We made it in early Friday, and after a long and relaxing weekend, demobilized Monday. The beginning of the week was spent catching up on tech duties, our first priority: installing our new milli-q system. While the process was a good learning experience, it was prematurely retired when a mooring broke loose off of Bermuda.
Two days later, scientists from Woods Hole (WHOI) flew in for a surprise cruise. We left mid-week and arrived on site early evening. Once we arrived on location, we lowered our transducer to the haul of the boat and sent out several acoustic pings from a benthos release box. Using acoustics, the device triggers a release- causing the mooring to float to the surface. Once the mooring was spotted, we spooled several hundred meters of mooring wire, which was later used during the reassembling process. The mooring is several thousand meters- consisting of sediment traps, transducers, pumps, and sensors. The process was an all-day operation.
We spent the morning reassembling the mooring, re-terminating connections, replacing the line and releasing the mooring. The process is tricky because you have to be very careful which terminations you disconnect while the mooring is overboard, or you can lose thousands of meters of cable and instruments. Overall, the trip was a success and a great learning experience.
