Hey blog-watchers!
We’re continuing on with dredging from now until Thursday, when we’ll get a brief stopover on Santa Cruz. Definitely looking forward to some land-based adventures.
For now though, we’re keeping busy getting dredges in and out of the water and processing any rocks we pull up. Unfortunately, we’re a bit behind schedule due to some issues with the bow thruster. The Melville uses a dynamic positioning system that allows it to move laterally as well as forward. This feature is helpful for dredging, since we want the start and end location of the dredges to be as close to our plans as possible, but it’s especially helpful because we’re dredging off the starboard side rather than the stern, which makes the operation even trickier. Luckily, Chief (a.k.a. Paul Bueren ) came to our rescue and provided us with an on-the-fly repair. Now dredges are back underway and our fourth dredge is currently in the water.
We had a bit of a surprise bringing up our last dredge, from a ridge off the south side of Pinta. We managed to snag a few rocks, but were surprised to see some sea life in our dredge basket as well. Resident biologist Daniel Wagner was happy to be able to collect some sea urchins, coral, and crustaceans as part of his work classifying Galapagos marine life.
The 12-4 crew bringing up a dredge.
Coral and rock that was scooped up by the dredge
Meeting of the minds- Eric and Alison examine a rock from the dredge
Marques, Cam and Nick modeling the rock cutting safety gear
Krista preparing parts of the tow cam that are supposed to collect glass off the bottom of the seafloor. The tow cam will hopefully be launched some time tomorrow.Daily Shout Out...
And in honor of the Village People...
Thank you Nick and goodnight everybody!
Today we've also got our daily crew interview up at the Crew Corner with Rob Gerhardt.
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