Hello Everyone:

This first week of the internship has been a busy one. On May 16th I arrived at the airport in Salisbury, Maryland and was picked up by Tim Deering the Oceanographic Coordinator for the University of Delaware’s Marine Division. We had to travel by car for about 45 minutes to arrive at the ship’s home port. The route we took us through the country, and I have to say we passed through some very beautiful country side. When we arrived at the port Mr. Deering gave me a complete tour of the grounds and the research vessel. I got the chance to meet the crew as well, and everyone seemed really nice and accommodating. The rest of the afternoon we discussed the dredge set up and CTD operations which we would be performing during the four different legs of the cruise. 

I have spent the first part of the week assisting the crew with load testing all the cable and winch sytems that will be used to deploy the equipment, making wire runs throughout the dry lab, helping the science team load some of their equipment aboard, and installing lab tables for the science team’s computers, just to name a few. I have never gotten to engage in all the pre-cruise activities before, and I learned alot about the attention to detail and careful planning that goes into an offshore trip.

The dredge system we will be using is a NOAA Schallop dredge. Also, the science team will be employing the use of a HAB CAM video system to provide visual images of the sea floor to assess schallop populations. We will also be using the SBE 11 Plus CTD to collect water parameter data from the water column.

We departed the dock to head to our first station at 1950 on May 13th. The HAB Cam was deployed at 0230 on Friday morning, but after towing it for about five hours we lost the insturment when it struck an object lying on the seafloor. The next several hours was spent taking multi-beam images of the area in which the incident occured. After several hours collecting data we begin heading back to port to regroup. On the way back in the first dredge was performed as well as a CTD cast shortly after.

We are currently at the dock with plans to head back out Monday or Tuesday. An ROV will be used to locate, and hopefully retrieve the CAM.

Talk to everyone again soon.

Chris Petroff