After six hours of desperately trying to communicate to the Lamont instrument, we decided to leave. We sent enable codes, burn codes, and tried to range to it to get a location, but we were just unable to get any consistent pings in return from the instrument. So, we basically don't know anything. We don't know whether the OBS was enabled, whether it received our burn commands, and if it did receive our burn commands whether or not it even moved off the bottom. Chances are that it probably was enabled and heard the burns, but is having the same problems as the previous instruments and did not burn off its anchors. The fact that we never got improved communication with it gives a slight indication that it is still on the bottom. We will return to it after two more attempted recoveries and see if we can't establish better communication. But for now, it's not looking good.
The Scripps instrument we recovered very early this morning came up, but didn't have all of its data (which we were told to expect, they knew this one was going to have problems, I don't remember why). But it has about 80% of it, so not too terrible.
The rest of the day I spent knitting with McCall and trying to stay cool and collected. This whole process is very frustrating. The deployment cruise was so much more fun, you just dropped things over the edge and moved on. Now, you get all these problems and uncertainties, not quite as fun.
But, we had a good lunch of Kalua pork sandwiches. And there are butterscotch brownies that I will certainly be indulging in shortly. Dinner was really great too, game hens, cheese manicotti, sauted veggies, and rosemary potatoes. We are on our way to another Scripps site, hopefully we will have better luck with the communication. Even the recovery last night for Scripps took a while for us to ping with the instrument. I think it may be because the seas are slightly choppier. But, trying to keep my hopes up!
Monday, November 1, 2010
Sunday, October 31, 2010
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!
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
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!
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Half way, 7-1
We are officially half way through our recoveries and on an 11 hour transit to the second group of 8 OBSes. Today we managed to get two more! We recovered another Scripps instrument very early in the morning, I believe after 1 am so I didn't stay awake for it. We again had some troubles with the Lamont instrument, but it came up, slowly but surely.
We found out what is going wrong with those guys. The burn cables are encased in these plastic cylinders, and those cylinders were cracked (from the high pressure that deep in the ocean) on the one Lamont instrument we did recover. So, this is probably the reason why we never recovered the first one, its anchors were unable to burn off. This is also the reason why only one of the anchors burned off the OBS we did recover, the one that didn't burn off had this cracked cable housing cylinder. And again today, the Lamont OBS only was able to burn off one anchor weight. So it took 5 hours for it to get to the surface. I'm trying not to complain, because slow is better than not at all. It took 7 tries to get it to burn its single weight, and in that process I honestly started to believe it wasn't coming up at all. So, we are really holding our breath with those ones.
Otherwise, its super calm seas! It's been very nice the last few days, and its supposed to stay nice for the next 5-6 days which is perfect! By then we should be done, or almost done, with the recoveries and starting our 4 day transit to port in Guam!
Food is still excellent. Lunch was BLTs, sausages with peppers, and clam chowder. I opted to make myself a turkey sandwich for something a little lighter. Dinner was also delicious. Pork loin and crusted snapper, both were very good. With dirty rice and steamed zucchini, yum! Cookie of the day was oatmeal raisin, and there was leftover macadamia nut cheesecake from last night available for dessert. Tempting tempting.
Right now I am working the eight to midnight shift, and it will be extended an extra hour because we are switching time zones again. Too bad. So, Julia and I will be watching a couple movies again as we transit! The next pick up will occur a bit after 1 am this morning, and it's another Lamont OBS, so keep your fingers crossed for us!
We found out what is going wrong with those guys. The burn cables are encased in these plastic cylinders, and those cylinders were cracked (from the high pressure that deep in the ocean) on the one Lamont instrument we did recover. So, this is probably the reason why we never recovered the first one, its anchors were unable to burn off. This is also the reason why only one of the anchors burned off the OBS we did recover, the one that didn't burn off had this cracked cable housing cylinder. And again today, the Lamont OBS only was able to burn off one anchor weight. So it took 5 hours for it to get to the surface. I'm trying not to complain, because slow is better than not at all. It took 7 tries to get it to burn its single weight, and in that process I honestly started to believe it wasn't coming up at all. So, we are really holding our breath with those ones.
