Tuesday, 17 February 2004

Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea

I am writing to you from a ship. It's an oceanographic research vessel named the R/V Melville. The sun is bright; the air hangs heavy because it is incredibly humid and the temperature is around 29° C (84° F). The water temperature is slightly warmer than the air!

If you're wondering why I am here, believe me, you're not alone, I ask myself the same question! My name is Denise Walsh and I work for Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California. I joined the R/V Melville in January in order to learn more about a collaborative research effort called Source to Sink (S2S) that is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and MARGINS. S2S in Papua New Guinea involves scientists and researchers from around the world who are working together to understand how sediment is delivered from the mountain tops to the ocean; source being the mountains, and sink being the Gulf of Papua. For the next three weeks, I'll be working with scientists from Scripps, the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, Penn State University and East Carolina University to explore the Gulf of Papua.

When I was young, I remember looking at a tree stump and noticing rings which got smaller and smaller as they reached the center of the tree. My mom told me that each ring represented annual growth of the tree, that each ring told a story. The rings could tell you approximately how old the tree was, it also gave you an idea of past climate. For example, whether a year was wet or dry. Just as rings in a tree tell you a story, so can the Earth when you look at layers of sediment below the seafloor.

Tomorrow I'll begin to explore the ways in which we can travel through time by digging into the past in the Gulf of Papua. I hope you will join me on this adventure and along the way get a feel for what it's like to live aboard a working research vessel and discover with me how to read Earth's history!

Analysis of an x-radiograph

Today's weather and location at 1300 (thirteen hundred hours, military time for 1:00 pm)
Air Temperature: 29°C (84°F)
Water Temperature: 31°C (88°F)
Salinity 31.33 PSU
Barometric Pressure: 1004.5
Relative Humidity: 71%

Longitude: 9.47599° S
Latitude: 147.14657° E