For the past week on The Sharp we have been on a 24 hour multi beaming mission. Today we recovered the mooring we deployed on July 24th and the next few days we will begin to fill in missed or ruined (by dolphins) data.
Amber Batts and Mohsen Badiey (University of Delaware Dean) getting ready for mooring deployment (07/24/15)
One thing I can say about being on a ship is….things are constantly breaking. For example, one of the monitors used (for navigation software) on the bridge decided it no longer wanted to turn on. Thankfully there are two. A replacement monitor was ordered and should be at the dock when we return on Monday (even though I entered in the wrong credit card number – a big oops). Today, an external hard drive being used by the data processor for CARIS decided to freeze up. It is the hard drive that contains the past ten days worth of processed data from the multi beam survey. And even during recovery of the mooring, the acoustic release gave out an error that slightly held up operations.
Point being….one should always be prepared to solve a problem quickly!
I am on day 36 and cabin fever may be setting in but I do appreciate the ability to communicate via satellite internet! That definitely helps. I am at the halfway point of my internship and I believe my favorite part of this experience is getting to know some of these scientists. There are some very interesting people on these cruises and I enjoy hearing stories of how they ended up in their chosen fields. I don’t have anywhere near as interesting a story to tell back to them but it doesn’t matter.
I’ve learned how to turn on a generator, which is actually quite easy, but nerve racking at the same time. Well, for a first timer at least. I was told if I didn’t do it right…..I’d probably blow up the entire ship 🙂
Hence the look on my face in the picture. Needless to say, nothing blew up today.
Turning on generator #2 for mooring recovery 07/30/15