We are beginning Dive 5 of expedition 3 of Okeanos Explorer’s 2014 sojourn to the Gulf of Mexico.
We’re in the northwestern Gulf of Mexico and you’re in for a treat today.
We’re looking at not one, but two shipwrecks.
We’re really lucky to have a number of archaeologists on the phone today and who will be interpreting as they see.
And they’ve had a couple of years to think about what all this means,
what these different ships might have been doing, why they might have sunken so close together,
why the artifacts on the wrecks differ from one ship to the other and what they might have been carrying at the time.
We will begin at the stern of Monterrey C.
We will not be violating the wreck perimeter.
Our goal is to try to station Seirios over the center line and mid-ships of the wreck and then operated D2 around the entire perimeter.
Monterrey C is only 29 meters long.
We’ve got a 30-meter tether on D2. We think we might be able to get away with that.
We’d like to minimize ship and Seirios movement if we can.
We’re going to be extraordinarily careful. Bear with us, we’re going to be moving very slowly today.
We don’t want to kick up sediment with thrusters, D2 thrusters, around the perimeter of the wreck.
So this is part of the rudder assembly. Is part of the steering assembly.
It’s the hinge for the rudder.
What these have been made out of. I don’t see any life really growing on them except a few little tubeworms.
Brass.
Couple of things that we’re trying to do here today, is
with regard to the biological growth on the wrecks is compare the differences among different habitat types, or material types in this case,
whether you’re looking at ceramic or glass or leather or metal or concretions or copper,
the case of the sheathing around the base of the ship, this first ship,
and also not just comparing those between materials and between the ships themselves,
but comparing that to the life forms that we’ve been seeing the last few days at the brine seeps and the oil and gas seeps
and in the canyons. These are the kinds of life forms that live naturally at these depths,
but we’re going to be wanting to know if it looks like there’s differences in the relative abundances here versus other more natural areas in the Gulf,
and what that might say about the impact of manmade structures being added to the Gulf of Mexico in the form of pipelines and platforms and windmills eventually and things like that
and how that might influence life forms around the Gulf.
You can see all that shell hash on the bottom below.
That would be the remains of those shipworms that destroyed the wood of the ship over time
and they’re not actually worms, they’re mollusks, they’re not worms at all, but they eat the wood of the ships and they have forever.
And that’s the downfall of most ships.
Trying to get a measurement on that will be helpful if ultimately working with the overall dimensions of the ship to determine its size and tonnage.
This makes it really clear that she is all the over onto her side because what you’re seeing there are the chain plates
on that side of the hull which can come up and attach the rigging to the mast.
It looks to be glass with a rim. I think it’s an instrument of some sort.
Ah. Okay.
Do you see what could be a dial, a hand inside of it as well?
As if this is a chronometer?
We’ll do this for another five or ten minutes and then we’re going to get ready to transit to Monterrey A.
The operational tempo here will be the same.
We’ll be looking at the perimeter of the starboard side first and then the port side without violating the perimeter of the wreck.
We will keep D2 outside the wreck and look in.
For those of you out there who are not
aficionados of this wreck, we are now looking at the stern and we are about to start moving up the starboard side.
This is a wreck that’s been visited by Okeanos for the first time in 2012.
That’s a cannon in the center, right hand view. We’re going to want to take a good look at that.
And the stove is the upright structure above and to the left of the cannon.
We’re going to want to look at both.
I do think it’s about time to call it a day, though, folks.
Is there anything else burning that you need to see before we leave?
I think we’re done, folks. I think we can button it up.
Bravo, you guys. Bravo, everybody.