NEPTUNE@Sea Blog Blog from September, 2011

Cookin' up a Storm

The days on the ship can get long and dreary when the weather is bad and the sea is too rough for ROPOS to dive. During this cruise, we even had days when the decks were “secured” – i.e. it was too dangerous to go outside because of the swell height. Waves were crashing over the side of the ship, and there was nothing to do but wait for the wind to die down and the weather to pass. What can one look forward to, trapped inside a rocking ship with un-deployed equipment and grumpy co-workers?! Dinner, of course!

The meals on a ship are of crucial importance for keeping the spirits of the crew and passengers up and meals serve as a key social time on the boat. The galley crew serves three meals a day:

1. breakfast from 7:15-8:00
2. lunch from 11:30-12:15
3. dinner from 17:00-18:00

On this cruise, 3 men kept a crew of 21, and science party of 23 people well fed and happy (at least for as long as they were sitting in the mess!) Meet Dan, Tony and Mike!

Dan, the ship steward is one of the longest serving members on the R/V Thompson crew; he has been with the ship since it was first commissioned in 1991. Tony, the second cook, started cooking in his home town of New Orleans, and has been faithfully serving up chow on the Thompson for the last 10 years. Mike, the mess attendant from San Francisco, brings good cheer and hard work to the mess hall, cleaning up after everyone.

Every day, breakfast preparation begins at 5:30am. A typical feast includes eggs, French toast, sausage, bacon, fresh fruit, yoghurt, warm homemade muffins, cream of wheat and sometimes even specials like breakfast burritos.

Mexican day is a popular lunch, with enchiladas, tacos, Mexican rice, and all the toppings including homemade guacamole. Some in the science party especially appreciated the spicy food on board! No bland cooking here. Dinner could include everything from steak to ribs to salmon to stuffed peppers with sides of potatoes and vegetables, and a well-stocked salad bar.

Planning for the day’s meals happens in the morning, when the galley crew “go shopping” in the storeroom where all the food is kept and decide on-the-fly what to cook for the day. The menu for each meal is posted on a whiteboard, along with announcements such as “Happy Birthday, Andy!” (The galley crew are responsible for the all-important job of baking you your birthday cake, should you have the good fortune to celebrate at sea.)

So, how much food do you need for hungry people spending days at sea? When the cabins are filled to capacity on the ship, 1000lbs per month of meat alone are consumed!

You might be wondering what happens to what remains uneaten after everybody has taken seconds and had dessert. Don’t worry, the food doesn’t disappear. Just like your kitchen at home, you can find a well-stocked leftover fridge on the ship, perfect for a midnight snack. This is crucial, since operations on the ship continue 24/7.

The amazing thing about the cooks in the galley is that they keep cooking in any weather, and the food is still delicious. Thanks for cheering us up with food, no matter how strongly the wind was blowing and how high the waves were! Cheers!

ROCLS-ing and Rolling

Uncalm Weather

The location and strength of the Aleutian low is the major controlling factor for weather in the Northeast Pacific. During the summer months it retreats poleward and weakens allowing a high to develop in the region. This tends to deflect passing storms northward, resulting in warm sunny weather on Vancouver Island weather.

This year, the Aleutian low stayed strong well into summer and now appears to be making an early comeback. When the low is in place, we typically expect a 4-day cycle of storms, steadily propagating one after the other across the northeast pacific. As they approach, these storms generate waves from the southeast, which back to the west-southwest after storm passage. The result is a seemingly perpetual high sea state, with waves criss-crossing in multiple directions.

However, during the fall transition period, there is a lot of variability as the winter regime develops. I think we still have good reason to expect breaks in the weather pattern before the Aleutian low establishes itself.

Deployment Conundrum

That is where we find ourselves now, waiting for a weather window to deploy our heavy spool of cable to the seafloor, so we can connect the Mothra hydrothermal vents to Endeavour node and the rest of our network.

The 8km spool, which weighs in at about 3200kg, is fastened into ROCLS, light aluminum frame and mechanical apparatus for cable laying beneath ROPOS. ROCLS is lowered first to the seafloor independently of ROPOS, then ROPOS descends and latches onto ROCLS at the seafloor to lay cable.

On an oceanographic research vessel like the R/V Thompson, there are two options for deploying ROCLS:

• off the stern through the A-frame, or
• off the side utilizing the ship’s crane.

