Scuttled Hopes and Dreams, 9-2

Happy Halloween! From this side of the date line anyway. We were super productive today and managed to do 3 recoveries in 24 hours. We will just miss doing 4 actually probably by an hour. In honor of Halloween I set out a bowl of candy corn that was demolished before noon, and some of the crew dressed up. One of our kitchen hands Carston wore his brightest clothing, tye dye shirt, pink shorts, and a bright orange hair band. We decided he was a rainbow. Or a rainbow warrior, as the University of Hawaii mascot used to be (they are now just the warriors). Another person, Frank, actually shaved his head into a mohawk and had a shirt spray painted 'Sons of Anarchy, Kilo Moana.' He wore goggles all day too, way to commit. And I also saw Larson dressed up as a ghost buster.

The day started out well. There was supposed to be a Lamont recovery early in the morning, arriving on site around 1 am. When I felt the ship moving around 5 am, I figured that we had left it behind (that it probably had anchor releasing problems like the rest), since the others have been taking 5 hours to rise. I have lost a lot of faith in these ones. But, when I woke up to get breakfast, I was informed that the Lamont recovery was a complete success! It came up properly, released both of its weights, and most importantly recorded all the data (the previous two we recovered only recorded for 250 and a measly 80 days...). So, that was a high note.

Now the low note. We moved on to our next recovery site, which happened to be a Scripps site much to my delight, because these guys have been coming up consistently and with no problems. It reached the surface without a hitch, and we happily brought it on board. Yet, when one of the techs removed the cylinder in the bottom that has the batteries and data cards, the other end of the cylinder popped open and water spilled out. Not only had it leaked, but the lithium batteries inside had also leaked, which is very very dangerous. And not only is the battery acid incredible corrosive, but the amount of power in that cylinder is equivalent to a stick of dynamite. They immediately swung the cylinder to the edge of the boat to drain it, and then dumped the innards of that cylinder, along with my hopes and dreams, into the ocean. It was very sad to watch. A years worth of potential data, crucial parts to my PhD thesis, scuttled off the back deck. Granted, those data cards were corroded and worthless so it didn't matter that we were dumping it overboard. It was still figuratively crushing.

Too bad this was after I opted out of the comfort food lunch: meatloaf, garlic mashed potatoes, mac and cheese, and green beans. I had a salad. I could have used that meatloaf. Instead I got on the bike and listened to some angry music. Dinner was calamari steaks with a tomato caper sauces, mango glazed ham, rice, and asparagus. There is some chocolate cake down there also beckoning, so maybe I'll have a little Halloween indulgence later.

We had one more Scripps recovery tonight, and luckily this one went without a hitch. I got to play pole girl for both Scripps recoveries today, adding to the excitement. We are now en route again to another Scripps instrument. We should arrive on site while I am still on shift, but it will probably surface after midnight again.

So, the one Scripps failure has some interesting and scary implications. Now that we have lost that OBS, we are really relying on two Lamont instruments for success in this experiment. We have three more Scripps instuments to recover, yet these guys all lie in a row. Without getting to sciency, we really want a good azimuthal distribution of stations to be able to get at our problem. So stations in a line would not be ideal. You can really see this when you look at a map of the stations

So, here the green circles are Scripps instruments, red are Lamont. A black check mark indicates a completely successful recovery, and a white check shows the two Lamont OBSes that didn't record all the data. The X shows the two OBSes that failed. So, you can see to get good spatial coverage on the group on the left, we need those last two red OBSes. Getting the rest of the green ones would be great, but they are in a line and we'd only have that one Lamont OBS off the line. The green Scripps one we lost today was a major player. I am mourning the loss of our soldier.

I was just thinking to myself, I am surprised Ernie (one of the OBS techs) hasn't tried to play a practical joke today, on Halloween. He has been quite mischievous on this trip. He was the one behind the 'I'm on a Boat' video. A few days ago they roped McCall into a scientist trap on deck. But, we just got a call in the computer lab that they needed help downstairs. So I headed down, but on my way down, I was a little suspicious. As I peeked my head into their lab, I saw a camera sitting next to Ernie. I knew they were up to something, so when I stepped in and a small piece of foam on a string (aka a spider) swung down in my face I wasn't too surprised. I think I bummed Ernie and Mark out a bit because my reaction wasn't quite what they were looking for. So, I sent Julia down into the trap, hoping their work wouldn't go for nothing. But the thing landed right above her head so she didn't notice. Nice try Mark and Ernie.

So, say a little prayer for those two Lamont instruments. My thesis may depend on it!