It isn't always plain sailing....

As in all areas of science, sometimes things can go awry, and delays can occur... but everyone can remain in high spirits!

By Sam Mitchell

Our technicians prepare for a busy couple of days on deck!

So yesterday we hit a little snag, but we're now up and running again! A 3D acoustic streamer array is complex... and deploying and retrieving it can take some time. But at the end day, everything relies on the ship. If we're not in "ship shape", well... we can't run. So when there was a need to reboot the ship's power, it was all hands on deck to bring in all of the streamers and the airguns.

But why did we have to bring in ALL 24 km of cable, 84 "birds", 21 acoustic receivers and an air gun array?! All the four streamers are towed in parallel lines behind the vessel. Keeping the streamers from crossing over relies on tension from the ship constantly moving forward. With a power reboot needed to occur, we had to bring all of the streamer array back onto the boat before we could even start tackling the issue on board.

Thankfully, it was a quick fix once everything was back on board. Although, at 2am in the dead of night (when our reboot occurred), our night shift noticed the eerie silence of constant whirring, "chirps", flashing lights and background noise that normally accompanies just any other moment on the ship. With us down to just temporarily drifting, even lack of regular movement of the ship seemed alien to us.

Nevertheless, with the power sorted and back up to full, we were ready to go again. BUT WAIT?! Oh... that's right.... we just brought in all of our equipment. So, once again, it was all hands on deck to help us deploy the entire 24 km array of streamers and airguns. Not to mention reassembling and reattaching all of the birds and receivers that had come off of the streamers just 12 hours before!

I think it's far to say our science party are well-versed in the logistics of deploying a seismic array now, as we helped to deploy it all in the first place. We should be all ready to go when it's time to bring in the array at the end of the expedition!

On top of things running smoothly, everyone was in a good mood considering the delay, and we were lucky enough to have calm seas, beautiful weather, and a nice moody sunset.

Every cloud has a silver(/red/orange/yellow/blue) lining I guess....