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Hello from the MIDDLE of the Pacific! My name is Jessica Jean McPeak. I am a 20 year old junior undergraduate studying Visual Studio Arts at University of California San Diego. I have been acting videographer and photographer for documentation of our transit from my place of residence San Diego, CA to Honolulu, HI. As I write from the Oceanus our coordinates are 31 degrees (lat) and 132 degrees (long). This geolocation describes the site of our second gravity core sample. Now we wait in anticipation for its descent to be complete at around 4,400 meters below surface water. We don’t have a dynamic positioning system on board so our crew is manually performing dynamic positioning to hold us steady on the water for the several hours. You do the math: 4,400 meters deep at a descending rate of 60 meters per minute. That’s a lot of long term joystick control. ( and your parents think videogames are pointless) I will write tonight to update on the status of our second core site. We will also collecting water samples from our CTD (conductivity, temperature, depth) later today! Our ship is a small vessel merely 175 ft long with 26 individuals on board. It’s just us and the big old blue. I only just saw a huge cargo ship today way off in the distance. We are all alone out here. Well that is besides amount of passing by trash that makes your wonder if I can VISIBLY see the floating debris 100 ft on either side of our small vessel than how much is spread out and how much is below that you can’t see… We counted 40 pieces in only 15 minutes going a speed of 11 knots! The garbage ranged from things you would expect to maybe see like lost buoys and nets except you would expect to see them this frequently. In addition to the sea related objects are a series of unusual floating debris including multiple plastic laundry baskets, a can of red bull, many water bottles, a container of detergent, a bottle of gin, plastic clothes hangers, individual bottle caps, a lonely teal handle, a container of bubbles, and toy play red fence.