The first option is, I think, much safer for crew; however, wave-induced pitching is substantially greater at the stern of the ship, which further limits seas in which we can successfully deploy. With this in mind, we have already positioned ROCLS on the starboard side within reach of the crane, just aft mid-ship where pitching is minimized. With the wave field we are riding on now we would not be able to move it safely over other equipment back to the A-frame, so this positioning was done in anticipation of deteriorating weather. The question now is, when will the sea state be calm enough to launch?

Consternation 1: Getting ROCLS Safely Overboard

There are two major areas of consternation for deploying ROCLS, getting it off the ship into the surface waters, and landing it on the bottom. Moving a 3200kg object on a heaving, pitching, rolling ship, is no mean feat. Our launch procedure involves roping tag-lines to all four corners and placing cleats in appropriate multiple locations to attempt to control the load. But how many wraps are needed on the cleats for human power to hold 3200kg in rough seas? If you have too many wraps, you can’t release the load properly and risk losing control, but with too few wraps you have no control over this enormous load. Wrapping and unwrapping a heavy load is dangerous, only experience can guide you.

The deployment procedure also includes inserting an acoustic release (more about this below) between the ship’s wire and ROCLS. In order to mitigate damage to the cable by the acoustic release after ROCLS is dropped, we attach floats to the acoustic release so it rises up and away. The floats are made of syntactic foam, which does not compress under pressure, and weigh about 14kg in air. For this operation, we need 12 of them (weighing 160kg) strung along a line. These floats are hand balmed over the side concurrently with the launch of ROCLS. During the previous launch of ROCLS in calm weather conditions, we needed 11 people on deck for this operation.

As ROCLS goes over the side, our main concern, after safety, is keeping ROCLS from smashing into the side of the ship. It is an aluminum frame and is quite fragile when fastened to a 3200kg cable spool. So the deployment crew try to get it into the water quickly once it's overboard.

After ROCLS enters the water, our main concern is snap loading on the ship’s wire and the ROCLS attachment point. With 8m waves that are often out of phase with the ship’s heaving, there will be times when the phase mismatch can put sudden extreme strains or “snap loads" on the cable. Snap loads, not static loads, are the times when cables snap and equipment typically breaks.

Once ROCLS is lowered into the water to depth where we can control it and snap loads are reduced, we need to attach a transponder to the line. To do this, the ship’s wire needs to be brought to the side of the ship, where some brave people are required to attach a transponder to the wire that is part of the USBL (Ultra Short Base-Line) navigation system we use for positioning ROCLS at the seafloor.

Consternation 2: Dropping ROCLS on the Bottom

The second area of concern occurs when we have navigated to the surveyed landing location and lowered ROCLS to the bottom. The acoustic release holds fast while ROCLS is lowered, until an acoustic signal is sent to it from ship and it unfastens. We try to release ROCLS just above the seafloor.

Currently, measurements indicate a trough-to-crest wave height of about 8m. So we need to estimate our distance from the bottom carefully and time the waves so we minimize the free fall and potential damage to ROCLS and our $300,000 cable.

And again, the key question is what sea state/ship dynamics make this achievable? At present, the sea state we are confronting is too rough to risk deployment.

Consternation 3: Laying Cable and Recovering ROCLS

A further confounding consideration is making sure we will be able to lay the cable. Before we can lay cable between the Mothra hydrothermal vent fields and Endeavour node, ROPOS must be deployed with the Mothra Instrument Platform. Such a dive and the subsequent cable lay are also weather-dependent, but it is imperative that they be done if ROCLS is deployed. ROCLS is made out of aluminum, stainless steel and ferrous materials (basically a large battery in seawater) and if left at the seafloor would rapidly corrode over the winter, becoming structurally unsound by next summer. If we deploy ROCLS now but are unable to lay the cable this cruise, both ROCLS and our $300,000 cable will be lost.

Complexities

So as you can see, there is a high level of complexity to installing a subsea cabled network. Not only are good weather and relatively calm seas required, but also a well-equipped and expertly staffed research vessel like the R/V Thompson is essential. A little good luck doesn't hurt, either!

(NOTE: No facts have been verified in the writing of this blog post, it is based strictly on the author, Steve Mihály's opinions.)

Weather, and Wind, and Waves! Oh my!

By Karen Douglas and Martin Scherwath

While the study of storms is interesting to many, those of us on the R/V Thompson prefer to investigate our study areas when the wind is in the 0-20 knot range. Nasty weather is triply bad because (1) not only is it hard on those who have to find their sea-legs on the ship and get used to being thrown back and forth while trying to work but also (2) for ROV operations, which have a certain threshold beyond which people and equipment are outside their safety zone, and finally (3) the work schedule has to be constantly adjusted in order to account for the weather so that it becomes difficult to plan coordinated operations with shore support.

