Dispatch 15: Another day, another mooring
Ashley Arroyo (Yale University)
September 13, 2024
23:30 UTC, 74.03°N 150.00°W
Conditions:
- Mostly cloudy
- 50% sea ice cover
- -4°C
- Winds 7.3 knots easterly
- Sunrise: 11-Sep-2024 08:19:05 -06
- Sunset: 11-Sep-2024 23:33:15 -06
- Day length: 15h 14mn 10s
Today, the Louis arrived at the site of Mooring A, for the mooring recovery. Similar to the recovery of Mooring B which occurred on September 10th (Dispatch 12!), Mary-Louise Timmermans and Jeff O’Brien were in the forward lab in the early morning hours to begin pinpointing the mooring’s location by transmitting an acoustic signal to the instrument. Once they received the pings back from the devices on the mooring, they were easily able to triangulate its exact location. After breakfast, the scientists and crew were on deck ready for the mooring to be sent the signal to release from its anchor on the seafloor. Within seconds of the release command, the mooring’s large yellow surface floatation sphere appeared at the surface of the ocean (holding up its 3800-meter wire with various instruments attached), where it was easily spotted by those watching from the Louis. From that point on, the mooring recovery was essentially identical to the recovery of Mooring B: the surface buoy was clipped in by deckhand Jerome Sibley, and the mooring was carefully winched onto the deck until all its instruments and other parts were safely aboard. Then, Mary-Louise and the WHOI team began offloading the yearslong data records from the recovered instruments and prepping the instruments (giving them fresh batteries etc.) to be deployed tomorrow for another year.
In the meantime, we steamed south at ~10 knots to station CB-3 where the science team completed CTD/bongo net casts. The casts went smoothly, and we even caught another jellyfish in the bongo nets! We are now on our way back to the mooring site where the deployment of Mooring A will begin first thing in the morning.
