Under clear skies and with light winds, we
recovered four of our six moorings today. These moorings, which contain
instruments at a variety of different depth levels measuring current speed,
pressure, temperature and salinity, were deployed on the UK2 DIMES Cruise in
December 2010 and have collected 14 months of data. The aim of the experiment
is to investigate mixing and internal wave breaking processes over a sea-floor
rise close to the Subantarctic Front.
 |
| Mooring operations on the aft deck |
 |
| Disassembling and storing buoyancy spheres |
 |
| Mick and Steve at work with the crane |
A typical mooring recovery involves ranging
the mooring to find out its exact location, then acoustically releasing the
instruments and mooring wire from its anchor on the seabed. The mooring then
drifts to the surface and the ship is positioned to allow recovery on the aft
deck. The mooring line is then slowly hauled onboard ship and the buoyancy and
instruments removed from it.
To complement this work, we aim to complete
a VMP and tow-yo CTD overnight tonight, before recovering the final two moorings
tomorrow. Many thanks to Uriel for the recovery photos.
No comments:
Post a Comment