Otherwise, its super calm seas! It's been very nice the last few days, and its supposed to stay nice for the next 5-6 days which is perfect! By then we should be done, or almost done, with the recoveries and starting our 4 day transit to port in Guam!
Food is still excellent. Lunch was BLTs, sausages with peppers, and clam chowder. I opted to make myself a turkey sandwich for something a little lighter. Dinner was also delicious. Pork loin and crusted snapper, both were very good. With dirty rice and steamed zucchini, yum! Cookie of the day was oatmeal raisin, and there was leftover macadamia nut cheesecake from last night available for dessert. Tempting tempting.
Right now I am working the eight to midnight shift, and it will be extended an extra hour because we are switching time zones again. Too bad. So, Julia and I will be watching a couple movies again as we transit! The next pick up will occur a bit after 1 am this morning, and it's another Lamont OBS, so keep your fingers crossed for us!
Friday, October 29, 2010
5-1
This morning began with an unexpectedly slow recovery. I believe we initially estimated the OBS would be on the surface at around 4:00 am, but it arrived at the surface around 8:50 am. After getting it on board, we saw that it didn't burn off one of its anchor weights, so it was rising to the surface at a snail's pace. This was our first Lamont instrument to be recovered. Talking to the techs, it looks like it had some problems though. It didn't record all of the data, only about 250 some days worth rather than an entire year.
This was our first daylight recovery, and it sure is different trying to spot these things when it is bright out. I didn't see this first one at all. The strobe in the darkness is much easier to see than a tiny orange flag bobbing in the waves. Here is a picture of a Lamont instrument. You can see that the top is yellow rather than orange (the yellow part is the glass spheres used for flotation). You can also see the orange ball (where the seismometer is housed) dangling from it is different than the green one that Scripps has.
On the bright side, I finally got the programs working to look at some of the data from the Scripps OBSes! We aren't exactly sure what we are looking at yet (we don't know which channel it is in the miniseed, for you seismologists out there. There are four on an OBS: X,Y,Z and the DPG- differential pressure gauge), but I can show you what we think is an earthquake that occurred on November 8, 2009:
Yay! That big squiggle in the middle is the eartquake :) It's amazing that we are able to look at this stuff so quickly!
After McCall and my rowing/biking session, it was time to do yet another recovery. This one was one from Scripps, and it came up without a hitch again! This also happened during the daylight hours and props to McCall for spotting the sucker first! It is going to take some practice for me to spot these guys. It arrived safely on board, the water was nice and and calm. So, that makes a total of 5 successful recoveries so far!
And guess what, it's Aloha Friday and that means pizza for dinner!! I had three slices again, have to keep it consistent: Hawaiian, veggie, and spinach and feta. Yum! We brought our slices outside to watch the sunset because it looked like it had green flash potential. It wasn't quite a flash, more of a streak, so more subtle than last time. But still pretty fabulous!
We are about two hours away from our next site, so here's hoping we pull another Scripps instrument on board to make it 6-1.
This was our first daylight recovery, and it sure is different trying to spot these things when it is bright out. I didn't see this first one at all. The strobe in the darkness is much easier to see than a tiny orange flag bobbing in the waves. Here is a picture of a Lamont instrument. You can see that the top is yellow rather than orange (the yellow part is the glass spheres used for flotation). You can also see the orange ball (where the seismometer is housed) dangling from it is different than the green one that Scripps has.
On the bright side, I finally got the programs working to look at some of the data from the Scripps OBSes! We aren't exactly sure what we are looking at yet (we don't know which channel it is in the miniseed, for you seismologists out there. There are four on an OBS: X,Y,Z and the DPG- differential pressure gauge), but I can show you what we think is an earthquake that occurred on November 8, 2009:
After McCall and my rowing/biking session, it was time to do yet another recovery. This one was one from Scripps, and it came up without a hitch again! This also happened during the daylight hours and props to McCall for spotting the sucker first! It is going to take some practice for me to spot these guys. It arrived safely on board, the water was nice and and calm. So, that makes a total of 5 successful recoveries so far!
And guess what, it's Aloha Friday and that means pizza for dinner!! I had three slices again, have to keep it consistent: Hawaiian, veggie, and spinach and feta. Yum! We brought our slices outside to watch the sunset because it looked like it had green flash potential. It wasn't quite a flash, more of a streak, so more subtle than last time. But still pretty fabulous!
