Hi from R/V GYRE,
Today was spent in transit to our first way point and in deploying and checking out the gear. The seas were building in the morning to about 4 ft and decreased in evening. There were no small boat operations today. Weather is expected to be 3-5 ft seas tomorrow, so small boat operations remain problematical. A small boat operations safety meeting was held at 15:00 UTC, so we are ready to launch when whales are found and seas and daylight conditions allow.
The 38 kHz ADCP was turned on at 03:30 UTC to log currents during our transit into deep water. The flow-through system, consisting of a thermosalinograph to measure temperature and salinity and a fluometer to measure chlorophyll-fluorescence were turned on about 14:00 UTC when water depth was ~75 m. The flow-through system will continuously log data from approximately the 3 m depth in 1 minute intervals.
Our first way point was moved to deeper water to allow a CTD cast to approximately 1150 m depth to be taken. The cast was started at 22:14 UTC when water depths of ~1250 were reached. The location was 27 15.6108' N 94 51.7656'W. A chlorophyll sample was taken to use in calibration of the flow-through fluometer. S-tags with depth sensors were strapped to the CTD frame. On the upcast, the CTD was stopped for about 10 minutes at depths of 5 m, 59 m, 257 m, 594 m, 937 m, and 1214 m. The CTD
was recovered at 23:47 UTC. Tags were set to transmit their data to ARGOS on Saturday morning for calibration.
The fishery echosounder was deployed successfully at mid-ships off the starboard side. It was turned on and the 38 kHz ADCP was turned off. We plan to run it until morning.
The two hydrophone arrays were deployed off the stern by 02:00 UTC.
