On most ships, the captain and crew use a watch system to
make sure there are always people awake to safely operate the vessel and
maintain productivity. Scientific crew
typically does the same thing. Because
this cruise is more exploratory with a wide variety of research operations, our
watches are a little more free form than usual.
Nevertheless, we need to keep the science going 24-7, and to make this
happen we have essentially split our operations into two periods and activities.
The day shift, led by Reide, is focusing on water-column and seabed
sampling. At night we have a skeleton
group for seafloor mapping and sub-bottom and current profiling.
The ship at night is quiet.
It’s peaceful, but it also can be downright painful. After 8 hours, watching a computer screen at
5 AM can be grueling… and this will drive those on watch a little batty. In an effort to keep alert we’ll analyze
data, talk, eat, play music, write computer code, make jokes and, of course,
drink coffee. While oceanographic
research is often very interesting, the ocean is big, and gathering data can be
mind-numbing. It’s helpful to have creative
and fun folks around to make the long hours a little more entertaining.
4:19 AM: Trip takes a break from writing Matlab code to proces ADCP data.
4:22 AM: Keith keeps "cleaning" multibeam data.
4:21 AM: J.P. pretends to type on computer while watching multibeam data.
6:28 AM: The sun starts to rise. Another ship is on the horizon.
6:42 AM: Day is breaking. Dinner (breakfast) is almost ready!
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