Floats

Isa Rosso The start of Cowboys’ ride It seems like an old memory...that doomsday I detailed in my last post. A very calm ocean is now surrounding us. A bigger swell is sometimes appearing, but nothing so dramatic to notice. I can finally sleep! And, finally, the phone is no longer attempting to hit me! Cowboys is ready for deployment with Uday, Nivas and Rakesh Two days ago I had my last station, and my last float, Cowboys (Apex #12757) , was deployed! Cowboys touched the water at 51 00.78’ S, 57 32.41’ E at 11:32AM on January 24 , and left the deck riding smooth and gentle waves. The name of the float comes from the mascot of the Salinas High School, which is a cowboy. I’m waiting to see its first profile, as Cowboys was, together with Lil Sinker, in the rollercoaster of Jan 18. Fingers crossed all the sensors are OK! You can check it on the SOCCOMviz website . As we are approaching our last site (at 40 degrees south), in search, again, for the lost mooring, the mood around is fizz

Isa Rosso January 22, 2018 Photo: Rakesh Rao Posing with Lil Sinker before its deployment. From left: Anoop (co-chief), me, Nivas (seaman) and Zoe (doctor)  Lil Sinker prep in Port Louis Let’s start with something good and exciting: Lil Sinker , aka Apex #12781 was deployed yesterday night (January 21, 2018 at 18:59 UTC) under the snow and with big swell, at 56° 58.83' S, 57° 39.08' E!! The float was adopted by Cheryl’s class at  Frenship High School. Thinking about the float’s cycle, which is all about sinking, drifting, sinking again and resurfacing, the class picked the name Lil Sinker. The float, indeed, after its deployment, is programmed to sink to a depth of 1000 m, where it drifts with the ocean currents for 10 days (who knows what it sees down there!? What would sharks and whales think when they see it? 😲 ).  Deploying Lil Sinker (white stripes are snow blown by the strong wind) Then, it sinks again to a depth of 2000 m, after which it comes back up acquiring and stor

Isa Rosso FMS Maximum Ride (Apex #12730) was deployed yesterday, after a long day, in which the nature, once again, reminded us of its power... and its beauty.  Power and beauty Let’s talk about numbers: the float started its journey at 63 59.22’S, 57 24.33’E , on January 16, 2018 at 13:17 UTC . The CTD casts took much longer to be completed due to the weather. We also had some issues at the beginning with the winch, but the main problem was the swell, which was picking up by the minute. Someone, at some point, shouted “SNOW!!”  While waiting for the CTD to come up, armed with (not-waterproof-neither-warm-enough) gloves, snow jacket, butterfly boots and my knitted headband, I ran outside… where I had to fight hard for my dear life! Massive, well-compact snowballs were flying from every direction. The “I come in peace” didn’t really impress anybody. Everyone was out: crew, officers, cadets, seamen, scientists. Everyone playing, no matter how rush the weather conditions nor the sharp cor

Isa Rosso Glorious sky on ice Days pass by, all quite similar to each other. CTDs starting at 6AM, then deployment of the phytoplankton net, LADCP in the afternoon, etc. They caught some more creatures that looked like something coming straight from your deepest nightmares, or dreams, depending what you like. All quite similar. Except... Sun(set/rise?) behind an iceberg In these last days we had about two hours of twilight, “which is the space between day and night, and confuses the daylights out of you” (cit. co-chief Anoop). Still not completely darkness then.  A few days ago, the sun still looked a bit confused, not sure if it was ready to set or rise. So it did both, in just 30 minutes of time in between .  I must say, the bright orange sky, with the shiny tired sun behind some solitary iceberg, is a view that put a smile on my face, and a sense of immensity in my heart.   photo: Rakesh Rao Me jumping with Ingrid (my guitar) Often we celebrated this moment with a series of “click c

Isa Rosso Marching...one, two, three! Celebrating the midnight of the New Year with daylight is definitely a first for me! It’s weird and magical at the same time. We had a bbq at the heli hanger, put up all the decorations, lights, the gigantic speaker and we danced to farewell the 2017, and welcome the 2018 over the notes of Indian, African and American songs. It was fantastic! Everybody showed up (minus, of course, who was in duty during hours) -- even the penguins!   Quietness We’ve been working on very calm waters during these last days. We are so close to the Antarctic continent, but sadly not so close to be able to see it. A few days ago, we were in pack ice. Most of the time the sky is gray, but not always. Now, I don’t know what I like more of this environment -- the ice is so fascinating, in every form. Penguins are so cute, I wanna jump out of the ship and grab one! And the silence... I like walking outside on my own, when most of the people are sleeping, and I can hear the

I sa Rosso December 31, 2017 All is ready for the New Year’s Eve celebration of tonight. Decorations and lights are up, ping-pong table is ready for the tournament, the bbq’s out. There’s a lot of excitement, lots of happy faces. The science activities have not stopped, though, and there are several scientists operating the CTD, collecting samples, running filtration. But all should be completed by 6PM, when the party will start! Funny thing: the sun basically doesn’t go down at all... just barely touches the horizon. So, we’re gonna have a midnight countdown with sunlight outside!! How cool is that!? The Agulhas I sailing through pieces of sea ice We are 65.5S, 72E, steaming towards 73E. The ice maps, images of ice concentration from satellite data, show us pretty high concentration of ice in the area we were supposed to cross. So, the initial decision was to avoid completely that area (a bit sad, I confess, as we won’t be able to see penguins, seals, maybe orcas), but now it seems we

Isa Rosso December 29, 2017 Icebergs I’m still recovering from 2 very long days. On the night of the 25th, we had a wonderful surprise at the galley: every table was decorated, there were dry fruit, chocolate and bottles of (no-alcohol) wine (pretty good, I must say!), a table full of delicious fruits, cut to resemble animals, another table full of desserts of any kind. It was such a feast! The cooks and everybody at the kitchen worked super hard to make us feeling as a big family.. and they doubtlessly succeeded! photo: Rakesh Rao Manker Tanker with me in the back December 26th, the alarm on my phone rings at 1:00AM, just after 3 hours of sleep. We are on station, time to get ready. We should have started with the CTD cast, but again things are not going smoothly. The swell is big, as always. Sometimes it’s fun, sometimes it is... well, not so fun. Michelle (the CTD technician) notices that there’s an issue with the block that attaches the winch to the CTD rosette. We would have 100%

Isa Rosso December 25, 2017 We are in the wake of a series of low-pressure systems, which constantly challenge our balance (my leg muscles are sore) and our scientific operations. There are some CTD casts going on now, after which the Lowered Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (LADCP) will be lowered from the back deck, to measure the currents at this location (procedure that is done at every station). Usually, the LADCP is mounted on the CTD rosette, but since this is a small rosette, there was no room to add the LADCP on it. CTD rosette LADCP I have some exciting news :) On December 23rd, 2017 at 13:19 UTC , 54° 02.1134' S, 68° 02.6330 E , we deployed the float #12734 , aka Magma Manker !! The float is the first one of the 2 adopted by the Girloy High School . The class chose the name in honor of their teacher Jeff Manker, who will retire at the end of the year (all the best, Jeff!!!!). Jeff taught the class about plate tectonics and seafloor spreading, and apparently picked up t