18th February 2010
"They have just brought the last tv grab on board. We should be steaming towards Suva in a few minutes. Wooohooo! There'll be an end of cruise party onboard later today..."
16th February 2010
"The swell has died down a bit since this morning - transiting through a big swell is very annoying and always just makes me tired and sucks all the motivation out of me. I want to try and finish up all the bathymetry processing today - shouldn't be too much more work.
Cinema night tonight! Hans has made up posters and posted them in various places. Should be fun and something different than beer and foosball. Not that beer and foosball is bad, it's just nice to do other things as well.
We should be on station in the morning and commence with tv grab and camera tow operations for another 36hrs and then we'll be on our way to Fiji. Woohoo!"
15th February 2010
"We left the work site at about 5pm last night and steamed for about 24hrs. We are pretty close to Kadavu hiding behind a little island. I'm not sure how long we will stay here. The cyclone built to a Catergory 4 and the eye is probably right on top of where we were working about now. The plan is to go back and try to get in one more day of work after the cyclone passes by. Had a beer last night while playing foosball. I am actually getting much better at foosball - as my friend Torben said last night "your powers are increasing"!"
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13th February 2010 p.m.
"The cyclone is moving slowly and intensifying. Still headed straight at Tonga pretty much. It is now a Category 3 with sustained winds over 100knts. Since it is moving a little slower than before we will stay here and work for another 12hrs and then run towards Fiji. Should be a bit of a rough ride I would imagine. Still no sign of any swell from it yet. The captain wants to keep a 300 mile radius away from it.
Well, back to the bottom detecting - should be done with the processing by tomorrow and then we just have to tie up loose ends before we get into port"
NOAA enhanced infrared image of Cyclone Rene, acquired 14th February 2010 - click the image for cyclone report
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13th February 2010 a.m.
"We just finished our last survey. I am knackered! Not too much sleep over the last 24hrs. Now we only have six days left at sea. We should be able to process the data and pack up in plenty of time. Right now they are going to do about 10hrs of camera tows and then it's time to run from the cyclone. The plan is to steam for about a day let the cyclone pass by then steam back to this site and do another day or two of work before going in to port."
12th February 2010
"There are two cyclones headed straight for us - Pat and Rene. The first one is building and the eye is pretty much predicted to go right over where we are (we are only about 20 miles west of Tongatapu(Tonga)), and the second one is following right behind it. Not sure what will happen if it does come this way. The escape route would be up towards Fiji, and if we're already up near Fiji with only a day or two left in the cruise I'm not sure whether the scientists will decide to go in early.
NASA image of Cyclone Pat, acquired 9th February 2010 - click the image for cyclone report
We just put the 120 in for its final lowering and I'm off to bed for a few hours before watch. This will be our longest survey yet - it should take about 28hrs...that is, if we can finish before the cyclone gets too close."
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11th February 2010 p.m.
"We have some exciting news here - apparently there is a cyclone bearing down on us. We were supposed to have another two days at this site using the camera sled and the grabber, but now we are packing up and heading to the last site to survey with the 120. Then we may have to run for cover! I'd be interested in the surf forecasts for Fiji - they'll show what the cyclone is up to and also what the surf will be like...!"
11th February 2010 a.m.
"We finished our second to last survey last night at 3am then recovered - went to bed at 4:30am, then got up and started bottom detecting away. Bottom detecting was tricky today, there were just tons of tall features off to the side so it was difficult to make things look good, and took ages to finish. The scientists aren't having much luck with sampling chimneys - they just can't seem to find them. I just sat down and had a close look at the sidescan with one of the chief scientists and pointed out things that I thought might be interesting. Hopefully they can find some good stuff. I don't think I would like to be the guy that had to pick spots to try to sample...Well maybe a little!
10th February 2010
"Well I am very pleased with the DSL120 on this survey - it's looking really good right now... beautiful sidescan and really nice bathymetry. Mark fixed a connector and set the doppler to ping less frequently to reduce noise interference. Its a pretty cool site that we are surveying too. It's a big volcano with a nice caldera and a reef on one portion of the caldera rim. It gets as shallow as 30m but I think we will avoid that spot. One of the upcoming lines goes over a 70m deep spot so the 120 will basically be at the surface. Kind of fun!
I played a little ping pong with a couple of the Korean guys last night they were pretty good but not good enough to defeat the Yank. I still haven't played their two best guys though. It should be good."
9th February 2010
"We had movie night tonight. One of the guys (Hans) was all fired up to have cinema night so he set up his laptop to the projector and we watched The Boat that Rocked. It was enjoyable but it made me homesick because it was the North sea! They also set up the ping pong table this evening. There are some players on board so I'll have to practise my skills.
