Today we went out again to continue the open ocean shipwreck survey missions. Makoto took charge of planning the day's lawnmower missions in VectorMap and resolved the settings issues that cut short several of the dive paths planned for yesterday. As such, the planned missions went very smoothly and the large majority of the day on the boat was spent either waiting around for the robot to surface, verifying that the robot looked OK when it surfaced, and checking the robot battery life in between missions to make sure that it would be safe to run the next mission. The missions for today also included one that filled in the sections of seafloor we missed yesterday because of mission errors, so we are slowly making our way across the survey rectangle given by Dr. Gambin and filling in the unknown regions of the map.
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| Makoto looking out for the robot |
It was a beautiful day at sea, with low wind, sunny skies, and a nice sunset. Although waiting for the robot was sometimes boring, we're actually thankful that there was little to do because it was a sign that the robot was running smoothly and collecting good data consistently. We have a very early departure time tomorrow morning (5AM) to get as many survey missions in as possible before the wind picks up tomorrow midday, and hopefully our early morning deployments are as uneventful as the deployments were today. The more uneventful missions we have, the more quality data we will have to work with in the days to come when we have to stay on land.
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| IVER glamour shot |
-Russell
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