Frederik Simons, an associate professor of geosciences at Princeton University, fastens a rope around a six-foot-tall white cylinder affixed with solar panels and various wires suspended in a metal frame. The instrument, named Son-O-Mermaid, will detect and record waves, but not the kind that are rolling under the research vessel and making Simons seasick. Son-O-Mermaid measures sound waves created by the quaking of the earth far beneath the ocean surface.