The Waiting Game

We spent some time in Trevor Channel, off the coast of Diana Island and Bamfield, evading bad weather and taking the opportunity to pick up some spare parts. We are now waiting at Endeavour for the weather to calm, as we continue to make preparations for the upcoming dives on deck. Everything is tied down including buckets, chairs and milk crates. Those still working in their chairs narrowly missed being tied down themselves. The crew is in good spirits but unfortunately this weather puts a bit of a damper on our plans.

To Dive, or Not to Dive

Our highly reputable ROV partner, ROPOS, operates happily in wind speeds up to ~25 knots (46 km/h) under the condition that the sea state is not worse than typical for this wind speed (wave height approx. 3 m). Lower thresholds come into play when ROPOS is required to carry payloads such as instrument platforms or ROCLS, the Remotely Operated Cable Laying System. This upper threshold wind speed of 25 knots corresponds to a 6 on the Beaufort Scale, called a "strong breeze"; slightly stronger winds are called "gales", a 7 on the Beaufort Scale. Other ROVs often have limits in the lower 20 knots. However, ROPOS can draw on their considerable crew experience and the fact that the most critical operations, launch and recovery, are performed using their LARS (Launch And Recovery System) crane which is self-stabilizing and extremely reliable.

For this cruise, ROPOS thresholds are not coming into play for some crucial cruise operations. One example is our deep-sea mooring installation, which required flat seas. See our mooring magic blog post for details.

Some statistics regarding this cruise: We planned a total of 59 cruise operations, including 21 ROPOS dives. Here's a summary of the weather requirements:

If only we could synch our schedule with Mother Nature!

NEPTUNE Canada vs the Pacific’s Weather

While waiting out the weather in Trevor Channel, we busily prepared POD 3 for redeployment at Barkley Canyon, which was a success. The sonar was affixed and the camera was removed as the new one has its own little tripod. We’ve also been tying up the cable (or “juting” as we call it here) with twine which becomes difficult when the fibres are blowing off and the twine won’t go anywhere voluntarily except horizontally into your face, but we’re managing. Our wait at Endeavour continues and we are building cables and preparing instruments. So, when this tempest finally blows past, we’ll be ready to go!

Free Wally Keeps on Ticking

Wally the Crawler underwent the ultimate stress test on Sunday. After entering the water tethered beneath ROPOS, strong waves apparently sprung Wally loose. He took an 870m free dive from the sea surface to the seafloor at Barkley Hydrates.

Shortly after entering the water, we checked for Wally in the downward-looking camera, and he was gone. As the dive logger described it, “The hook came off, Wally is by himself.” Onlookers both on ship and shore drew a collective gasp.

Wally’s creator, Laurenz Thomsen of Jacobs University was watching the events live from Bremen, Germany. He remarked, “Hoppla, that could imply that Wally took his own dive with 40kg weight.”

Free Falling

Free-fall deployment is not new to ocean research, and has been used for many years. In fact, we used this method to successfully deploy our Seafloor Compliance apparatus at ODP 889 in 2009. But, Wally was not designed and built to be dropped from the surface, although we wouldn't put it past our German partners to have designed some extra toughness into their little crawler.

As we watched ROPOS descend, the sense of dismay was palpable. Could Wally survive such a plunge? Could his extremely sensitive instruments and microprocessors?

Cat-like Landing

When ROPOS arrived at the bottom, Wally was not there. To make matters worse, a sudden glitch in our positioning system complicated our efforts. ROPOS began running sweeps, using sonar to search for Wally. Gas hydrate mounds in the area presented a couple of false targets. But, after a relatively short search, the ROPOS pilots found Wally, resting on his treads on a steep submarine slope. Just like a cat, Wally had landed on his feet!

We were relieved to find Wally, but the question on everyone's mind was whether he and his instruments were intact. ROPOS carried him back to his regular haunts in "Wallyworld", unfurled his umbilical cable and plugged him in to the Barkley Hydrates instrument platform.

Wally Phones Home

Fingers crossed, we turned on the power and asked Laurenz to go ahead and activate Wally. ROPOS hovered nearby as everyone watched and waited. At first, nothing happened. The ROPOS crew Skyped Laurenz, "we are 2m away, don't run us over."

