Before starting graduate school, University of Delaware doctoral student Melinda Bahruth said she never thought she would be on a research vessel or conducting geological research at sea.
Before starting graduate school, University of Delaware doctoral student Melinda Bahruth said she never thought she would be on a research vessel or conducting geological research at sea. The Kansas native isn’t afraid to admit that she’s pretty scared of water in general. But Bahruth faced that fear when she travelled with UD associate professor Jessica Warren and members of Warren’s Mantle Processes Group to the Gofar Transform Fault, which is located underwater on the East Pacific Rise, a mid-ocean ridge that runs south from the Gulf of California.
The group spent nearly a month at sea just west of the Galapagos Islands placing seismometers and collecting rock samples.
“There were times when I was on the ship and I was thinking ‘there’s 4,000 meters below me to the seabed, an unimaginable depth,’ and there was no-one out there besides us,” said Bahruth. “It was a very remote part of the ocean, and you don’t see anybody. It was otherworldly, but incredible to experience.”
Read more at University Of Delaware
Image: Cécile Prigent (left), a postdoctoral researcher at UD, and Kuan-Yu Lin, a doctoral student, sort and label rocks on the deck of the research vessel. CREDIT: University Of Delaware
