But first a note. Due to technical issues we have been unable to upload a blog onto the Mare Incognitum website and as such for the next 5 days this will be the official blog for the site. 5 days from now we will have this fixed and up and running. So until then, enjoy some colloquial aussie humor and anecdotes! The technical issues are actually in themselves quite interesting. The website operator is currently onboard the Helmer Hanssen, a research ship, which is wandering around the fjord just outside Ny Ålesund taking samples. Because ships rely on communications satellites for their internet (being why shipboard internet is a whole new level of expensive) they have trouble getting signals when they are too far North. In this case the internet is being blocked by the mountains just to the south of Ny Ålesund. The things we take for granted. However, our wonderful IT tekkie will be free of the ship in a few days and from then we’ll be able to get everything up and running properly! Yay!
But until then, Snow!
Today it’s snowing. Snowing with the kind of enthusiasm that is usually only attributed to pre-schoolers baking cookies. And of course today is our first day working in the real outdoors, which just indicates that the weather does have some kind of narrative skills, even if they are a little bit misplaced. Today, all being well, we will be taking little geek (our ROV) out for a spin by the pier, pending polar bears of course, and then with the arrival of the ship in the evening we will be meeting our second best friend the AUV. The big news for the day team wise is that we have named our little ROV, he’s “little Hulk”.
But until then, Snow!
Today it’s snowing. Snowing with the kind of enthusiasm that is usually only attributed to pre-schoolers baking cookies. And of course today is our first day working in the real outdoors, which just indicates that the weather does have some kind of narrative skills, even if they are a little bit misplaced. Today, all being well, we will be taking little geek (our ROV) out for a spin by the pier, pending polar bears of course, and then with the arrival of the ship in the evening we will be meeting our second best friend the AUV. The big news for the day team wise is that we have named our little ROV, he’s “little Hulk”.
All up it was a very exciting day. We got to do some new and exciting stuff and we learnt a lot of really hands on practical stuff.
We started by checking that the ROV was still working after Wednesday. And hooray hooray it is! Below you can see one of my fellow students checking that the vacuum within the housing is sufficiently vacuumy.
We started by checking that the ROV was still working after Wednesday. And hooray hooray it is! Below you can see one of my fellow students checking that the vacuum within the housing is sufficiently vacuumy.
After a bit of getting to know the ROV, and more importantly getting to know all the cables associated with the ROV it was time to take it out for a spin! This involved packing everything up nice and neatly into their boxes and taking it down to the pier (which by now was covered with about a foot of snow). After unpacking all the kit somewhat less neatly and getting buried in a hubbub of wires and plugs we got both the computers up and running in the relative warmth of a hut on the pier.
We then spent a reasonable amount of time wandering around in our awesome and super duper reflective scooter suits doing technical things like clearing snow and working out angles for the cables. Because it’s so cold the cables are particularly prone to snapping so it’s even more important than usual not to bend the little fellas, one snap and you can say farewell to $3000 worth of cable.
We then tested our lovely little ROV again, this time in the snow, to check that everything was working and was fine and dandy. Which it was. We took this opportunity again for a lovely little photo shoot with our most photogenic of subjects, little hulk!
Following the testing we actually deployed our ROV! Exciting times! It got dropped into the water, with love care and attention, and everything worked as planned. Well, almost everything, we had a few issues with navigation with the compass which is also having a couple of difficulties being so far north, but we worked through that in the end.
This was followed with undoubtedly THE most important part of the day which is where we actually got to start learning about how to operate the vehicle. This involves learning how to hold the umbilical so that it provides least resistance to the machine, learning how to read sonar and of course learning how to control the ROV directly. We get a live video feed from the robot, although I hadn’t realised how disorienting it was going to be working underwater with really no mental reference point. It was great fun once you get the hang of it though!
This is a sample of the view we get as we’re driving. As you can guess, this is the sea floor. Although we did see some really awesome things including fish, a crab, and the most exciting thing of the day, a bird actually diving in front of the camera! Highlight of the Universe!
Sadly however our rookie skills were a little bit rookie and as such we got a whole bunch of weeds tangled in the motors. This was pretty detrimental to actually being able to drive the ROV although it did mean we got a whole new learning experience of taking apart the pieces and putting them together again. All screws were used and accounted for!
All up it was an incredibly awesome day and we’re looking forward to trying it all again tomorrow! Ahoy!