Sunday, August 28, 2011

Survey's End!

Gareth here. We have now finished all of our 31 planned stations, and even had time to add on a 32nd 'icing-on-the-cake' station where we sampled some cold waters coming down along the Flemish Cap from the Labrador Sea.

A map showing the location of our two initial test stations where we tested out all of our instruments (blue dots), our 31 planned stations along the survey transect (green), and our 32nd 'icing-on-the-cake' station (yellow). We're now en route back to Woods Hole. The yellow star shows the final resting place of the Titanic, which we passed by earlier in the cruise and will be passing alongside again later tonight.

We're all feeling a great sense of accomplishment as we now steam home. Some of our instruments, and of course our bird observer Tim 'The Bird Machine' White, that sample while the vessel is underway are still running, but otherwise most of the science party is now working on processing data and samples, and taking apart the equipment for when we return to Woods Hole. We're far enough offshore though that it will take us a total of about 6 days to make it home!

Nancy and Katie washing down the nets from the MOCNESS, ready to be stowed away until the next cruise. [Photo: G. Lawson]
The MOCNESS nets hanging out to dry from the 01 deck rail. [Photo: P. Wiebe]
Gareth and Alex disconnecting the data cable from the "portable" winch installed for this cruise to allow us to tow the HamarHead broadband echosounder. [Photo: P. Wiebe].
Bosun Clindor, Chief Mate Logan, and AB Chris taking down the 'Cannon,' a  large boom used to tow our Greene Bomber towed body. [Photo: G. Lawson]

No comments:

Post a Comment