Today turned out to be a big day for group 4. Why? Because we students suddenly became the teachers! Group 3 want to have a look at what creates they can see out in the bay near the marine lab, and to do that we're going to take the ROV out for a spin and see what we can see. So we did a quick check and look see to make sure that all things were operational.
And the group 3ers took this opportunity to photograph the most photogenic of our team, little hulk.
And then we went out for deployment. We almost managed to run two transects out from the pier, but we had a lot of trouble with the wind and currents that were running. We also took a bit too long to deploy which could have been a problem for poor little hulk being stuck out in the cold for that long (it's much warmer in the water than in the air at the moment) but he took it well and was happy as a little lark when we deployed him.
Deploying was actually quite an exciting experience, as we were going off the high side of the pier. But with lots of safety measures in place we got little hulk down to the water safe and sound with no students following him, always a good thing!
All up it was a pretty awesome day, we had a great time teaching some of the other students what we had learnt and sharing the awesomeness of being with little hulk. It was a bit sad though as he will be leaving tomorrow on the ship to save space on the plane, which means we will be moving to a different ROV which I hope to introduce you to tomorrow. Sadly we ran out of time to do our planned AUV mission, but we're looking forward to having a good smooth mission tomorrow during the day, and then probably at night as well.
In other news the divers went out in the bay today and apparently they saw some really cool stuff, including a whole raft of animals which are usually only found at 200-300m depths, these guys were hanging out around 1-4m deep. So there's defiantly some new stuff going on down there, new to science, I'm guessing that the creatures themselves have been doing it all for quite a while.
I also heard rumours that some birds have been caught and we're going to have a look at their stomach contents to see what they've been eating. But these are still rumours, I'll try and substantiate them tomorrow!
And last but not least, the light environment was really interesting today. It was incredibly bright (relatively speaking, my sunglasses are still in their case) this morning with a beautiful "sunrise". This was followed by an incredibly sudden drop of the sun and pitch blackness. The kind of dark where you can't see your hand in-front of you, though you can see some amazing stars. And a few hours later the full moon rose. This all happened within a matter of hours, and I think it must have a pretty amazing impact on the creatures living here to have such different light environments within such short periods of time. I know I couldn't have predicted what was going to happen, maybe the animals can.. who knows.
Either way, it was a pretty exciting and exhausting day!
In other news the divers went out in the bay today and apparently they saw some really cool stuff, including a whole raft of animals which are usually only found at 200-300m depths, these guys were hanging out around 1-4m deep. So there's defiantly some new stuff going on down there, new to science, I'm guessing that the creatures themselves have been doing it all for quite a while.
I also heard rumours that some birds have been caught and we're going to have a look at their stomach contents to see what they've been eating. But these are still rumours, I'll try and substantiate them tomorrow!
And last but not least, the light environment was really interesting today. It was incredibly bright (relatively speaking, my sunglasses are still in their case) this morning with a beautiful "sunrise". This was followed by an incredibly sudden drop of the sun and pitch blackness. The kind of dark where you can't see your hand in-front of you, though you can see some amazing stars. And a few hours later the full moon rose. This all happened within a matter of hours, and I think it must have a pretty amazing impact on the creatures living here to have such different light environments within such short periods of time. I know I couldn't have predicted what was going to happen, maybe the animals can.. who knows.
Either way, it was a pretty exciting and exhausting day!