Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2006

R/V MIRAI

"recovery of m-TRITON buoy"

Fine, later cloudy.
Weak northerly wind (2-3 m/sec). Significant wave height was 1.6 m.

Observations:

In the morning, we had fine weather and shallow convections were dominant (photo-1). From the satellite data, we confirmed that large-cloud systems developed south-east of MIRAI and then moved to westward in daytime. However, as they approached to MIRAI, they decayed. Only the cloud lines can be found from the MIRAI (photo-2).
As we arrived at (0, 82E), we conducted CTD observation down to 500 m depth. Then, we started to recover the m-TRITON buoy from 0620 LST. After the release command was successfully operated, it took about 80 minutes to ascend the glass ball to near the surface. After all, we finished to recover the entire mooring system by 1143 LST (photos 3-5).
Then, we also recovered the sub-surface ADCP mooring (photo-6). It took about 3 hours to complete it.
During these recovery working, we also conducted the radiosonde 0bservation every 3 hours. Sometimes, we launched the baloon by manually (photo-7).

Remarks:

After one-month mooring, we recovered m-TRITON buoy at (0, 82E). Since the sea condition was calm in the morning, we could proceed smoothly. We confirmed data is okay.
We are now cruising to (0, 79E).