Calm Weather, Smooth Operations

Sea lion watching Jason come to the surface. Credit: S. Avetisyan, University of Washington; V23.

September 7-11, 2023: Leg 4 started with a promising note–good weather and calm seas. Ten new VISIONS students boarded the R/V Thomas G. Thompson to have their first experiences at sea. A large part of operations during Leg 4 are focusing on recovering and redeploying cabled Deep Profiler moorings that host an instrumented vehicle, which at the Slope Base site traverses up to ~ 2700 m (8858 ft) of ocean water daily. These moorings are a companion to the Shallow Profiler Moorings, which in concert are providing unprecedented, real-time monitoring of ocean environmental conditions throughout the entire water column. Not only did the students find operations, so did the sea lion pictured above.

More details and live video of operations can be found here. Don’t miss anything!