Day 12 - Entering PNG waters

It seems the further north we go the fewer rocks we retrieve from the dredge and less flora and fauna we see from the observation deck. Nonetheless we overcame our rut of bad luck at the Lexington Seamount and hauled in some good chunks of basalt from the margin of the Louisiad Plateau.

Viva PNG!

Today we entered PNG waters! This is the first time Quinn Anderson, from The University of Sydney, has ever been outside of Australia. So she gets a (unofficial) passport stamp. Welcome to new frontiers, Quinn!

Final seamount

As we ware passing into PNG waters, we are no longer able to publicly disseminate seafloor bathymetry. So here is a topological map of the Lexington Seamount, the last seamount in Australian waters and the oldest in the Tasmantid hotspot chain.

The Lexington Seamount is the first of a chain of seamounts that have sprung up from a mantle plume penetrating the base of oceanic lithosphere.

Bad Poetry Day

Happy Bad Poetry Day! We gathered here today to recite some truly awful poetry to stretch the English language to unbearable limits.

Moi - Ode to the Wombat

As you pound along the track
Eyes wide open and ears pinned back
You may have noticed those queer square turds
And thought if not expressed in words
The pain of such defecation
Baffles the imagination
But it ain’t done to entertain us
The wombat has an oblong anus
So if at night you hear pained cries
Outside your tent, feel no surprise
With eyes shut tight, teeth clenched with pain
A wombat’s gone and crapped again!

Chantelle Ridley - Rock on

Some are big
And some are small
Good ol’ rocks
I love them all

Poor rock
Pooooor rock
I love you rock
Except in my socks

People tread on you everyday
They just don’t hear what you say
I know rocks have feelings too
Just like me and you

Oh rock
Ooooh rock
I love you rocks
You rock my socks

Josie Lumley - An Ode to Boobies

First you see them,
Conspicuous, large, heavy, robust,
Some brown, some white,
Red blue yellow, wow what a visual perception.

If you provoke them,
Then maybe you’ll hear them,
A honk, a whistle,
A quack of a hiss,
They really are quite hard to let slop through one’s fingers.

And what’s more about boobies,
To both yours and may delight,
They come in pairs or more,
As they’re poised at great upright distances.

So I finish here after sharing to thee,
About my great amour for my beloved Suli formes.

Edward Clennett - The Booby

Once upon a 2am-2pm dreary,
while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten
basalts and volcanic breccias—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a swath mapping,
As of some one gently rapping/dredging, dredging at my seafloor.
“’Tis some geologist,” I muttered, “dredging at my seafloor—
Only this and nothing more.”
Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately Booby of the saintly days of yore;
Not one rock did he analyse; not one sooty tern counted by his eyes;
But, hoping for the baseball cap prize, perched above my RV Investigator—
Perched upon a bust of Jo Whittaker just above my RV Investigator—
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.
And the Booby, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Jo just above my RV Investigator;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,
And the winch cable o’er him streaming throws his dredge on the seafloor;
And my rocks from out that dredge that lies floating on the seafloor
Shall be lifted—RV Investigator!

Saskia Ruttor - Untitled

Where are you rocks so deep in the sea,
hiding from the dredge!
From every corner we will try,
to get you off the edge.
Sand yeah sand is not enough,
some basalts are wanted,
or are they too rough?