1-1/green flash/glowing squid

So much has happened in the last 24 hours, I hope I can remember to document it all here! Well, it all started on a sour note. Our first attempted recovery was unsuccessful. As we got to the recovery site, we were able to enable and communicate with the OBS using transducers. So we know it is alive down there. However, we told it to burn its anchor off, and nothing happened. We can tell how far away it is, and that range wasn't changing, thus it wasn't moving. We sent it the burn signal 9 times, and were forced to give up on account of time (we need to make sure we still will have enough time to recover the other 15 instruments). I figured we might have some troubles getting the OBSes to the surface, but I just hoped it wouldn't be our first one. This was one of the instruments from Lamont, and they rely on glass spheres for flotation. But, we are sending these instruments to record depths, and there is a chance of these things imploding, in which case they won't float to the surface. Any number of things could have prevented it from coming up, it could be stuck in the mud (it's been sitting at the bottom of the ocean for a year), the glass spheres could have imploded, the burn cable may have had problems, etc. We don't know. So we were forced to disable it, and we may swing back and try again if we have time later.

I proceeded to hop on the stationary bike for a while to blow off some steam and burn off one of the two pieces of pumpkin pie I ate last night. Afterwards, the Salty Stitches won their first quoits match! We played the Ring Worms and won 21-11. McCall reverted to the horse shoe style throw rather than the frisbee throw and was rocking it! She threw two ringers, yet they were canceled out by the other team. Nonetheless, we pulled out a win!

The rest of the afternoon we spent transiting to our next recovery location. This instrument was one of the ones from Scripps, and is, in my opinion, overall more reliable than the Lamont version. It uses syntactic foam rather than glass spheres for flotation (so no worries about implosions there) and the seismometer itself is encased in a complete sphere, whereas Lamonts are sealed in two half spheres of glass stuck together. So, we had high hopes for this one.

Everything was going according to plan, and as the instrument was on its two hour journey to the surface, I witnessed the spectacular. I got to see the green flash as the sun set! It's subtle, but it's real! I didn't get a picture because I was too focused on keeping my eyes peeled on the horizon. I missed seeing it last year, but I got to witness it tonight! Not only was that amazing, but the sunset that followed was absolutely gorgeous. It's nice not being on the midnight to 4 am shift now because I get to see sunsets again (rather than trying to be asleep already).

After the sun went down, and the lights on deck went on, one of our lab techs pulled out his fishing poll and we went squid fishing! They are attracted to the light apparently. The first one we pulled out of the water was quite amazing! I believe they are bioluminescent. At first, it was a red and orange color, then after squiring some water at us as a defense mechanism, it flushed and went white. Then you could see it kind of glowing in a pulsing fashion. We got a great view of its nervous system! McCall gave it a try and I got to witness her catch her first squid! So proud :) We practiced catch and release with a few more squid, and soon enough it was getting close to the time we estimated the instrument to be on the surface.

We also got to see some lightning on the horizon. Also pretty spectacular at sea. Luckily we are supposed to have good weather for the next few days.

So, after sending the transducer back in the water, we figured it must be at the surface by now. But we weren't getting any radio contact. Luckily, these things are easier to spot at night believe it or not because they have a strobe light on top. I'd like to believe I was the first one to see it off the port side stern, so I'm going to say I was the first to see it. Because I got to shout and point, so I felt important. We then pulled the ship up close to it, and we could see our little OBS floating waiting to be recovered!

The orchestration of the recovery process was remarkable. I'm glad I was watching from above! Basically we backed the boat up to the instrument, two of the OBS techs stood ready with a hooked pole that had a rope and clasp attached. Once it got hooked, the rope was hitched on, and the other end of the rope was attached to a wench that would crane it up over the side. It all worked beautifully, such professionals, and soon enough our little soldier was safe on board! It is so crazy to think that that little guy was on the bottom of the ocean, 6 km down, recording earthquakes for a year! And it made it back safely. I'm so glad!

We celebrated accordingly, as I greeted our instrument excitedly with a hug, and proceeded inside to have another slice of pumpkin pie :)