We have a 5hr transit tonight and then we expect to put the DSL120 in the water at 8am. It should be a 20hr survey and then there is just one more before we are finished."
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8th February 2010
"We finished our survey today at about 6pm. It always feels good to have another one done - one more closer to home! It turned out really well as far as data quality goes. I think I'm pretty much still the 120 master!! I guess so many years with it, where I was responsible for the data quality, taught me a lot about the whole system and what needs to be right to make the best data possible. If I had been in charge of interpreting this last survey I would have recommended that they move on and not spend time on this site - there isn't much to see and I don't think they'll find any chimneys... but, it's difficult to communicate well and not really my place."
Back deck of the R/V Sonne - the DSL120 side scan sonar is the blue and orange instrument on the deck
7th February 2010
"We performed an 8 hr survey yesterday, then had a 6 hr transit and went straight back in for another survey. We're about halfway through that survey now. We got on the bottom at about 2.00 am, but the data was looking quite noisy. After some trouble shooting, I discovered it was the doppler creating all the noise - now it is corrected the data looks pretty good, though it seems the transducers on the port side are not quite right, affecting the bathymetry. There was talk of recovering the sonar before I discovered the noise source though, so I'm pretty pleased!"
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4th February 2010
"We are down on weather right now! Might be down for a couple of days...oh well...off to do some bathymetry editing in Fledermaus."
3rd February 2010
"E-mail has been down all day, I haven't gotten any - hopefully I'll have something to read at the next transfer. The seas have gotten pretty rough. The captain called off all the deck operations for tonight. We were supposed to go back in with the sonar tomorrow at some point but I don't think we will if its this rough. The ships crew sort of drag all of their gear up the side when recovering but the 120 isn't as robust as the claw or their camera sled. Hopefully it will calm down a bit... On the bright side they do have unlimited pretzels and beer on this ship which are two of my favorite things.
Had another good workout - still trying to get fit, I did get a bit out of shape during my paternity leave. Not much else happening. I am crap at foosball. Played with the Koreans today and I pretty much suck. Shocking really to be that bad. I'll have to make it my cruise goal to improve and become somewhat competent!
So the navigation editing software that I got funded by WHOI and pushed through HMRG before I left is pretty good. Roger built it into the HMRG real-time mosaic software - it lets you compare underlain grids and have the DSL120 sonar data to be re-navigated semi-transparent; then you can pick points to pin in place and points to move around, then save the new navigation and re-grid the data to see the results...makes changing the navigation a lot easier, so I'm pleased.
The new bathymetry data has very few artifacts and looks very good - I'd altered the angle-angle tables to reduce the numerous large along track artifacts that were present from the originals, time well spent."
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1st February 2010
"We finished our first survey at about 2.00 this afternoon. It went very well. There is a little noise in the data from the EM120 multibeam and there is noise from all the pitching but there isn't much we can do about those things. The recovery was a bit crazy! There is a velcro sleeve that holds the tether, the recovery line and two tag lines, but it came undone and slipped all the way down to the towfish. As the tag lines were being untaped they were accidentally dropped becoming tangled - we couldn't use the tag lines or the recovery lines. We eventually managed to tag a line on the main shackle and pulled the sonar onboard from there... The bosun was swearing a lot!! The system in place theoretically makes sense and would probably have worked if the tag lines hadn't got away, though the sleeve may have been tangled regardless. Anyway it is safely on board and in one piece. Bottom detecting is very boring!! But I've been able to help out with the processing side of things today so I'm feeling a little more useful!" |
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31st January 2010 p.m. "The 120 is on the bottom and working like a champ - great sidescan and bathymetry. Pretty tough terrain for towing it around though. We are essentially trying to image a 200m - 400m deep caldera that is only about 500m across, so traversing down over the cliff the data are quite poor because the fish pitches so much. Going up it's pretty good. I'm off to get a few hours of sleep and then back up to finish off the acquistition for this site." |
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31st January 2010 a.m. "Well things have gotten more exciting today! We launched the DSL120 sonar at 8.00am but it wasn't transmitting so we brought it back on board. Kind of a funny launch and recovery system on here, but it all went fairly smoothly - the bosun seems to be on top of things. We got the 120 back on deck and I helped Mark pull out the main electronics chasis and check things. I think it will be useful if I run through a Jason pre-dive check in my head and use that which is applicable to the 120 to make sure everything continues to go well. Anyway, hopefully Mark can find the transmit problem and we will collect some data soon." |
30th January 2010
"Only one more day of doing nothing and then we will have some data to work with. We'll actually just be acquiring for 24hrs and then will start to process it immediately as we don't have too many people. I think it may be a bottom detecting nightmare of a survey, as we will basically be surveying a caldera!
