Shinsei-maru

Back on mainland Japan, for a 10 day cruise on the Shinsei-maru, the new ship built to replace the Tansei-maru when it was retired last year.

After an early flight into Tokyo, I raced off to JAMSTEC to pack up one of their microscopes and some extra sample jars, as I haven't quite gotten the OIST lab up to cruise specs yet. Then off to Tokyo university to help pack the cruise stuff on the truck. The truck, which turned out to be 2 huge trucks, in fact. Although there were only 2 more scientists than are usually on a Tansei cruise, the amount of stuff everyone brought seems to have increased twofold. But we've all done this before, and soon both trucks were on their way, and, after a small pit-stop to see the Sky Tree in Tokyo and meet up with all the Oppama folks, I followed suit and took a Shinkansen up to Sendai.

I had visited the Shinsei-maru when it first came to JAMSTEC last autumn, but it's different actually going on a cruise, and so after a relatively quick unpacking, we spent a busy afternoon deciding where everyone should be, what we should do with all this stuff we had brought along, and finding where the spare hooks were hidden (under the sink, of course!).

I then had a morning free, so went to visit the site where Sendai castle used to stand, and got to see the famous statue of the founder Date Masamune, and his awesome helmet.

Then it was time to go!

And with style, please!

It was the first time on this ship for many of us, and we got a good slap of 'this is how we do it, boys' right from the start. The ship has dynamic positioning through rotating propellers at the back, and so instead of leaving dock normally, we simply untied the ropes and swept away, parallel to the dock, until we were out in the central canal, where they put it in gear and we were off. The most quiet,  easy, and V.I.P. departure I've ever seen.

The ship control panel available as a touch screen in the lab, showing the main propellers set for a fixed station sampling.

The cruise itself went very well, with quite nice weather.

Well, mostly reasonable….

... and some pretty amazing sampling.

The CTD being deployed by its specialized crane.

One of the 2 dredges we deployed … and some of the cool stuff that came up in them.

We had the usual rocking water-plankton-bentos group, and we had half the crew and even the captain down on deck helping us fish!

Our first shark!

The captain and his optical illusion flounder

(that one was minute, but he made up for it by out fishing everyone the next day)

The boat is incredibly quiet, and it does not roll at all, ever, which made both everyday life on board and sampling very easy and relaxing, and soon we were steaming up to the JAMSTEC wharf, parallel-parking the boat just to impress everyone, and then spending the whole rest of the morning unpacking our luggage which had greatly increased in size and weight since Sendai. But more weight means more samples, and that's what we were out there for!

 Back to my hot and rather humid tropical island, but Fukushima, I'll be back!