Category Archives: Cruises

by Heather Furey

Well, this cruise has been singular – definitely the best weather for deployments and recoveries that I have experienced while at sea.  I’ve been noticing the things folks do in their spare time.  Every cruise is different; every cruise has a different feel to it.  The different people and personalities and work experiences coalesce into a singular experience. 

On this cruise, I have learned that I am not awful at crosswords!  Every day, Collin Dodson prints out a stack of the most recent New York Times crosswords, and people work on them through the day.

Every single person in the lab working on the exact same New York Times crossword at the same time.

Dave Wellwood has a disco ball in his salt lab, and music. 

Keenan Foley has been trying to keep a stowaway bird alive by providing it a little bowl of water.  We think it might be a juvenile Ringed Plover? 

A stowaway bird (maybe a juvenile ringed plover?) has come out to visit for each mooring deployment. We think it has been on board since we left port. Keenan’s fresh water supply for the bird is pictured to the right.

The science party made cups to shrink, a tradition. Regular sized cups, when put under great pressure – as happened when being pulled deep underwater, will shrink to cups a quarter or so of their original size.  We decorate cup with sharpies and tie them to the CTD rosette cage for a ride to the bottom of the sea.

Decorated cups in a laundry bag, tie-wrapped to a rosette frame, ready to be brought to the bottom of the ocean.

And James Kuo has been working his rope skills.  It’s James’ birthday today, and Eric made a special cake, James (an experienced winch operator) got to run the Lebus winch and drop the last anchor on the last deployment. 

The OSNAP portion of this cruise is almost wrapped up. We have had four successful mooring deployments thanks to a great crew, and we have just one more sound source mooring to recover. It is time to savor the last few days at sea, the simple skyline. Time to get things documented and submitted, work out agent and shipping logistics, to dream of fresh green vegetables, and of heading home.

by Heather Furey

06 June 2018

Well, here we are again – in the middle of the gray raw North Pacific in June; must be OSNAP time!

Amy Bower and I are the only OSNAP people on a ship full of Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) folks.  But almost everyone on this ship is from WHOI.  I will really miss sailing with Bill (Johns) and Stuart (Cunningham) and well, all the rest of the UMiami and SAMS crew, and sometimes the NIOZ crew, as I have done almost each year since 2014.   Your shipmates become like family, and it was nice to have the same science crew together as we bounced from ship to ship each year.  And I will miss seeing Rockall. This year, though, since the third and final seeding of RAFOS float deployments were completed in 2016, Amy and I are onto something else.

The RV Armstrong is here primarily for the turn-around of the OOI Global Irminger Sea Array off the eastern tip of Greenland (http://oceanobservatories.org/array/global-irminger-sea/).   Amy arranged with the National Science Foundation (NSF) for four additional days of shiptime and mooring crew time to deploy four moorings for OSNAP east of Greenland, and also to recover two of the sound source moorings used for tracking the RAFOS floats.  We took over this mooring array, instrumented with CTDs and current meters, from the UK as a swap: they took over some moorings in the Iceland Basin closer to their home country.  Although this is a turn-around year for these moorings, we are only doing the re-deployment.  Johannes Karstensen and Penny Holliday, onboard the RV MSMerian, will recover the moorings that were deployed by Penny onboard the RRS Discovery in 2016.  Johannes and Penny will be recovering at about the same time that we are deploying, and we will have to carefully coordinate our timing so that we do not literally get our equipment tangled up together.  Stay tuned on that one.

This cross-slope array will measure the properties and transport of the Deep Western Boundary Current which flows along the ocean bottom from north to south.  The DWBC is composed of two primary water sources, the Denmark Strait Overflow Water (DSOW) and the Iceland-Scotland Overflow Water (ISOW).  The DSOW is ‘newer’; its source is the dense (relatively cold and fresh) water that overflows the sill at the Denmark Strait, at the head of the Irminger Sea.  Above it resides the relatively saltier and warmer ISOW, which originally came from the head of the Iceland Sea, in a similar deep overflow, but much farther upstream.   Both are principal components of the subpolar overturning circulation.