The weather has gotten a little better - it has been rainy for most of the transit but it was quite nice this evening."
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29th January 2010
"Roger is modifying the setup routines and changing code - it's always good having him go to sea and use his own software because then he fixes annoying stuff! Mark is making sure the sonar is working. I'm just sitting at my computer, reading, watching some Aardmans or playing chess against the computer! I actually defeated the machine 1 out of 4 today - I was very pleased!!
I had an ok workout earlier, though I feel out of shape. There's not much of a gym onboard though - thankfully two stationary bikes and a rowing machine were purchased in Auckland, otherwise there would be nothing! I did 1 km on the rowing machine, then 3 km on the bike, then another 1 km rowing and another 3 km on the bike. The rowing machine is brutal!! Tomorrow my big plan is a warm up on the bike then sit-ups, push-ups and pull-ups, then maybe a few exercises with the dumbells! Still another 1.5 days of transit to go before we start surveying..."
27th January 2010
"Not much happening so far. It was a nice sail out of Auckland but now we are out to sea. Its slightly bumpy but not too bad."
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26th January 2010
After working on mobilisation all day yesterday, Akel clocked off at 6.00 pm and headed straight for the surf! He had planned to go to a world class break two hours drive away, but decided to head somewhere closer to get more time in the water. It turned out to be one of his many epic adventures however...
"I chose a spot close to where I went yesterday - it only took 40 minutes driving that time. The new place, Bethells Beach in Te Henga, turned out to be at the end of a really narrow windy mountain road, and took two hours to get there! I'd seen some other surfers when I arrived, but when I got to the beach there was nobody around. I decided to hike to the nearest headland, but there was still nobody in the water. I looked further up the beach to the next headland, and there were some guys out there - almost a mile of hiking!
The surf was good, not epic by any means, but I enjoyed it. It was getting dark so I decided to make my way back - the windy unfamiliar road was interesting in the dark... Anyway, then I had to return my car to the rental place at the aiport, but all the roads between me and the airport were being worked on in readiness for the 2011 Rugby World Cup. I got diverted the first time, but got totally lost, the diversion signs were missing or something and I ended up in this residential area stuck down some cul de sacs. I finally found my way back to the motorway, and discovered that you can't just get from the city to the airport, you have to take one motorway, cut across through another residential area then take another motorway to get there. And of course, there were yet more roadworksthere... I followed all the signs carefully this tiem, and before long realised that I was literally being sent around in circles!! I got to one junction that pointed to the airport in one direction and my diverted route in the other. I trusted the airport sign...and it worked!!
So by now, it was really late and i had no idea where to go, but I found a car rental sign and finally found a place to leave the car with a late drop-off box for the keys. That was fine, but then I realised I was at the domestic terminal and it was pitch black and completely deserted...images of me having to sleep on the sidewalk until morning were going through my mind! I started to walk toward what I hoped was the international terminal, when a baggage cart (one of those little tractors with a luggage container on the back) came towards me. I leapt out in the road and flagged him down, and the guy was super-nice. He told me it was a pretty good hike to get to the other terminal, where the taxis were, but I could hitch a ride with him! So we strapped my board down in his container thing and I jumped into the tractor cab and off we went. The guy had to drop off his container on the way, and once that was gone we realised there was nowhere to put my board...the tractor thing was pretty tiny. So he had this idea that if I stayed in the cab and stuck my arm out the window, he could load me up with my board no problem. So there I am, close to midnight, trundling along in this deserted airport in a luggage tractor with my arm out the window hanging onto my board and chatting away with this guy...so surreal, it was hilarious.
We got to the terminal, I got my cab and finally found myself back in the zone we'd had dinner at last night...the only place open was a kebab shop...and a couple of pubs...so I rounded off my adventure with a pint watching an Australian Open quarter-final (a good match between Andy Murray and Rafael Nadal) a quick chat with my wife and then back to the ship. Fantastic!!!"
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23rd January 2010
Akel is currently en route from England to Auckland, New Zealand, where he will meet the German registered ship, the R/V Sonne for mobilisation. The Sonne is due to sail for the Lau Basin, near Fiji, on 27th January.
The ship, built in 1969, is a former fishing trawler but converted into a scientific research vessel in 1977. She is due to be retired this year!. With a length of 97.6 metres and a width of 14.2 metres, she has a service speed of 12 knots. She can accomodate up to 25 ship's crew and 27 scientists. See this website for more information.
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Last modified February 2010.
