Friday, Nov. 24, 2006

R/V MIRAI

"buoy recovery completed"

Cloudy, later fine.
North-westerly (3-5 m/sec) in daytime, later changed to southerly (6-8m/sec).
Significant wave height was 1.5 m.

Observations:

Three hourly radiosonde observations as well as other continuous surface observations have been done. At (0, 79E), we recovered m-TRITON buoy and sub-surface ADCP moorings. For m-TRITON buoy recovery it took about 5 hours, while it took for ADCP about 3 hours. CTD casting was done before and after the recovery of m-TRITON buoy and sub-surface ADCP moorings. In addition, we have started hourly CTD observation down to 200m for 24 hours from 2330 LST.
From satellite images, we can confirm that large-scale cloud area covers entire the tropical Indian Ocean just south of the equator.

Remarks:

We had started to recover the m-TRITON buoy just after the rain in the early morning (photos-1, 2). Although we conducted the recovery smoothly, fishery boat came to close to the ship (photo-3).
Some photos were taken at various situations. When we wait the ascent of glass ball that is attached near the acoustic releaser for ADCP mooring, captain and his crew adjust the ship's position accordingly for the drifted mooring system (photo-4). Since we must sum up the preliminary results before the end of the cruise, marine technicians process the data now (photos 5, 6). Also, they maintain the instruments for the coming next cruise (photo 7).