We are about two hours away from our next site, so here's hoping we pull another Scripps instrument on board to make it 6-1.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
3-1
We have had two successful recoveries today! Both Scipps instruments, so I am quite pleased. One occurred early this morning right around 6. I woke up to see it happen, and McCall was the first to spot it this time. So, again, we were in the cover of darkness so the strobe light made it easier to see. The other one happened tonight, right around 9 pm. It was a tie between me, McCall and Ernie (one of the OBS techs from Scripps) to spot it first, but I pointed first, so it went down in the log as mine :)
We went back to the first recovery spot where the Lamont instrument never came up to try again, but to no avail. Our fallen soldier will remain at the bottom of the ocean. Others think of it as our $70,000 gift to the Pacific. On a brighter note though, we already have the data off two of the instruments that have come up, so that is very exciting! Don and I are working to get the data unpacked so we can look at seismograms, but we are still troubleshooting a bit. So, no word about the data quality, but it is there!! All 24 GB of it (that is for just ONE station, I will be busy for the next three years).
Tonight McCall and I strapped on work vests and hard hats to be the 'pole girls' for the recovery. Basically we just had to grab the long poles the techs use to get a tag line on the instrument so we can crane it up on board. Not a huge responsibility, but it sure got my adrenaline going! I just didn't want something to go wrong and it be my fault! But we did just fine! And I managed to get the poles out of the way without knocking anyone in the water, so I call that a success.
Today, I certainly enjoyed breakfast. Fresh baked cinnamon rolls! Lunch was chili dogs, but I averted for just a bowl of minestrone soup. Dinner was pretty good as well! Beef stroganoff with egg noodles, grilled asparagus, but the show stopper was the honey macadamia nut shrimp. So good! There was also cherry pie (which it took all my power to not indulge in a slice a la mode) and I got a nibble of the butterscotch pecan cookies. Those I may have to indulge in later ;) McCall and I finally got on the rowing machine, and I am going to be sore tomorrow. But the more we work out, the more cookies I can eat, so I'll take it!
We went back to the first recovery spot where the Lamont instrument never came up to try again, but to no avail. Our fallen soldier will remain at the bottom of the ocean. Others think of it as our $70,000 gift to the Pacific. On a brighter note though, we already have the data off two of the instruments that have come up, so that is very exciting! Don and I are working to get the data unpacked so we can look at seismograms, but we are still troubleshooting a bit. So, no word about the data quality, but it is there!! All 24 GB of it (that is for just ONE station, I will be busy for the next three years).
Tonight McCall and I strapped on work vests and hard hats to be the 'pole girls' for the recovery. Basically we just had to grab the long poles the techs use to get a tag line on the instrument so we can crane it up on board. Not a huge responsibility, but it sure got my adrenaline going! I just didn't want something to go wrong and it be my fault! But we did just fine! And I managed to get the poles out of the way without knocking anyone in the water, so I call that a success.
Today, I certainly enjoyed breakfast. Fresh baked cinnamon rolls! Lunch was chili dogs, but I averted for just a bowl of minestrone soup. Dinner was pretty good as well! Beef stroganoff with egg noodles, grilled asparagus, but the show stopper was the honey macadamia nut shrimp. So good! There was also cherry pie (which it took all my power to not indulge in a slice a la mode) and I got a nibble of the butterscotch pecan cookies. Those I may have to indulge in later ;) McCall and I finally got on the rowing machine, and I am going to be sore tomorrow. But the more we work out, the more cookies I can eat, so I'll take it!
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
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 :)
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!
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Feast
Most of the excitement yesterday revolves around food. Again, I can't comment on breakfast (but not for long probably! This is my last midnight shift woo!), but lunch was one of my favorites! Fish tacos and kalua pork quesadillas. So delicious. They were accompanied by red beans and rice, refried beans, and jalepeno poppers, not to mention a dollop of yummy guacamole :)
Dinner last night was Thanksgiving in October! The cooks must be reading our minds, because McCall and I have lately been discussing the holidays during our Salty Stitching sessions, and commenting on how much we love Thanksgiving fare. It had everything. Roast turkey and gravy, mashed potatoes, stuffing, sweet potatoes (the variety with marshmallows on top), steamed veggies, cranberry sauce, and potato rolls. I took this as a Thanksgiving warm up, so in order to be prepared for the real holiday I had to practice going back for seconds on turkey, sweet potatoes and stuffing. No Thanksgiving meal would be complete without PUMPKIN PIE! McCall and I decided they were tiny slices so we just HAD to have two, plus Julia and Dayanthie didn't have a slice so SOMEONE had to eat theirs! So so good. I couldn't have been more excited about that meal! I'm seriously going to leave this ship overweight. McCall and I hope to get our butts on the rowing machine this afternoon.
