When you are pressed for time, the only thing you hope for is for things to go as smoothly as possible so that you can move on.

... probably the most challenging feature in the global ocean on which to deploy ocean bottom seismometers, which need to land onto a relatively flat surface ...

Kyle Manley, Tristan Salles Dietmar Müller Since roughly 1880 the Earth has warmed by 1 deg C, many times faster than any warming episode in the past 65 million years of Earth’s geological history. We will need to remove hundreds of gigatons of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere by the end of the twenty-first century to keep global warming below 2°C within the constraints of the global carbon budget.

Three and a half days after our departure from Hobart, we arrived in just northeast of the Macquarie island and instantly proceeded with swathing – mapping the ocean floor in the north-eastern quadrant, in lines parallel to the Macquarie ridge.

A violent earthquake roared and rumbled through the underworld of a distant corner of the planet covered by the restless ocean, far enough from any soul to be felt or heard.

“Below 40 degrees south there is no law, and below 50 degrees south there is no God."

We (the team of 9 scientists and technicians from the Australian National University’s Research School of Earth Sciences) are out of strict 2-week quarantine and ready for a pre-voyage mobilisation. This includes a series of inductions and briefings prior to boarding, boarding, and final stages of preparation for the voyage.

A recent article in The Conversation by Simon Lamb from Victoria University of Wellington "uncovers the fundamental forces that control the Earth’s surface". They use Crust 1.0, ETOPO1, and the McKenzie and Priestley lithosphere model to compute their "Whole Layer Isostasy" model.

I am locked in a small hotel in Hobart turned into a quarantine, tempted to write a story named “Tasmanian quarantine”, but, honestly, I can’t.   I could lament how unlucky, or brag how courageous we are to endure this isolation. I could show you how tiny the room is, in which I feel I could touch all corners at once if I stretched my hands and legs wide enough.