There a sudden shout and rapid flurry of Skyped "Yee-Haws" erupted when Laurenz switched on the lights and began driving Wally. No problems with left turn, right turn, forward or backward movement.

Instruments Alive

We were happy to see Wally's lights, camera and wheels still functioning. The next concern was the state of his instruments:

• compass
• methane sensor
• conductivity-temperature-depth (CTD) instrument
• current meter
• fluorometer
• turbidity meter
• sediment micro-profiler

Upon visual inspection, all appeared intact, although Wally's lights were somewhat askew.

One-by-one we powered and quickly tested the instruments. After troubleshooting a couple of device driver problems, we were able to confirm all instruments to be working. However, there appear to be problems with two of the delicate probes on Wally's sediment micro-profiler. There are also some lingering data offset issues, which we're still trying to resolve, but Wally appears to be well enough to leave deployed at Barkley Hydrates for the winter.

Needless to say, everyone's happy Wally was able to "take such a licking and keep on ticking". But, we're not planning to use free-diving as our favoured method of deployment for Wally anytime soon!

While the study of storms is interesting to many, those of us on the R/V Thompson prefer to investigate our study area in the 0-20kt range. Currently, we are in Trevor Channel off the coast of Diana Island and Bamfield evading bad weather and taking the opportunity to pick up some spare parts. Everything is tied down including buckets, chairs and milk crates. Those still working in their chairs narrowly missed being tied down themselves. The crew is in good spirits but unfortunately this weather puts a bit of a damper on our plans.

Mooring Magic

NEPTUNE Canada, its Highland Technology contractors, the IOS mooring team, and the fabulous R/V Thompson crew co-operated Tuesday in a complex deployment of the Northwest Regional Circulation Mooring (RCM-NW) in the axial valley of the Endeavour segment of the Juan de Fuca Ridge. The RCM-NW mooring is part of a planned 4-mooring array at Endeavour designed to establish a big picture view of currents and water column characteristics in the axial valley of this hydrothermally active spreading centre. Each mooring consists of a large anchor and a suite of tethered instruments suspended above the anchor on cables connected to floats.

2010 Deployment: 2-ship operation

The North-East mooring was deployed on our Fall 2010 NEPTUNE Canada installation/maintenance cruise thanks to a combined effort from our team on the R/V Thompson and a DFO team on the CCGS Tully: the Tully crew deployed the mooring itself while ROPOS (deployed from the R/V Thompson nearby) waited for the mooring at depth. This setup proved very efficient as the mooring could be guided within 1m of its planned landing site and connected as soon as it landed.

2011 Deployment: 1 ship only

This year, the deployment was performed entirely from the R/V Thompson. The plan involved carefully lowering floats and instruments one by one off the aft deck, using the ship's crane and A-Frame. Once strung out behind the ship, the 750kg anchor was lowered into the water on the A-Frame, pulling the instruments into a vertical configuration. Then, the entire assembly was lowered to the seafloor where it was detached using an acoustic release. The process was very delicate – working on the aft deck with incredibly heavy objects, ropes and cables strung everywhere, two cranes overhead, and sensitive scientific instruments in between was like performing a ballet in hardhats and lifejackets! Deck operations alone took over six hours, not including the days of planning and preparation beforehand, and the ROPOS dive to connect the instrument afterwards. The pictures below show the step-by-step operations as they took place.

Step-by-Step: 1-Ship Mooring Deployment

Deployment Phases

The deployment plan had three main phases:

1. First, there was a lot of preparation.
2. Second, the mooring was lowered into the water. At the end of that phase, the mooring would be standing freely in the water column supported at the surface by two large deployment floats.
3. Third, these two floats would be removed and the mooring transferred to the deep-sea winch cable so it could be slowly lowered to the seafloor at a depth of 2300m.

Step 1: Preparation

As a first step, floats, instruments and cables for the 270m tall mooring had to be arranged and secured on the deck so that they would be accessible in order of deployment without risk of tangling. The engineering team did this work the previous day, then the night shift reviewed the set-up and added some safety artefacts.

Step 2: Dunking the Floats

The first step in the deployment was to lower the three large spherical floats to the water using the ship’s crane. The top float for the mooring, which is made of material that will not compress under immense pressure at depth, weighs over 350kg in air!

Step 3: Dunking the Instruments

Next, the instruments on the long mooring cable were deployed off the deck one-by-one. An upward-looking Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP) was slowly lowered into the water via crane. Then, 3 tandem instrument packages (Acoustic Current Meter (ACM) + conductivity-temperature-depth (CTD) gauge) with interspersed floats were lowered into the water.

