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We’re on the bridge of the
research vessel Atlantis.
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This boat is a Navy owned research
vessel that is chartered to Woods Hole
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Oceanographic Institute.
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We do scientific research—it’s a global
ship—so we do scientific research
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all over the world.
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It’s home to the Deep
Submersible Vessel Alvin
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Okay, we talk to them by voice and radio,
and we have a heads up when they’re
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coming and when they’re due to arrive.
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They actually sample different levels,
low levels—twenty thousand,
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fifteen thousand—they really don’t get
below five thousand feet with us and
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they stay, let’s say, about
a half mile away from us.
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They can come closer—they have to say
“hi”, we wave to them and they wave to us
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but the actual sampling that they do,
they don’t have to be right on top of us.
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They’ll be near us.
They’ll sample on the horizon.
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You can see them on the horizon,
maybe ten miles out, then get five
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miles away, then maybe get close
to a mile or two miles away.
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Really it’s a study of aerosols in general
and that it’s coming from plankton and
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that the biggest plume of plankton in
the world is off the North Atlantic,
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even if you wouldn’t really think that.
And as a general mission in itself, the
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study of it and where they’re trying to
find out and figure out in the research
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of it is fascinating, and you should go
onto the website and read about it!
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Okay, but these are
spotting now, right?
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Yep, those are verified.
Those are concentrations.
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So right here they said
seventeen of them.
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Yeah, Yep.
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Here they had twenty
eight of them.
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So it’s a lot more active than
I thought for this time of year.
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Than that previous….
That was just the sea ice
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All the mates on watch will coordinate
with science to achieve what the ship
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needs to do in order to support the
science whether it’s deployments
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and recoveries of equipment or helping
to determine areas of operations with
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with incoming weather that maybe we have
a large enough area where we’re working.
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We can work two hundred miles over here
and avoid the bad weather—the typhoon
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and then come back and come
over and work another area.
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Or, if the seas might be prohibitive
the wind and seas for the conditions
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we might have to wait a day
for the conditions to abate.
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So we’re working very closely all
together, the captain, science, and
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the mates on watch just to make sure
that we can find the most optimal time
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and way to get things done.
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We’re going to start just south of
the tip of Greenland, Cape Farewell,
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and practically halfway to the Azores,
and then back to Woods Hole.
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But it will all be on a north/south
transect, roughly along zero four
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zero longitude.
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Certianly, and as there are ice patrols,
aerial patrols, ship reports, there
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are general areas of ice reported,
and then we make decisions accordingly.
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But most of the ice is still either fast.
The sea ice boundaries are mostly clear,
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we’re in mostly ice-clear areas where
we’re operating. We may transit through
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areas where there are some known
icebergs and growlers and reported ice.
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If we’re in a feature that’s on the
surface and it’s moving with the
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current we’ll generally try to move
with it. But if we’re trying to stay over
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a feature on the sea floor with an ROV
then we’ll stay within ten meters,
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sometimes a finer point, but it generally
depends on the work we’re doing.