Mysteries of Ontong Java

Next week and I will be off to Pohnpei, Micronesia via a 10+hr flight to board the state of the art research ship Falkor - from there, on to the Ontong Java plateau.

Schmidt Ocean Institute R/V Falkor

The plan is that I will be working for my colleague Carlie Wiener, handling the outreach on a research/exploration cruise.  The ship is run by the Schmidt Ocean Institute (SOI), a private non-profit organization dedicated to ocean exploration. I like the quote from Wendy Schmidt (March 6, 2012), "The purpose of this ship, as she leaves on her various missions, is to communicate about the science of the oceans to people so that they can care about it.  We can't take care of something that we don't understand and we can't care if we don't know."

I will be posting daily  to the SOI blog, Facebook, Google+, and Twitter accounts. Better yet, the scientists on the cruise who actually know something will do some of the postings too. So follow along and learn about multibeam sonar scanning, multipurpose landers, and a mystery - an undersea plateau almost as large as Alaska that was probably the largest known volcanic eruption in Earth's history. Join me as I accompany Chief Scientist Mike Coffin from Tasmania with a group of scientists from around the world and the ship's crew of the Falkor, to explore "The Mysteries of Ontong Java."

The name of the area alone makes it worth checking out. I will link back to this blog, or you can follow directly via the SOI site.

For the University of Tasmania Press Release on the cruise see: Tsunami risk estimates will improve with Pacific voyage study
Aloha,

Mark