Stealth Journeys with the Steam Mapper

Chapter 56: Getting to Work

The shorter dive the next day gave everyone time to watch the scientists in the lab busy at work with their new specimens.   The lab was a marvel of new devices installed onboard just for the research planned for the long voyage.   Now that vents having the desired bacterium were located, future trips down were being assigned.

One person especially happy to be handling the newly harvested specimens was MBER, Mary Berenstein, aka: "Mama Bear".   Mary or "Ember" (as she was called on this expedition) was someone both StLF and MYKA now gravitated towards after their very first day of introductions, which had begun awkwardly.

MBER enjoyed having the "dorm mother" role for these two.   Mary Berenstein had retired from being a professor for graduate studies at the Woods Hole Institute and had begun taking part in expeditions now that her three daughters had completed their medical studies and flown the nest.

One might think that MBER and Chief would have lots to talk about, since both had raised children to have fulfilling careers.  But that wasn't the case.  When MBER had approached Chief for some casual small talk about their families, she was quickly shot down.   Chief's children were outstanding and destined for great military careers and that was enough said.   No family anecdotes to be shared.  Chief was highly protective of family to the point of one wondering what family skeletons might be in the closet.

Getting to travel on oceanographic expedition brought a second wind to Mary's career.   She was again able to use her gentle approach to helping solve the problems of anyone she mentored.   It was a teaching method she could not retire even as she retired from the classroom.

Secretly she did have to admit that she had to use every trick in her parenting book to convince MYKA and StLF that she could be trusted and that she really knew her "stuff".   Her open, friendly manner did not seem to match the seriousness of her pursuit of the specialized types of bacterium being sought as a solution to carbon emissions.

Mary's professor husband chose to remain at home while she traveled and, finding new friends on each trip was a way for her to cope.  Trying to find companions that would listen to her long-winded explanations and answer her probing questions usually brought mixed results.  Through trial and error, she learned that younger scientists were as a rule, more tolerant (out of respect for her work, no doubt).  But, MYKA and StLF were suspicious of people who tried so hard to become intimate friends in such a short time.   Over time they began to see her as a source for answering generic questions, but they kept their own personal stories to themselves.   Who knows what private information of theirs she might gab to others onboard this research vessel?  She was known as "The Talker".

With the successful dive, the scientists in the lab were using technology first used by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI) in conjunction with the long-living ALVIN submersible, which was used to take the Vent-SID (Submersible Incubation Device) to the sea floor.  The Vent- SID was the brainstorm of biologist Craig Taylor and engineer Ken Doherty, both of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI).  Other WHOI engineers designed the equipment to function in situ.  This allowed all sorts of studies at the actual hydrothermal sites, where the intense pressure, nutrients, lack of sunlight, and the oxygen deficient zone of the water column above the vents, all contributed to an accurate understanding of the unique chemical features in the vent fluids, allowing the measurements of nitrite, and chemosynthesis.  The new devices allowed for the study of the productivity of deep-sea vents.  This allowed scientists to assess what roles such vents played in biogeochemical cycling of the deep-ocean and in other ocean levels, too.