Buoy-tastic

Here it is - attempt # 2 to make a weight that is hand-deployable, yet heavy enough to stay in one spot on the bottom. tricky, very tricky. Good thing it doesn't have to be hand-deployable by me. I can hardly lift the frame of this thing, let alone half of 150 pounds. Those gigantor chain links are HEAVY! Luckily, Tom and Ben C. could get it into the water with the help of the pulley on the A-frame - and it seemed to stay in place! Excellent. That was at Adam's Point though, several kilometres upriver from our actual research area. We'll find out soon if it'll hold out in Portsmouth Harbour...And yes, this is about as exciting as it gets for me. In fact, I think that the last post about a bag-o-milk was more interesting.

Fieldwork and Trooper

The past week and a half have been pretty crazy. We started testing the pinger positioning last week at Fox Point in Newington. It's a gorgeous spot, and it was nice to work there. On Saturday, Trooper came over to CCOM to help me test the RTK GPS. His job was supervisor, but he spent most of the time chewing on his kong toy.

We finally got the RTK working, it took quite a lot of running around, downloading drivers, picking up forgotten tribrachs and trying to get the laptop to stay alive long enough to set up the receiver. ( we ended up having to use a car battery and an inverter - it worked very well)

The actual survey at Fox Point was very hectic, with the R/V Coastal Surveyor driving back and forth in front of the pier, and Tom measuring sound speed profiles continuously over nearly two hours. Below is a photo of the GPS antenna with the Coastal Surveyor in the background. It was a beautiful day and it only rained a little bit.