January 31st: Final Sampling Day

Ian with vehicles in laboratory 1 at Palmer Station

Well, we completed our final REMUS mission today and got the vehicle back. Mark had one more area that he wanted to cover with the vehicle today so we sent it out across the Bismark Straight to the Wauwermans islands. This was the last area that the penguins had been traveling to that we had not yet explored. It had been raining for most of the day. When we were getting ready to go pick the vehicle up the rain started turning into a heavy thick snow and the wind began to pick up. It was a beautiful scene to pick the vehicle up in on our last day. We also went and picked up the acoustic transponders that the vehicle used to navigate back to the station.

Mission Control, where I spent most of my time.

After we deployed the REMUS today we went and picked up Matt’s University of Delaware glider. It has been in the water for three weeks now and still looked remarkably clean. Normally during a glider deployment they start accumulating small marine organisms that like growing on it, since it is a hard substrate that is moving around. Matt was very excited to have it back in the lab.

So everything is officially out of the water. Even though we lost a couple of items and damaged a couple more, we have had a very successful field campaign. With our REMUS vehicles spending 100 hours in the water and traveling over 550 kilometers during our stay down here, this has been the most intensive sampling effort we have ever undertaken.

Good night, Ian