It's a beautiful day here in Ny Alesund. The sun is shining (relatively speaking), the birds are tweeting and the skeleton shrimp are having an excellent time in the bay just outside our laboratory. I finally managed to get a photo which almost represents what it looks like to the human eye. As you can see it's not completely dark, and you can see outlines of clouds, mountains and such. Under some light some of the mountains appear to glow with the snow which is quite a majestic thing to experience. If you're looking for something to do with your January, I can definitely recommend a Northern trip. But, enough of standing around and appreciating the nature and onto the science!
And good science starts with planning (well, realistically it starts with an awesome idea, however planning is a key element). So we planned. This is our plan for today (Tuesday) and tomorrow. We're planning on running two awesome and mind blowing AUV missions one over midday and one over midnight. Then tomorrow afternoon we'll be taking two groups out. For one we're going to be mapping the bathymetry of the bay here and the other group we will be introducing to the ROV, little little geek, the cutest of cute ROVs. So it's looking like a fun, full, long few days!
And good science also involves a good bit of problem solving. Today I was quite impressed with one of our tekkies solutions to the "only have 2 hands" problem. (I have my suspicions that coke would also be fairly impressed, and possibly happy with the product placement).
But somewhat more vitally (depending on your point of view) we had to find a way to help the AUV deal with the cold. As I've mentioned before, the battery is freaking out in the minus temperatures we're having here. So in a first attempt at solving this problem we've found a sleeping bag, AUV sized, and we're going to keep it wrapped up in that until deployment. There was talk of someone snuggling up with it and whispering softly, however it seems that that won't be required, though we had no shortage of volunteers.
Overall we were really happy with our efforts to get the AUV in the water nice and quick and she got off to a great start getting a nice quick GPS fix and roared through her mission.
The best sight of the day was possibly the surfacing of the AUV out in the Fjord. Due to the awesome strobe and glow stick we could spot it hundreds of metres away and helped guide the boat out to meet it. They then brought it straight home, and we plugged her back in to charge for an evening mission. I can't help but wish it was so easy to recharge humans too! A nice easy data download and a few hours recharge, leaving you ready and rearing to go!
But as it stands, all the data is looking great and quite interesting and the AUV should be rocking 10pm tonight!
But as it stands, all the data is looking great and quite interesting and the AUV should be rocking 10pm tonight!
And now we wait for our next mission. But in the mean time the science never stops. Three of our brave, intrepid and adventurous diving scientists are heading out into the bay to document what's going on in the water in the evening. They looked pretty tough in their dry suits and ready to take on whatever kongsfjorden might throw at them.
They also took out some cool non standard equipment, including, and I think this is particularly groovoid, a device which will test the nature of the water column so they can relate the information they get from photographs to the natural state of the water and also above water ambient light. Cool stuff.
They also took about 4 cameras with them, a thought which brings fear to the hearts of all shy sea critters. Having had a peek at some of the photos they are getting, they are getting some really really really awesome stuff! These guys are both skilled scientists and photographers, which could result in a bit of embarrassment for some of the critters that thought they were safe getting up to some hankypanky in the polar night!
And now the time comes to start prepping the AUV for her next mission. As I've said before, Science doesn't sleep, and apparently we don't either! (but correlation is not causation friends)