We are still underway to our first station. The seas are 3 to 5 feet, which makes for slow going. This morning, we woke up to find out that we lost a number of our big plastic barrels when a wave washed them out of their tie-downs. It's very difficult to spot a black barrel in the water at night. Most of the barrels were recovered, but it's disappointing to lose any.
Along with one of the barrels, we lost a small pump that we use to pass the water through our manganese-fiber (the manganese fiber collects the radium so that we don't have to ship 100's of liters of water back to the lab for processing). It looks like we'll be able to put the extra travel time to good use, rebuilding the pump we lost from spare parts.
With the moderately rough weather, quite a few of the science party are feeling queasy. Unfortunately, the forecast is for higher winds tonight and tomorrow, with the seas building a bit and staying rough through tomorrow. Once we get our sea legs, we should be fine.
Later today we'll get a break from the weather for a little while. We will start offshore and head up the river, collecting water samples based on the salinity. The Pelican has an onboard system which measures the salinity in real time so that we can target salinity levels of interest, and sample them as we drift back down the river. Heading up into the river should give us some calmer seas for a few hours before we head back out for our transects along the coast.
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2 comments:
"Remember the bonine!" is a great rally. Sorry to hear about the rough weather, I hope you get some good samples in spite of it.
Sorry to hear that you folks are having rough weather and have lost some of the barrels. Sounds, though, like you are improvising well! Stay safe and well.
- Melanie
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