Atlantis science party members (including SIO MOD team Caeli Griffin, Helen Dufel and Grant Meiners) taking water samples for the calibration cast. (photo by Magdalena Andres)

Greetings from the R/V Atlantis! NOPP-GIW is heading for the north Pacific!

The SIO/WHOI IWR array and the WHOI/UDel long line array will both be deployed off the continental shelf and slope in a massive internal tide beam emanating of the Aleutian Island chain. While this is happening, SQUID floats will be launched in coordination with the UW-APL team for a large coordinated NOPP-GIW effort to map these internal waves. In addition to the NOPP-GIW field ops, a crew of scientists and engineers from WHOI have joined the NOPP-GIW cruise in a coordinated science mission to launch an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV).

On July 7, the WHOI team launched their AUV. We just completed the first AUV dive and surveyed the area near the seamount.  Great deployment and recovery by the WHOI team, and a first look at the AUV data by Maurice, Masako and Sean looks great.  We’ll start another survey dive after lunch and will recover around midnight. In the meantime, while the AUV has been on the seafloor “mowing the lawn”, we’ve completed one mooring sensor calibration cast and are in the middle of the second, with the final one to follow next, so we’ve been able to make great use of the ship time.

We’ll start deploying CPIESs tomorrow morning as we await the perfect weather for the mooring deployment (likely Thursday) and while Masako, Maurice and Sean pour through the survey data for the targeted seamount dive later during the cruise.

Weather has been great. The Atlantis crew is remarkable and our science party is  a fun (and competent) bunch.  Good cohesion all around.

And we’re very happy and grateful to have the SIO graduate students (Caeli and Grant) and undergrad (Martin) along.