Danny Baza Blas

One of my students took on the task of making a movie to show how much other students cared for my efforts the past two years. Ceth asked to have a few minutes during class to show the video, which was a total and complete surprise to me. I had no idea why he had requested to use an iPad during lunch, before and after school! Ceth continued to request photos of me and what my favorite song was. Now I know! Thank you to my Kearny buddies. You will not be forgotten.

A ship's morale is often times based on food quality Current ship status : latitude: 71.40N; longitude: 150.54W; temp: 32F; speed: 4.7k; winds: 32k; water depth: 1450m Yesterday (Day 18) was Labor Day on the ship, meaning the science team and Healy crew labored all day, dropping our coring instruments into the Arctic Ocean from morning to dusk. Today we are experiencing rough seas again, and because of the sea situation, our science--meaning coring--is taking a brief pause. Teacher On-Board Today is the first day of school in San Diego Unified School District . Steve Walters (Mission Bay High School, San Diego) will have a brief respite from coring operations today due to rough seas . Yesterday, Steve's Labor Day did not include barbecue or relaxation; coring was the order for Steve's day. Danny Blas (Lincoln High School, San Diego) did not write a blog post yesterday in observation of Labor Day; however, did conduct video interviews with the entire Healy Fo...

The view from the bow of our icebreaker USCG Healy (Master Chief Sullivan) Ship's current status: visibility: low, foggy; temp: 37F; latitude: 70.39 N; longitude: 137.30 W The third straight day of sunshine and more vitamin D for a crew with good morale. Very little coring today (relative to previous days of core, core, and more coring). We are transiting west, towards an area with very shallow waters and geologic features called pingos , which are mounds "of earth-covered ice found in the Arctic and subarctic that can reach up to 70 metres (230 ft) in height and up to 600 m (2,000 ft) in diameter." What we seem to be more interested in, however, are pingo-ish, underwater hills that "form when methane hydrate (a frozen mixture of gas and seawater) decomposes beneath the seafloor, releasing gas that squeezes deep sediments up onto the seafloor like toothpaste from a tube," according to Charlie Paull and William Ussler, MBARI geologists. Our goal i...

Click to enlarge current position [Today's video (below) "In Transit" includes appearances by: Martin Reedy, Akash Kataria, Lloyd Keigwin, Neal Driscoll, Woody Sutherland, Steve Walters, Chris Griner] The image to the left displays our current position (latitude and longitude) as well as the current temperature, wind speed, and barometric pressure. Our current position is on the Beaufort Sea at a point near where the Mackenzie River empties into the Beaufort Sea. Click here to see a map . The ship, the crew, and the science team are engaged in full-bore instrument deployment at the moment. The gravity core , multi-core , and piston core instruments have been in-and-out of the water all morning and afternoon. Marti Jeglinski 's team are busy taking the cores, labeling and storing the cores. Brendan Reilly has been scanning the cores, using an assortment of instruments, to determine the contents of the cores. Brendan does this without opening the core...

Barrow, Alaska, very cold desert is the most northerly point in the United States  http://goo.gl/R1K8Ym Day one of the Arctic mission objective was--pretty much--getting onto the ship, the United States Coast Guard ice breaker  USCGC Healy . If you read my previous blog post, you already know the trip from San Diego, CA to Barrow, AK was a long one; however, the ending of Day One was worth it. I'll get to that in a moment. When the Alaskan Airlines flight landed in Barrow, we were met by a convoy of pickup trucks and vans, which collected the members of the science team, and delivered us to the Search and Rescue Hangar (SAR). (Take a peek of the SAR in the video below.) The first order of the day at SAR?: order lunch! And we did, and it was surprisingly good. It never occurred to me that good pizza could be had in Barrow, a very cold place with zero paved roads. (Another person on the science team, Mackenzie, who will be a senior a...