An Ode to Marine Geology
By Zachary Levitan, MG&G Group, 12-4 watch
The air hung heavy on my clothes. Beads of sweat clung to my back as I donned a work vest and hard hat. Marley sipped coolly on his third La Croix of the day as we walked out to the aft workstation. The flat blue horizon of the horizon greeted us with the heave of a wave while the green cliffs of Olosega Island towered nearby. The sediment grab glistened in the sunshine, curved metal reflecting the beating sun. The sediment grab, known as a Shipek, was to be lowered all the way to the seafloor some 450 meters below. Once there, the lower bucket would swing into place, scooping up the grains of sediment that littered the seafloor. This was our area of study. We stood and watched the slow turn of the winch as the silver outline of the Shipek disappeared in the clear waters. We waited. Our eyes turned to the outdoor screen that read out the tension, payout of wire, and speed of descent. We waited. The depth grew slowly while the tension reading seemed to jump around from 600 to 400 to 200 and back again with no real rhyme or reason. We waited.
Eventually, the tension dropped, the speed flipped direction, and the winch began to crank in reverse. The wire rose steadily out of the water as the Shipek returned from its watery bottom. After some time, the glistening metal came into view and a blue plastic bucket was placed underneath. Once open, the bounty within blessed our eyes. Never before was I so happy to see a pile of dirt. The black coarse grains of volcanic ash were better than any Christmas present I had opened just over a week earlier. This sediment was key to several of my friends’ projects, and we gleefully ran our fingers through the grains. Aisha remarked about its exfoliating properties while Sophie pointed to small clear shells that stood out against the inky black backdrop. We scooped the sediment into plastic bags so they could be put through sieves and sorted by grain size. We cleaned the lower bucket of the Shipek and returned everything to its rightful place. With everything reset, the boat steamed along to the next sample site where the grab would be lowered once again. But until then, there was nothing we could do but wait.
Zachary Levitan, MG&G Group, 12-4 watch