One thing I like about being at sea is learning new things; things that have nothing to do with sitting in a chair at a desk on a computer.  This morning were the first release tests for the surface mooring (SUMO) at the OOI Irminger Sea Array.  Talking with Jim Dunn, a salty mooring technician from WHOI, I learned that it is common practice for the OOI team to test releases by lowering them to 1000 meters depth on the CTD frame, and to let them sit for 20 minutes to get cold before doing the test. The release needs to be acclimated and under pressure to make for a good test. Seems like every group has a slightly different depth and duration for wet tests of the releases.  Some groups do not do a wet test at all.  I’ll plan to stick to the OOI protocol for our own mooring releases.

As well, I got a good show-and-tell from Jim Dunn and Meaghan Donohue, another salty mooring technician from WHOI, about how wire is wound on a reel with respect to the winch.  On this ship, we have a Lebus winch, a double barreled winch where the barrels can be moved independently, at independent speeds, and also oriented differently from each other, or skewed, to control the spread of the loops on the reel – so they do not get tangled.  The tension is controlled by the number of loops wrapped around the two barrels.  Nominally there are six loops wrapped around the winch barrels as the mooring line and instrument are fed over the fantail into the ocean.  After one reel of wire is spooled out, the wire is tied off, and the next reel of wire is moved into place.  Instruments are put on the mooring either between the two wires, or clamped onto the wire itself.

A more traditional winch, a “normal” winch, is a TSE winch – with a single barrel.  The single barrel cannot have reels of wire fed to it, the wire tangles easily.  This means that all reels must be carefully fed onto the single barrel winch before deployment.  All segments, starting with the mooring bottom, are wrapped onto the barrel in order from bottom to top.  Then, at deployment time, the line is payed out from top to bottom.  This means that to deploy with a Lebus is generally twice as fast as deploying with a TSE. 

The two winches have one upstream difference: the wirerope or rope may be wound on the spools in opposite directions.  This winding preference is correctable at sea, but it takes a long, long time to rewind spools of wire on a 3000 meter mooring, with the wire split onto many spools.  And at sea, it is best to be prepared.  Months before leaving for sea, I notified WHOI’s Rigging Shop that these moorings would be deployed on this ship with a Lebus winch. 

Our OSNAP mooring deployments are days off.  This morning (Wednesday 06 June 2018) we went out to make sure the OSNAP mooring wire rope was wound on the spools correctly, and it was.  Thank you, WHOI Rigging Shop.  For the Lebus winch, the top of the wire is on the outside of the spool, and the opposite holds true for the TWE winch.    If there are no instruments clamped to a wire segment, this wrap direction is inconsequential.  But if the wire segment is ‘marked’, which means an instrument like a microcat will be attached with clamps to the wire, rather than being deployed in-line, the wirerope is taped at the correct depth where the instrument will be attached on the mooring.  For this reason, marked reels need to be wound properly with respect to the winch used.

Jim also told me that moorings are deployed anchor first in ice-covered water.  Which I did not know and had never thought about.  You can’t steam into anchor-over position dragging a mooring cable through the ice, like you do with a mooring deployment in open water.  So in ice-covered water, the desired anchor position is where the mooring deployment starts.  Which means the exact opposite holds true for the winch type and wire wrapping relationship if you have an ice-deployed mooring.

What amazes me is that the same attention to detail needs to be paid to nearly every system set or tasks performed on a research cruise.  I think it will be great sailing with this new group of folks. 

The Lebus winch in action, its two barrels slightly skewed. Meaghan and Jim are at the center of the action, along with ‘deck boss’ John Kemp.

An unmarked reel – terminations are only labeled with shot length and the spool does not include ‘MARKED’ on the labelling.

A marked spool. The cable termination is labeled ‘top’ and the spool is labelled ‘marked’.

by Nicolai Bronikowski

Most of the MSM-74 scientists in the CTD watch room. I am in the middle with the blue shirt, to the right are from nearest to farthest: Sunke Schmidtko, Marie Hundsdoerfer, Ciara Willis and Johannes Karstensen. On the left are: Arne Bendinger, Rene Witt, Ilmar Leimann, Dasha Atamanchuk and Claire Normandeau. Missing from the photo are: Thea Siuts and Alexandre Barboni (Photo Credit: Joachim Ribbe).