Step 4: Dunking the Anchor

Next, the anchor and L-box (electronics canister) were carefully raised up and over the edge using the A-Frame on the R/V Thompson.

The anchor was then lowered and released to assume its natural position at the bottom of the mooring line. Doing this also pulled the entire assembly into vertical configuration.

Step 5: Removing Two Floats

At this point, the second phase of the deployment began. The crew used a pole to hook the floats and pull them around to the aft deck. The top two floats were removed and lifted back on deck using the A-Frame. This left only the main mooring float atop the array in the water.

Step 6: Beacon Attachment

A beacon was attached to the anchor before it was deployed, and a second beacon was secured to the mooring float. The first beacon reports the position of the mooring during the descent and helps position it on the seafloor. The second beacon is a precautionary measure: should the cable snap, or some other mishap occur (e.g. the anchor falling off and instruments floating away), the mooring can be tracked and retrieved.

An acoustic release was used to connect the float to the winch cable. This release is triggered from the ship by sending a “ping” through the water, telling the release to unlatch when the mooring reaches its target depth.

Watching & Waiting

The deck operations were a successful co-operative effort on this bright sunny day at sea. Our mooring was deployed and sent off down through the water.

As the float disappeared from view, we all waited anxiously for the next ROPOS dive to see how it would look on the seafloor, and more importantly, whether it would start sending data on connection.

All's Well that Lands Well!

As it turned out, the mooring was successfully deployed. When ROPOS went down to inspect, the mooring was found intact, and upon connection, we discovered that all 9 connected instruments activated and began sending data!

"Mob" Time

When NEPTUNE Canada prepares to sail, quite a bit of preparations are necessary to get all necessary equipment out to sea. Mobilization (a.k.a. "mob") encompasses three tasks:

1. getting things to the ship
2. loading the ship
3. tying things down so that everything stays put in rough seas on a swaying ship

For our September 2011 cruise, we had quite a lot of equipment to deal with:

• 3 instrument platforms (IPs)
• Wally II (deep-sea crawler)
• Tempo-mini (new integrated platform from France)
• 4 large cable drums
• 3 250m moorings, each with 9 scientific instruments
• 1 array of 4 temperature probes
• 3 short-period seismometers
• 2 sonars
• 2 Benthic And Resistivity Sensors (BARS)
• 4 bottom-pressure recorders
• 1 high-definition camera platform
• and a partridge in a pear tree (just kidding)

In addition to these major items, were numerous bits and pieces including SPARES, which you just don't want to forget when there is no convenience store nearby or a seeming insignificant but crucial adapter on the shelf in your lab is totally out of reach for three weeks.

It was like setting up a rock concert to move all that gear from our MTC lab in Patricia Bay (near the Victoria airport) to the Graving Dock in Esquimalt where the R/V Thompson berthed. We packed five large trucks (two 54-foot step decks, two 45-foot and one 30 foot flat deck), using one 60-ton mobile crane and three forklifts (one 7000 kg, one 6000 lb and one 5000 lb). Unloading them at the Esquimalt Graving Dock required one rig to shuffle trailers and two ship cranes.

The R/V Thompson arrived on time and loading commenced without any delay. The major challenge for smoothly transferring all the equipment from shore to the deck is to stow each load without delay after it lands on deck. Otherwise, we quickly run out of open space to drop the next crane load. Almost all of the large plastic containers full of small items could go straight into the main lab, rolled along by a jack lift. Finding space for all the bulky parts like the IPs, Wally and cable drums was more difficult. Bulky things can't just be stashed anywhere on deck or they start getting in the way. Sometimes we had to find passages for the gear using a tape measure.

Operations Set-up

Meanwhile, the operations lab computers were set up and networked. These include laptops for the chief scientists and loggers, a dedicated laptop for conductivity-temperature-depth (CTD) measurements, a printer, and our video encoder. At the same time, the R/V Thompson crew installed a block onto the A-frame for us.

Working Late

Loading continued right into a beautiful sunset, unfortunately missed by those who were working inside, tying down boxes, bits and pieces or setting up the computer network.

Unfortunately at some stage the ship's crane stopped working with two trucks still needing to be unloaded. Unfazed, the mobilization crew switched to the Esquimalt Graving Dock crane and was able to finish all loading work by 11:00PM.

But the ship's crane needed a spare part, forcing a delay in our departure time until 11:00 a.m. the next day (Saturday September 10, 2011). This gave our crew a good reason to enjoy one last beer onshore and a steady bed for one more night before finally setting sail into another three week adventure.

