Battle at sea

Last night was the ultimate battle at sea. The were thrusters engaged, instrumentation pushed to the limits, and all hands on deck. Well, ok, so it was not quite that exciting. I was quietly sitting in my office pod when I got a radio call from the bridge from Cpt. Bill, "Rebecca, um..you are needed in the bridge."  Uh oh. I thought maybe he had some concern about the remaining route, but it really had to do with the circumstances surrounding the ascent on the site locality we were targeting. At the same time that we arrived at this previously identified seep site we were racing a smaller research vessell to the same locality.

WHOI research vessell in same area when we returned in the morning.

So we did some investigation into the ship name and determined it was the Oceanas and realize that they were after the same seep. One of the C and C technology survey guys found a link on the internet that explained that the Oceanas was commissioned by NOAA and NSF and that the onboard scientists were from WHOI. So I started joking with our scientists onboard that it was the battle of the research institutes: WHOI vs. CSIRO. The Captain established contact with the boat after about 15 minutes discussion and we relayed information. They had just recently deployed a buoy with a sensor array into the water (move #1) and then they informed us that they were going to be in the area for 36 hours (move #2). So we told them we would get back to them about our plan-- commando mission- don't relay your plans! In the end we decided to do several 'clover leaf' patterns around the suspected seep (~2.5 hours) and then head south returning to the area we left about 5 hours ago to try once again to relocate potential seeps. So through the night we left the site, cruised south, and then right at dawn slowly returned to the original site and quickly slipped into position while the Oceanas was distracted. Check mate! Then we sat there for about 6 hours and dropped two CTD casts. All and all it was a pretty funny event. You sure do have to be cut throat in the science and ship biz.

CTD retrieval with WHOI ship awaiting locality

A sailor's poem

I will simply say that this has been a nice day. As always the gulf weather is unpredictable. In most of the daylight hours we spent either in the rain or under a grey sky. Just before sunset the sky began to clear. Even though I have yet to see the gulf waters lite up by the sun, I was able to witness some spectacular beauty. At around 6:00 PM you could capture a rainbow on the stearn and a sunset on the bow. Charlie, one of the CSIRO scientists, and I were flitting from the front and the back of the boat snapping photos and watching the waters slosh by as we moved away from the sunset.

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I convinced Bob, our engineer, that even though he had seen a million gulf sunsets that everyone was unique and worth getting up to see. So he finally got up and went to check it out.

Beginning of sunset

Near the end

Afterwards Bob told me their is a sailors saying ' Red skies in mornin' sailors take warning, red skies at night sailors delight'.  Delight indeed.