Hawaii Cruise
March 13, 2001 to June 2, 2001
Monterey to Hawaii and back
Logbook
March 18, 2001: Leg 1; Day 6
Log Entry: Written 2110 hours (March 17th)
Current position 32 52.29 N, 131 17.49 W
We are steaming towards Hawaii at 9.7 knots and the seawater temperature is getting warmer (currently at 15.1 C). We are in a fog bank right now and the weather reports are looking rather grim. It looks like there is a storm brewing and due to hit us in the next day or so. We had a great day yesterday. We got on station and ran a CTD station from 0700 hours to 0900 hours and then launched the ROV. After the launch, the divers got into the water and had a bluewater dive that was actually in BLUE water! Visibility was over 30 meters and the upper water column was teeming with life. We collected several different types of animals like salps, siphonophores, and ctenophores. We saw a few fish, mostly larval fish hanging around the salps for protection. The ROV dive was also interesting with some distinct zonation of animals and almost nothing below 700 meters. We ended the day working up all the data that we collected.
Sunday (March 18th) is scheduled as a steaming day although we may try and run a CTD station if time and weather permit.
33 44.27N, 134 13.01W
We are cruising along with a planned stop at 13:00 hours to run a CTD station. The water got up to almost 16C but has dropped back down to 15.25 C. We are thinking about going for a bluewater SCUBA dive while they are running a CTD station, we'll see what happens. We are still in a fog bank. It's odd to think that we are out here in the middle of the Pacific blowing a fog horn. Who is out here to hear it? The weather that we were fearing now looks like it is heading north of us so we may just catch the tail end of the storm rather than going through the middle.
