It's been a very busy and productive day, with lots of excitement and a little bit of fun. Woke up to find 3 more barrels rolling around on deck because of the heavy seas. Rescued them and secured them with even more rope, but every time the ship rolled, a wave would come aboard and pop them loose again. Finally, we just filled them half full of water to give them some weight, and that seemed to do the trick.
At our first station for the day, we managed to get the radium pump intake down 78 meters, and even had a little bit of hose left over. A near record for this system.
On our second station of the day, our high volume pump failed. We had just commented that it seemed to be putting out an odor when it suddenly shorted out and stopped working. The ship's engineer believes a large capacitor blew out, possibly having gotten wet. For radium sampling, we switched to using the ship's system which draws water in from about 3 meters below the surface. We located a replacement pump near LUMCON, and we hope to have it aboard the Pelican tomorrow morning (03May2008).
With the sediment from the box cores, we are trying to pressurize them enough to force water out through a filter, leaving the sediment behind. Leslie and I each managed to over-pressurize the system, sending the mud into our collection beaker. After a little re-engineering, it looks like Alanna has successfully set up our first mud section on the squeezer -- we've managed to collect about 100 ml so far, one drop at a time.
No fishing tonight. We are steaming towards our next transit line which will take us from near LUMCON to offshore waters again. Lots to do tomorrow as we will have to wire and plumb the pump as soon as it arrives if we want to get water from below the surface, and we have lots of stations to sample.
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