Some of you have maybe wondered what life on a research ship is like. Maybe because you are about to embark on a cruise of your own, or maybe you are just curious. For me this is my first oceanographic cruise and even though I have only been on board for a week, I feel the ship routine settling in. Time to write a blog entry about a life at Sea! Most of the scientific work on board MSM-74 is centered on mooring and CTD work and we are all assigned shifts in which we carry out shared scientific duties. My shift for example is from 8 Am to noon and from 8 PM to midnight. During this time, we watch the CTD as it is collecting ocean data in the control room and then take bottle samples of salt and oxygen once the CTD is back on deck. During mooring work we are mostly on deck helping the crew and the three GEOMAR technicians Christian Begler, Rene Witt and Wiebke Martens with getting instruments ready. Often other shifts will help out on mooring work as there is a lot to do and the work can be physically demanding.

Working hard on cleaning up the recovered moorings.(Photo credits: Nicolai Bronikowski)

Technician team from GEOMAR. From left to right: Rene Witt, Wiebke Martens and Christian Begler. (Photo credits: Nicolai Bronikowski)

Every day at 1 PM we have science meetings were progress and plans are discussed by the chief scientist of our cruise Johannes Karstensen from GEOMAR. This is the time ask questions and sometimes it is also a good place to share the results of your work. For example, today Penny Holliday who I interviewed in Blog #2, described her OSNAP work and some of the surprising results that came out of OSNAP with respect to the role of the Labrador Sea in the overturning circulation.

Science Meeting photo from Penny’s talk. (Photo credit: Joachim Ribbe)

Our kitchen team feeds us well with three hot meals a day. Breakfast is from 7:30 to 8:30, Lunch is 11:30 to 12:30 and dinner is from 5:30 to 6:30 PM. And don’t forget the cake at 3 PM! Typically meals are eaten by the first shift to relieve the other one so they can eat as well. Everyday the fantastic chefs of MSM-74 prepares vegetarian as well as meat options for everyone on board. If one is afraid of missing out on a meal the person can request their meal to be kept in the fridge to be eaten later. Sylvia, the stewardess also runs the ships store were twice a week one can purchase a few necessities such as fruit gummies, chocolate or toiletries. The typical after work beer is allowed on board of course so the shop also offers duty free beverages such as beer and liquor.

Eating “Mustard Eggs” “Eggs with mustard sauce and beetroot” for dinner. A traditional German dish! (Photo Credit: Joachim Ribbe).

After a hard day working on deck there are various ways to relax such as going to the ships own Sauna with a real Finnish made sauna room and beach chairs to relax afterwards. In ships storage area there are table tennis, darts as well as a foosball table and they often become the center of socializing after work shifts are over. In the ship’s own bar one can purchase drinks and relax in leather chairs to the sound of music or an interesting conversation. Game nights are also held there and it’s a good meeting place to talk more to the crew.

Typically, there are two scientists that share a room, except for the technicians and principal investigators that get their own cabin on board the ship. The way the shifts tend to work out one goes to bed as the other gets up for their shift. Which is a good system for those that need a bit of alone time or are light sleepers. And one can wake up each other Curtains help keeping light out and for the most part you don’t notice people entering or leaving. If one feels like they need to be out and relax, when the weather is good there is a nice little bench on the port side of the main deck and for those who like to sunbath in the chill air, there are beach chairs on the observation deck

I hope this summary of typical day on board and the different routines help paint a clear picture of life at sea on the Maria S. Merian. We are now close to Greenland on our month long cruise and I am excited for the next couple of days enjoying Greenland’s coastline.

By Nicolai Bronikowski

Blog Entry 2:

There are many fantastic people from all corners of the world on board of our cruise and in the next few entries I like to introduce some of these people I have the pleasure dealing with every day. One of our scientists, Penny Holliday is an ocean going oceanographer from NOC (National Oceanography Centre), who joined our cruise from Southampton, UK. Penny has worked in Ocean science for over two decades and leads the UK OSNAP program.

Penny told me what really got her interested in Oceanography was the possibility to work on so many projects and how connected everything about the ocean is. Penny herself calls her starting point in oceanography a coincidence. Penny was analysing a hydrographic time series when she noticed that her data set could not be explained without digging deeper into the wider Atlantic circulation. This was her starting point in studying the currents in the North Atlantic, which is the focus of the OSNAP program.

But why does this transport matter? It may not be obvious to think about the cold North Atlantic as an important driver of our pleasant weather in Europe. Penny told me that without the currents in the North Atlantic transporting water South-North which is called the Meridional Overturning Circulation, the weather in Europe would be much colder than it is now. Indeed, understanding the way this circulation changes and what drives it are in Penny’s view the key to adapting better to climate change.

