Today has been a long and crazy, but good day. We woke up to a huge layer of ice from the glacier covering the whole bay this morning. The skies were blue and the sun stayed out all day today. We can see everywhere. The mountains behind us and the mountain range to south are spectacular.
I had a couple of last tests to run on the REMUS and then we went out and to launch one of Rutgers gliders (another collaborator on this project). Since the whole bay was covered with ice, it took a long time to weave our way through the ice, pushing big and little chunks out of the way so we could get out to open water.
Once we were on sight we were amazed at the views, but realized we had to get back to work. We dropped the vehicle off and came back to station. Usually the glider calls back in every 3 hours, but this one did not so everyone was getting a little worried. This happens from time to time and things do get lost, but it is still stressful. We were going to have to wait and see if anything happened.
In the mean time, Mark and I took the first REMUS out to do a short run and calibrate its compass, which would take about an hour and a half. We put the REMUS in the water, started it and watched it take off with the beautiful landscape in the background. Ten minutes into the run we heard Matt call over the radio that he was going out to the station where the glider was last seen.
Apparently, the piston on the front jammed in the down position and sent the glider to the bottom of the ocean, which luckily was only 90 meters. The gliders are only rated to 100 meters. Once it didn’t come up it dropped a little lead weight and floated to the surface.
Mark and I sat out and waited for the REMUS to finish up and watched penguins go swimming by, along with a couple of whales. We picked up the REMUS and brought it back to the station to download the data and make sure it was flying okay and get ready to do the second one tomorrow. After dinner we went and launched a second glider that will be flying offshore to study another penguin foraging site.
The ship that we were on came in close to the coast line today and was taking water samples and running a lot tests. They will pick up the glider that we launched a couple of days ago and take it with them to another study site. I just find out that they launched a glider before we got down here that is flying down to Rothera, a British research station.
The station crew enjoyed the afternoon in the sun and the rest of the science crew continues to work on their projects, taking samples and spending time analyzing them in the lab.
The glider crew has to work on the 2 gliders that are acting up and we will be preparing for tomorrow and looking at today’s data tonight. Also, hoping for another beautiful sunset and nice day tomorrow.
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