Willy Sellers and I pose with Jason on the fantail of the Thompson. This picture was taken toward the end of the mission, so it's either on station at the Daito Ridge or en route to Yokohama.

You are looking at Jason's bow, the "business end" where sensors and manipulators are located. On top is a blue thing with a red stripe, this is the float, made of a special glass bead foam that won't crush under pressure, which provides buoyancy. Around it are rails with a variety of lights and sonar transducers. The "tray" below it holds equipment (in this case, a cluster of cameras including color video, high definition video, and electronic still camera). The manipulator is retracted, just visible at the lower left, next to my hand.

Behind Willy, you can see the winch with its huge spool of rusty tether cable. This is the tether which lowers Medea and Jason into the sea, carries power down to the vehicles, and carries data back up from the vehicles (through the optic fibers at its core).

Willy is standing kind of stiffly, and not looking super cheerful, because of his hip problem. He was in pain for a lot of this mission, and he had surgery (the "Big Dig") to replace the hip joint soon after we returned. Now he has an artificial hip and is much happier and more mobile.

For trivia fans, I'm wearing the Farmstock II (Livestock) shirt, from the Boiled in Lead performance at the VanBokkelen farm.

Here's a picture of Willy with Jason, taken by my sister Cindy on the dock at Woods Hole. From this angle you can see the thrusters, which sit in notches at the sides and rear of the float. The electronics packages sit below the float. The vehicle is lowered into the sea by a derrick, using the overhead cable, which is then released. Once in the water, Jason navigates with its own thrusters. All power and information travel through the tether, which is sticking up at Jason's stern.

Here is the interior of the control van, where I spent many many hours piloting. Several videocameras show views from Jason and Medea along the top tow of monitors. Forward-scan sonar is at top center. Navigational data station is at the lower right, and the winch control station (Medea pilot) is at lower left. The fat joystick that is just visible in front of the winch station is Jason's manipulator control.

The cluster of red and green lights at lower center is Jason's operations control box. The thruster controls (Jason's "helm") is usually held in the pilot's lap, while the pilot scans all these monitors. You can see me doing this constant scanning on the Discovery Channel video.