Aaarrrghhh so much going on! Work, eat, sleep and blog…there is only time for three. I can sleep when I’m dead!

Well it is good news. The ROV has been in done its shake down dive, collected what we suspect is not just a new species or even a new family but … possibly a new order of anemone, seen active vents and come back safe. What a day. You could see the weight evaporate off shoulders and the nervous grimaces turn back towards genuine smiles. Bring it on!

Isis launch (by Chong Chen)

The first dive was a relatively short 12hrs. The ROV itself is not massively limited by time. The moving of arms and parts etc degrades oil and eventually it needs to come up for a service but that could be after 48+ hours. The problems is we have usually filled all our cargo boxes by then.

So we are doing a series of short bounce dives. Dive 187 (our first) confirmed the site as still active, oriented us in space and even gave tantalizing hints that things have changed. For example we are working on a vent chimney called Dogs Head (only looked even remotely like a dogs head 2 years ago when viewed from a specific angle and altitude). Its size and shape appear to have changed and many of the animals have gone. Questions like why and where spring to mind.

Dive 188 was a swath mapping dive where we scan the seabed. It is perhaps the most riveting of ROV watches. The ROV is set to auto altitude 40 above the seabed (so you see nothing) and it does a systematic mowing the lawn coverage of an area. Science log reads

00:23 start line 1 northward,

01:14 end of line 1

01:27 start line 2 southward

02:23 change pilot camera tape

It’s a job that requires our mapping scientist (Verla) and 1 member of the watch. Sampling (now that is where the fun is) requires a team of 4-5 scientists and if there was one piece of advice it is know when to say “STOP. Everyone take a breath….” as things can happen too fast. What is the point of receiving a sample and not knowing where it came from because it was not logged or missing a tape change because everyone had headless chicken syndrome. I think a major part of the problem is we do this because we love it and everyone regresses to childhood with new toys/games if you are not careful. Yes the excitement can get the better of us. Although we strive to find our academic detached analytical self we will probably find him up the tree house having a picnic with joy of discovery and her little brother adventure.

I have to stop now. 45 minutes until the team takes over control the Dive and I have to spend some time in cahoots with the previous watch doing a hand over.

Chris