Success at Sea!

11 units of a novel RSL-designed high-temperature deep sea water sampler has just been deployed in the ocean, specifically at Hole 1309D along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge as part of Expedition 399 of the International Ocean Drilling Program (IODP). The samplers are narrow cylinders, and 11 of them were linked together - as seen in the photo - and lowered into a narrow borehole drilled into the bottom of the ocean. The bottom of this particular borehole is at a temperature higher than 140 deg Celcius! Several successful samples have been collected so far, with water from those samples to be sent to 12 different scientific labs around the world, to include institutes in France, Germany, Wales, England, Japan, China, US, Australia.

The instruments use a novel, passive, shape memory alloy (SMA) trigger to allow water to be collected at very high temperatures. The concept was introduced by Dr. Kitts several years ago and led to the funding of two collaborative proposals by the National Science Foundation; one was through SCU for design and development and the other was with Dr. Geoffrey Wheat from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Dr. Wheat is a Visiting Scholar with SCU's Robotic Systems Laboratory and a 20+ year collaborator with Dr. Kitts. A number of SCU students played critical roles in designing the sampler and it's SMA trigger mechanism, to include MS graduates Rachel Stolzman and Ann McGuire, seen in the photo below with an early prototype of the sampler. Dr. Wheat and his team have performed an enormous level of additional test and refinement of the samplers in order to estblish the functional systems that are now being used at sea. The samplers being deployed by Dr. Wheat - who is currently out at sea - and the crew of the current IODP mission.