I also asked Penny what she has most enjoyed about Oceanography and she admits it’s the travel and the opportunity to do lots of different things. To Penny one of the best things about oceanography are its interdisciplinary focus, with opportunity to work with lots of people. Penny is frequently on ships and her number one advice is to take the time to meet as many people as possible, make friends and be open to learn about topics that may not be directly related to your research focus.

Penny working on the mooring spool together with GEOMAR student Ilmar Leinmann (Photo credit: Penny Holliday)

On our cruise the last few days were filled with extracting and deploying moorings (K7-K10) and taking CTDs along the 53 North Array. The array stretches from the Newfoundland-Labrador shelf between depths of few hundreds to over 3000 meters deep. Most of the instruments we recover have been sampling for over two years and our task is to extract the data and ready them for the next mooring deployment with the OSNAP program. For us as young scientists we get to learn a lot of practical and technical skills changing batteries and calibrating the sensors and we feel the responsibility of doing a good job. After all the continued success of the program depends on new and accurate data.

Map of the 53 North Array and the total cruise plan for MSM 74.

Recovering Mooring K7 (Photo Credit: Sunke Schmidtko)

by Nicolai Bronikowski, Memorial University

Blog Entry 1:

Summary:

And we are off! MSM 74 – the oceanographic cruise from St. John’s to Reykjavik is making its way to the Labrador Sea. In these 5 weeks a group of 21 scientists and 24 crew on board the German research vessel “Maria S Merian”, will brace the tough North Atlantic in the name of science. The mission: we will recover and re-deploy German, British and US moorings with measurement devices as well as take 80 CTD casts from the surface to the ocean floor to assist the scientists from the OSNAP program with their effort to estimate the Subpolar Overturning circulation and associated transport of heat and freshwater. In this blog we will detail some of the work being done, why it matters to oceanography and what life on board feels like. We hope you will enjoy reading this blog.

Day 1 – Day 3: Our journey begins in St. John’s – the capital of the easternmost province of Canada: Newfoundland and Labrador. St. John’s is a vibrant little city on the Atlantic coast inside a natural harbour of ragged rocks towering around the fjord. The night before putting out to sea snow fell and for a moment coated much of the city in a fine layer of fine white dust. It must have been an unusual sight to see snow in the end of May for most of our team arriving from places where summer already started. Our team consists of 21 scientists, 6 of which are bio-geochemists from Dalhousie University (Canada) and 15 physical oceanographers from GEOMAR (Germany), Memorial University (Canada), NOC (UK) and EPPS (France).

After re-fuelling or bunkering as they say in nautical language, the ship’s ready for the voyage. The pilot boards the ship and helps the captain navigate safely into the open ocean. We all say goodbye to mainland until the end of cruise and are greeted by 2-4 meter swells. We began the journey with safety drills and figuring our safety equipment like entering the free-falling lifeboat and lifejackets.

After this was done it was time for our CTD test station (Station 27), just outside St. John’s. CTD stands for: Conductivity, Temperature and Depth sensor and is used to measure very precisely the temperature of the water. From conductivity, temperature and pressure, the salinity and density can be worked out using standardized equations for sea water. These variables are the most important physical variables captured on all ocean research cruises. However, our CTD cast has many more instruments attached such as an ADCP to measure current speeds, an oxygen sensor to measure dissolved oxygen, a flourometer to measure plant life activity, an altimeter to detect the distance to the seabed, and a UVP (underwater vision profiler) that takes high resolution pictures of living beings under water like plants, marine life and other particles. The CTD is attached to the so called rosette, which includes water bottles that can be closed at different depths and collect samples of sea water. These are then analyzed by the bio-geochemists for gasses such as oxygen or carbon dioxide as well as nutrients.

Everyone was present to learn about the different steps in taking a CTD cast and the necessary water sample preparations that needed to be done. Unfortunately, at this point, some of our scientific crew started to battle the effects of sea sickness and the ship’s doctor was doing his best encouraging us and gave us patches to counteract the sickness feelings. Now we are on our way to our first real mooring and CTD station site and we should arrive there this evening. Looking forward to what the day will bring.

