Written Monday 17th December 2007
By Margot Foster
A queasy start. How can it be? We are rolling around in the swell because we are dead slow in the water deploying a mooring.
One vomit and two tablets is the scale of my disaster. I should never have boasted about my last trip and my capacity for kippers at breakfast and the joyrides on the bridge in heavy seas.
Scientists excel at providing acronyms. Today’s included ADCP - the Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler. Work on the device delayed our departure by three hours but it’s now tested in the water and providing data to depths of up to500-700m.
I watched the laying out of the PULSE mooring - a trial surface mooring. Three kilometres of line hold data collection equipment at regular intervals before being anchored. Two kilometres were fed out behind the ship before the concrete anchor was tipped in at the target spot. The mooring will be hauled up again to reveal the contents in sediment traps next March. If it’s successful it will become the design model for future moorings.
There are many closed doors in ‘D’ Deck so I’m not alone with my ‘mal de mer’.
I sleep so well in the afternoon I miss tea!
Margot Foster is a journalist currently on board the Australian Aurora Australis, an Australian research vessel currently participating in the Census of Antarctic Marine Life (CAML, IPY project 53). She works with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).
