This week we had some of the calmest waters one could ask for going right into 5 meter waves! This range gave me lots of practice deploying the CTD in variable weather conditions as well as the knowledge of when it’s just too much to deploy safely.

While the sea was dead calm, an AB and I went up on the flying bridge to assess some railing damage near one of our radars. Going up top means rigging up in climbing gear and using lobster claws to climb the mast. From the top you are able to get the best view of the ship! As some of the radars emit radioactivity, it is necessary to shut these systems down beforehand.

View from flying bridge along with the flying bridge itself.

Our CTD is still experiencing issues so we spent our time transiting between stations and the bad weather days troubleshooting and reading as many manuals as we could to find our potential issue. We replaced the slip ring on our fore winch that serves as the connection between the winch wire and the SBE11 deck box for CTD power and communications while deployed.

Fore winch slip ring replacing and the inside of the winch wire

I spent some time Megger testing our aft winch wire and triple checking it was not suitable for use. We also checked out the SBE11 deck box’s electrical guts to see if a capacitor had fried or a wire had disconnected, but, there was nothing to be found. We decided to switch out the deck boxes anyway and electrically re-terminate the CTD which I got to do in full this time…in the 3-5 meter waves! Our CTD is still having some electrical troubles, not as many as before, but, zero issues are the preferred amount so we will continue to troubleshoot. By the end of this cruise I will have been trained as a decent at-home and ship-based electrician.

Inside of the SBE11 deck box and a CTD electrical termination

In science news, we reached our station that is the deepest point in the Kermadec Trench! Sitting at 10,049 meters in depth, this point is the fourth deepest point on Earth. URI’s DAP (Deep Autonomous Profiler) has already completed two successful deployments to this depth and will continue to for the next couple of days.

The EM124 multibeam mapping the deepest point in the Kermadec Trench

As always, featured are the petrels that have been following us for days along with a rainbow that graced us after the rough seas.