Hi All,
Well another busy day! Lots and lots of activity. The ship is a hive of round-the-clock activity with ROV exploration, coring, CTD’s, swath and lots of other science.
ISIS was brought in at around 7PM, marking the end of a successful dive No. 99. During the dive we collected a number of creatures call holothuriuns and some other biological samples. These will be studied by the biologists who will take DNA samples and study how these strange creatures are related to other bottom dwelling beasties around the world.
So, with ISIS on deck a large crowd gathered around to see if all the samples had made it back. In addition to biological sampling we had taken three “push cores” – hollow tubes which are pushed into the mud to extract a core sample of the sediment.
Once we had landed the samples I went to watch the scientist’s study the creatures they had brought up and take DNA samples. Unfortunately the creatures don’t survive during the 4000m ascent to the surface. The scientists take the DNA samples; study the contents of their digestive systems and some other features of the creatures.
At 8:30 I went back to the cabin but no sooner had I settled down into writing emails I received a call saying a Submarine had appeared close to the ship and was heading past us. At first I thought it was a joke, but headed up onto the deck. There was indeed a submarine sailing past some distance away. I went up to the bridge and took several images of the submarine which we identified as most likely British. It was unusual to see a submarine transiting on the surface and we watched as it headed off into the rapidly approaching gloom. Through the night lights could be seen….
Sleep didn’t last long. No sooner had I put my head down – I received a call telling me one of the systems which I helped look after was not behaving. The USBL (Ultra Short Baseline) system is used for tracking underwater equipment. We had added it to a small device for extracting core samples from the seabed. Unfortunately the beacon’s cable has been misplaced and the battery had died.
The next day started with the usual data management tasks. We are producing lots of data from a variety of sources and one of my first tasks of the day is to write all the data to a 400GB tape drive in-case our main logger dies.
With that done I had a look at a few minor taks before going and helping in the ROV container for a few hours. They seemed really happy because I brought lots of sweets for them.
Later in the morning a large battle fleet turned up comprising of ships from a variety of nations including the UK, France and India to name few. I can only guess that they are in an exercise with the submarine we saw last night. Unfortunately for them we are making a lot of noise. We have a number of systems that are emitting noise into the sea as well as our propellers and thrusters keeping us on station. HMS Westminster and an Indian vessel did a few laps passed us at distance before moving off to rejoin the fleet.
At about 3PM we recovered ISIS. I sat in the engineers chair with Simon piloting. The recovery went without a hitch and no sooner was the ROV secure the scientists were opening the sample boxes to reveal one of the biggest sea slug like creatures I have ever seen! This creature was huge!
With the ROV on deck the ISIS team turned their attention to a few issues they have encountered whilst we deployed a CTD to take water samples at different depth and then a device to trap small suspended beasties just above the seabed some 3900m below us
All in all a busy and successful day |