Lots of excitement is about to ensue today. We should be recovering our first OBS in a little less than 8 hours. We should arrive on site around 5:00 am local time, upon which time we will communicate with the instrument and tell it to burn off it's anchor. It will rise through the water at a rate of about 40 m/min. This instrument is sitting at about 5994 m depth, so it will take approximately 2 - 2.5 hours to get to the surface. Then, we play the waiting and watching game, and once it is spotted, the captain will back up the boat toward the instrument, but not too fast as to run it over or let it get thrashed onto the side of the boat by the swells. The OBS techs will then use a hooked pole to get a handle on the instrument, and I'm not sure how we get it on board after that. I think a crane is involved. I'll have a better description tomorrow after I've witnessed this happen. It is going to be tricky, I'm glad I'm not the one in charge! Our jobs will be to take detailed notes about when and where everything happens, and get the poles out of the way of the people on deck once they are done with them.
So, it's going to be a long day for me. I guess it's good I got a huge meal last night! I'll get off at 2 am (Julia and I are working half shifts again), go back to bed until around 7 am and start helping with the recovery. Then I'm on shift again at noon to 4 pm, and since we are switching shifts I will also work 8 pm to midnight so the other two can take over their first midnight shift tonight. If all goes well, we should be doing about 3 recoveries every 24 hours, so we will be quite busy from here on out! Wish us luck today!
Dinner last night was Thanksgiving in October! The cooks must be reading our minds, because McCall and I have lately been discussing the holidays during our Salty Stitching sessions, and commenting on how much we love Thanksgiving fare. It had everything. Roast turkey and gravy, mashed potatoes, stuffing, sweet potatoes (the variety with marshmallows on top), steamed veggies, cranberry sauce, and potato rolls. I took this as a Thanksgiving warm up, so in order to be prepared for the real holiday I had to practice going back for seconds on turkey, sweet potatoes and stuffing. No Thanksgiving meal would be complete without PUMPKIN PIE! McCall and I decided they were tiny slices so we just HAD to have two, plus Julia and Dayanthie didn't have a slice so SOMEONE had to eat theirs! So so good. I couldn't have been more excited about that meal! I'm seriously going to leave this ship overweight. McCall and I hope to get our butts on the rowing machine this afternoon.
Lots of excitement is about to ensue today. We should be recovering our first OBS in a little less than 8 hours. We should arrive on site around 5:00 am local time, upon which time we will communicate with the instrument and tell it to burn off it's anchor. It will rise through the water at a rate of about 40 m/min. This instrument is sitting at about 5994 m depth, so it will take approximately 2 - 2.5 hours to get to the surface. Then, we play the waiting and watching game, and once it is spotted, the captain will back up the boat toward the instrument, but not too fast as to run it over or let it get thrashed onto the side of the boat by the swells. The OBS techs will then use a hooked pole to get a handle on the instrument, and I'm not sure how we get it on board after that. I think a crane is involved. I'll have a better description tomorrow after I've witnessed this happen. It is going to be tricky, I'm glad I'm not the one in charge! Our jobs will be to take detailed notes about when and where everything happens, and get the poles out of the way of the people on deck once they are done with them.
So, it's going to be a long day for me. I guess it's good I got a huge meal last night! I'll get off at 2 am (Julia and I are working half shifts again), go back to bed until around 7 am and start helping with the recovery. Then I'm on shift again at noon to 4 pm, and since we are switching shifts I will also work 8 pm to midnight so the other two can take over their first midnight shift tonight. If all goes well, we should be doing about 3 recoveries every 24 hours, so we will be quite busy from here on out! Wish us luck today!
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