Brad deYoung, Robin Matthews and Mark Downey
Physics and Physical Oceanography
Memorial University, Newfoundland
11 January 2017

This fall we deployed an ocean glider into the Labrador Sea.  Our goal was to make measurements of the oxygen and carbon dioxide gas  properties in the Labrador Sea.  There are presently two deep-sea moorings in the Labrador Sea, separated by about 40 km off the shelf in 3500m of water.  The K1 mooring was deployed by German researchers from GEOMAR in Kiel; the Seacycler mooring was deployed by Dalhousie researchers as part of the VITALS research program. We wanted to map the gas and water properties between and around the moorings.  The glider operated from the surface down to 1000 m depth, flying along a 100 km extended line that connects the two moorings.

Our original plan was to deploy the glider directly in the Labrador Sea from a research ship  and then recover it from a ship in the Labrador Sea, so that we would get the most  out of the batteries in the glider. Battery-power is time, and time is money of course. We wanted to get the most out of our battery investment. As it turned out, the availability of ships did not line up with our schedule. As a result we had to deploy from the shore in southern Labrador, the closest port to the Labrador Sea. For recovery, southern Labrador would not work because by December all the ports are closed because of ice. So we had to fly the glider to the south and recover from the island of Newfoundland.

The deployment in September required driving  1400 km from our lab, in St. John’s Newfoundland, to Cartwright Labrador, about a day and a half of driving that requires taking a ferry from Newfoundland across the Labrador Straits to Labrador. We deployed the glider using a 63 foot boat operated by a local fisherman.  Operating from small boats does have some advantages, making it easier to get the glider into the water. Even in September the weather was intense. On the afternoon of the deployment, winds over the shelf reached 55 knots and the sea was about 8 m or 25 feet.

Mark Downey getting the glider ready for deployment with the Gannett Islands in the background.

The glider did move across the shelf fairly smoothly (see below) although you can see from the track that there was a period when the glider was too shallow and got caught in a strong southward current and was pulled southwards. Once off the shelf and the glider could dive to its full 1000m depth thus was able to make better progress and only took a few weeks to reach the mooring stations. The glider operated in the Labrador Sea very well and flew for three months operating along the extended line between the two moorings.

The intent was to fly the glider straight across the shelf but strong currents, and a little mixup in the depth of the glider, led to an unintended loop to the south.

In November we began making plans for the recovery. We carefully watched the battery usage. Each day the glider would use about 0.5 percent of the battery. That meant that in principle we could have 200 days at sea but in practice we want to recover with 15-20% of the battery left in case there are delays on recovery or the battery is not as ‘full’ as we think it is. We made a plan to fly the glider along the shelf edge where the water is deep and where there is a strong shelf break current moving southwards. The southward current meant that we gained an extra 10-20 km of progress. We determined that it would take about 40 days to fly the return route and so headed the glider southwards in mid-November (see track below). As the track shows, the glider made its way southward very well in spite of a few hiccups. At times we would lose regular contact because the winds (greater than 50 knots – 80 km/hr) and sea-state (well above 10 m – 30 feet) were such that the antenna was not always working properly. We also had some problems bringing the glider back across the shelf when it appeared to lose track of its direction a bit, perhaps related to problems with how the glider corrects for the current that it experiences as it flies.

Return path of the glider from the Labrador Sea a trip that took about 40 days and
led to the successful recovery of the glider just off Heart’s Content, Newfoundland

We planned to bring the glider back to one of the deep bays on the north coast of Newfoundland – Trinity Bay. These bays are somewhat sheltered and because they are deep the glider could wait there for us, patiently going back and forth in the deep water. The glider arrived at our target location off Heart’s Content, Newfoundland on Christmas day. We programmed it to fly a little triangle offshore (see figure) and then went out in a small boat to recover it. On the day of the recovery the pilot for our mission (Robin) was in the UK and so while he maintained contact with the glider we got the boat ready and then went out looking for the glider. The day before we had a storm with strong winds and the day after we had a strong winds again and so we had a narrow window for the recovery. It was winter and windy but we had no problems as we knew precisely where the glider was. The glider was just where we expected to find it and the weather cooperated. Now we get to explore the data and plan for our next deployment in the Labrador Sea.

The glider (located just below the boom in the center of the picture) was just where we expected it to be on a somewhat windy and very cold data. The glider looked just as bright and clean as on its deployment some four months earlier.

by Penny Holliday

We’re steaming through Southampton Water on a hot, sunny day, and as we near the dockside at NOC we’re reflecting on a successful and enjoyable cruise.  We were very lucky with the weather, and that, combined with the work by our highly skilled team of people on board, meant that we have achieved all our scientific objectives.  I’m very pleased with the excellent quality of the data that we have collected, and with the new friendships we’ve made.

