The beginning of the week started with going through the vessel and making sure we had everything ready for the NSF inspection. This inspection occurs every two years and it is where members from NSF and JMS Naval Architects come aboard the ship and go throughout the ship making sure everything is in working order and we have all the proper safety requirements established. We continued to work on small projects throughout the week but our main focus was assisting the inspectors with anything they needed and wanted to see. They came aboard Wednesday and toured the whole vessel and examined the condition the vessel was in, all of the gear, winches, cranes, etc. that is aboard. They were making notes of anything they think we need improvement on or anything on the vessel that needs to be fixed. They do this to ensure that our vessel is in good condition and is suitable to keep on going with our research cruises. Wednesday evening we mobilized to St. George’s so we can get an early start to going out to sea at 0730. When we got to St. George’s there was another vessel docked in front of us called the DSSV Pressure Drop. I was lucky to be invited aboard to take a tour of the vessel and the submarine they have aboard. They have a mission to go to the deepest point of the five oceans. They’re mission is called the five deeps. They have gone into the Mariana Trench multiple times and they are the only submarine that can go as deep and as quickly than another other submarine created. They have completed four locations and they are on their way to go to the fifth location. If they succeed, they will have completed something no one has done before. There is a film crew aboard and they are filming a show for Discovery Channel called Deep Planet. We left Thursday morning to head out to sea with the inspectors on board and we also brought along thirteen students. We deployed a CTD and the MOCNESS as well as an XBT and it was good for the inspectors to see us working with science groups and what our day to day operations are like while we are on a cruise. We went through all the drills and tests for all of the gear and the winches and cables. The inspectors split up and went with different groups of the crew to examine different things. For example there was an inspector with the marine techs, one with the engineers, and one with the crew, and one with the captain himself. At the end of the day we all gathered in the galley so the inspectors could relay to us any problems they saw that needed to be addressed and an overall assessment of what they saw. This boat is a little bit older so its bound to have some things that need to be fixed. All in all the inspection went well and they were happy with what they saw and gave us approval to keep operating normally and keep going ahead with our research cruises. The rest of the weekend we had off of work. I explored this trail that goes along the coastline called the Railway Trail. It is one of the most beautiful trails because you get to see the aqua blue water the whole way of the trail and at the end it gets to Whalebone Bay. I cannot get over how beautiful it is here.