Photo Slideshow

A Return to Sea

NEPTUNE Canada scientists and engineers are sailing again, aboard the R/V Thompson for 3 weeks. The cruise’s dive plan is an ambitious one, with Endeavour being the focal point of repairs and new installations.

Endeavour

A new cable into Main Endeavour vent field (MEF) will be installed (the old cable one stopped working last October and had to be chopped up and retrieved by ROPOS during our July cruise). Once reconnected, our MEF instruments (COVIS, RAS water sampler, short-period seismometer) can be reactivated and new instruments installed. These will include Tempo-mini and benthic and resistivity sensors (BARS), which had its connector cable fried by molten lava.

Tempo-mini, designed and developed by our French collaborators IFREMER, is a unique instrument platform, which integrates a video camera, oxygen sensor, dissolved iron sensor and temperature probes in one compact platform. We’re eager to install Tempo-mini, after a series of delays.

A new cable will connect Endeavour node to the dynamic Mothra hydrothermal vent field, where we hope to deploy a second BARS and a short-period seismometer (SPS).

If the weather gods smile on us, new Regional Circular Moorings (RCMs) will be deployed. The first mooring was successfully installed last year with the assistance of the CCGS John P. Tully; however, due to scheduling conflicts this year’s deployment of the RCMs will be attempted by the R/V Thompson alone. This complex and risky procedure will therefore likely be a slower process than previous RCM deployments and is further complicated by being highly dependent on good weather and very calm seas.

Our plans call for replacement of the northeast RCM and installation of two more at the northwest and southwest corners of the mooring “box” we intend to build around Endeavour ridge. Each of these moorings includes three different types of instruments affixed at varying depths along a cable extending upward from the seafloor. The uppermost instrument is an Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP) which is able to estimate currents up to 800m above the sea floor. Below this are four instrument pairs positioned at different locations down the mooring line. Each pair includes a Conductivity Temperature and Depth (CTD) sensor and an Acoustic Current Meter (ACM). Working together, these instruments measure deep-sea current velocity in three-dimensions as well temperature and salinity of the water. The top of the mooring line is kept vertical at all times by a large buoy while the base of the RCM is anchored to the sea floor by a 650kg weight.

If all goes well, we also hope to install a short-period seismometer at Endeavour node.

ODP 1027

A stop at ODP 1027 will be made to install three bottom pressure recorders (BPRs) for the “Tsunami-meter” experiment. While these instruments will not be connected to the network until 2012, they will be recording data autonomously. They will be deployed to new sites, 25km distant from the central node, which will help scientists improve their ability to detect and model tsunamis in the northeast Pacific.

We also hope to diagnose and repair a problem with our piezometer, installed during the July 2011 cruise.

Barkley Canyon

Wally the Crawler made it back just in time from Germany where the team at Jacob’s University Bremen and the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology worked feverishly to get him ready for his next adventure in Barkley Canyon. This time, Wally is equipped with a webcam, a sediment micro-profiler, methane sensor, current meter, fluorometer, turbidity sensor and a CTD device.

Additionally, Barkley Benthic Pod 3 will be retrieved, refitted with a new Kongsberg sonar and redeployed. Collection bottles on the sediment trap will be swapped out and a new stand-alone video camera system will also be connected to Pod 3.

ODP 889

On such a tight schedule, hopefully there will be time to revisit ODP 889 and install a refurbished Imagenex multibeam sonar (a.k.a. “Kraki”), which will hopefully be used to observe methane bubble plumes. We then need to retrieve the seismometer auxiliary platform, which developed a ground fault and was disconnected earlier this month. We also hope there will be time to download the data from the IODP Circulation Obviation Retrofit Kit (CORK) 1364A to be sure the CORK is healthy and our work last cruise was successful.

Shore-side Preparations

DMAS (Data Management and Archive System) has been preparing for the cruise since the end of July! They have tested approximately 60 instruments for the upcoming cruise. Each instrument had to be put through an extensive testing procedure. The testing procedures include:

• Preparing meta-data
• Prepare the correct parameters for the instruments
• Retrieve raw data
• Pair and calibrate the raw data to be readable by people rather than just computers
• Prepare a camera control page for camera users to operate the device
• Prepare a final data product in order to allow a user to search and download data

DMAS, NEPTUNE Canada scientists and engineers have been working tirelessly to ensure that the cruise has an excellent chance of success. Hopefully, the weather will be on our side as well.