 The OSNAP moorings are now starting a 2-year long period in the deep ocean collecting lots of precious data for us – and some of us will be back to retrieve them in 2018.  Meanwhile, we’ll be busy analysing the data we’ve collected on this trip, and looking forward to going to sea again.

Photo by Penny Holliday

by Sotiria Georgiou

 Here we are! 15 days on board! So far, 36 CTD stations, 10 Moorings, 25 RAFOS floats and 1 Argo float have been completed and so many stories to tell!

 Back on land, I am a PhD student at TU Delft in the Netherlands. I am using a numerical model to reproduce the circulation of the Labrador and the Irminger seas. To validate a numerical model we use observational data that we can easily download from the web. That means that we want to be sure that the output data of the model are able to reproduce the real state of the ocean as well as possible. Being here, in the Irminger Sea, collecting data for the first time is a priceless experience. Now, I get a rough picture on how complicated is to plan such a cruise to obtain the precious data and keep track on it whatever difficulties might occur. 

 The team is working hard during day and night. Me and Ryan are the night-watchers. During the night the ship is quiet and everyone is waiting for some action. That’s going to be either by getting to a CTD station or by releasing some RAFOS floats. When we reach at a CTD station the technicians will guide the CTD from the deck to the sea surface and then all the way down to the bottom. Once it returns on deck, we make sure that all the bottles keep well protected the water from the different depths. Then, under the whispers of songs (mostly from the top 40..), we take water samples from each of the bottles for both salinity and nutrients. Even if is too dark to distinguish the difference between the ocean and the sky, there is a beautiful sunrise to wait for (not everyday though!!).

 Yesterday, we had some celebrations! Anna turned her 21st year! During the dinner (having greek mousaka!!) there was a big surprise for her. A huge birthday cake suddenly popped up from the kitchen followed by the happy birthday song! Mia made a wonderful birthday card for her and we all wrote our wishes to her. She was really happy! 

 We are about to finish the measurements and then we need almost one week to sail back to Southampton. On our way back, as we will all be more relaxed, there will be time to discuss the first processed data, our research and have even more fun!

Birthday cake

Chefs cake

CTD and float

Ryan and CTD

Sunrise

Photos by Sotira Georgiou

Tonight, during our 2000-0400 shift, my watch-mate and I are feeling like Neil Armstrong; walking into the dark to achieve a better knowledge of the unknown. As we approach our next station, the whole ship shakes due to the high winds and waves, as a spacecraft does on its way up, but more harmonically. After all, the Saturn V had a speed of 21,785 knots while ours is 10 knots; and, while it took Neil Armstrong’s spaceship only 3 days to arrive at the moon, we would take 755 days. Anyway, with this shaking one cannot avoid remembering the lyrics of the serenade from the Steve Miller Band: “Did you feel the wind/As it blew all around you”.

Strong gravitational forces can be felt when going down the steep vertical stairs in these waves, where one must be careful not to fall in front of Neil Armstrong’s picture and make a fool of yourself. When we get out to sample, it is as dark and cold as it probably is in space, but here we also have the wet component.  The deep ocean, like space, is one of the least explored areas scientifically and, as such, is also a hostile environment for mankind. Around 2500m depth, water temperatures hover around 1ºC and the pressure is enough to convert a foam coffee cup into a little shot glass. Unlocking the mysteries of the ocean requires a big passion for science – as is true for space exploration.

All of a sudden, from the porthole, in the far distance a tiny light appears. It is not a satellite; it shows the position of another ship in this immense solitude of water. It is 0200, and all you can hear is the engine (and some background music in the main lab). We two astronauts of the ocean are launching the rosette into the deep; we also wear a helmet and boots, but instead of a space suit we use a personal floatation device. [The rosette contains a CTD, which is a sensor that measures conductivity (to estimate salinity), temperature and depth; a LADCP that measures the ocean currents using sound (the Doppler effect); and 24 bottles of 12 litters each to capture water at different depth. This collection of instruments is deployed from the surface to 10 m above the bottom, which takes hours to do.] Perhaps our real space suit is the immersion suit (affectionately known as a gumby suit) and is only reserved for ship-evacuation cases – designed to secure survival in this hostile environment.

As morning arrives the vessel’s common areas start to fill with people and the vessel no longer has the lonely feeling of a space craft (luckily!).