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“We know about earthquakes here in Wellington,” asserted a waiter The cruise itself was divided into two legs, both of which were carried
at the Thistle Inn. After a satisfying meal, my colleague and I were out on the R/V Roger Revelle. The first and longer of the two legs
giving an abridged rundown of our cruise objectives to this excited involved the collection of the four lines of CSEM data shown in
employee. It was a day or so before we would leave for a month-long Figure 1, in addition to the deployment of 42 OBEMs for collection
voyage to deploy ocean bottom electromagnetometers (OBEMs) for of passive MT data.
controlled-source electromagnetic (CSEM) and magnetotelluric I had never been to sea for more than a few hours - as a geophysics
(MT) imaging of the subseafloor off New Zealand’s north island. PhD student, I would spend most of my days in front of a computer
Curious about our business in New Zealand, our waiter warned us rather than performing manual labor. I am pretty accustomed to
that talking about earthquakes was making people anxious in his having stable ground beneath my feet and a bed that doesn’t rock
country. Somehow, it was refreshing to find a non-geophysicist who at night.
thought our work was important. But it also impressed upon me the
urgency to make this cruise a success. Everything about the experience was new for me.

Figure 1. Survey map showing location of leg 1 OBEM deployments (green
triangles), leg 2 OBEM deployments (magenta squares), CSEM tows (peach lines),
and GNS land receivers (white and blue circles). Inset shows regional tectonics
(from http://volcano.oregonstate.edu).
4000

-37 2000 “
It was very educating and
fun to work with instruments
North Island, NZ also took home some ideas
other than the ones I am
-38 0 Topography (m) used to from my institute. I

for organizing science on

-39 -2000 research vessels, which might ”
benefit my work group.
- Gesa Franz
-4000
-40

CSEM tow
Leg 1 Receivers
-41
Leg 2 Receivers
GNS Land MT Right page: The Scripps Undersea
GNS Lake MT Electromagnetic Source Instrument
-42
(SUESI) with leg 1 participants. Back
left to right: Chief Scientist Samer Naif,
Eric Attias, Christine Chesley, Chris
175 176 177 178 179 180 Armerding, Dallas Sherman, Gesa Franz,
Andi Adams, and Bar Oryan. Front
kneeling left to right: Daniel Blatter and
Jake Perez. Photo credit: Samer Naif
Left: R/V Roger Revelle.
Photo credit: Kerry Key

16 • GeoPRISMS Newsletter Issue No. 42 Spring 2019