PICASSO test

Guess I’m a bit mixed up in the days... seems to be the 2nd already. Anyway, good day yesterday, with the PICASSO testing (not a success, but they know what to fix), the laser testing (a success), and the satellite testing (didn’t hear anything about it, but it must have been miserable, squating on the top of the boat in the rain and wind...).

At 8am we started the PICASSO tests, and at about 10 it was launched. Everything went fine for quite some time, except for a bit of ballast problem on the back. Then the controls stopped woring, but the ship was still receiving images from the cameras... And so of course the ballast release didn’t work (as the controls didn’t work), but if you cut the fiber-optics cable it automatically releases the ballast. So that’s what they did, and up came PICASSO. Turns out they had gotten a kink in the fiber-optics cable somewhere that blocked only the downwelling message.

I got to see how you fix a fiber-optics cable, which was cool, but it seems you have to be careful to align the minute little ridges otherwhise it gets kinked. They spent the afternoon fixing some other minor bugs (on the bottom the depth said it was about 3m underground...). I got to look at the video they made on the trial (lots of siphonophores and some sea-pens on the bottom), and continued sorting my net sample. I found some more siphonophore bells which I will have to identify today, and a neat polychete with what look like white squid arms with bright orange spots on them, and some other larvae.

In the evening we had a going away party for the 2 who are leaving today. It was fun to see a japanese party. And it was quite short, as they get drunk and go to bed rather quickly. We had lost half after an hour and a half about. There were lots of little snacks too, and most of them weren’t bad. I tasted japanese beer. It’s not bad, but doesn’t taste at all like what I’m used to. I also had a glass of red wine from Chile, complete wil screw-top bottle. It pretty much lived up to the expectations I had of a wine that comes in a screw-top bottle.

Today will be a calm day, with resting for the laser guys and a planned PICASSO dive which is mostly just for the paper work, as they plan to cancel it for meteorological reasons. We will still do the pre-dive check, as it’s good to get everyone used to it. And I will be sorting and identifying my jellyfish.

Will be a nice day, if the ship doesn’t move around too much. I haven’t gotten sick yet, although the sight of raw fish at 5pm for dinner is not always easy to bear. I usually have a good breaky (they have monster bread slices, the thickness of 2 normal slices), and a good lunch, but dinner is still a threat. Tonight there will be no anchoring, so we will sail up and down the bay all night, and that may become really fun. Shall see....