by
bringing in the biggest seamount of the trip. This may be one they have
been saving the name Scripps for. I had the watch and it started coming
in on the fathometer at 9:30 the night of the 18th. I was still plotting
at Midnight when José came to relieve me and I plotted right on - with
him calling off soundings - until 4:40 the morning of the 19th. As the
smoke cleared away, I had plotted over 350 soundings, the shoalest depth
was 900 fm - the deepest 2800, - a height of 1900 fm or 11,400\' over 2
miles high. SA-4 was only 10,500 and Gilbert and Pratt 10.080 so this
indeed is the biggest yet.

We now are running long zigs and zags between stations running East in
hopes of turning up another small scarp - one that includes Erben Bank
and several other bank in that area. The crew all feels that the long
zigs are somehow my doing and are a bit teed off at \"my\" delaying
their arrival in San Diego. We\'ll be back well before the 1st anyway
but I am getting a little tired of some of their cracks - all done good
naturally, but getting monotonous for me. Gosh knows, I want to get back
as much as any and I am sure more than most.

![](media/image26.pct){width="2.3201388888888888in"
height="2.5069444444444446in"}

[^1]: ^◊^ NOAA/NMFS/Southeast Fisheries Science Center, 75 Virginia
    Beach Dr., Miami, FL.

[^2]: ^∆^ NOAA/NOS/National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science, 1305 East
    West Hwy., Silver Spring, MD.