Day 15! An OBS Swan Song...

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An OBS Swan Song
Sunday, 22 July. Day 15!
After all the watches have been stood, all the proper instruments have been collected and deployed, bathymetry data compiled, there remains only one last thing to do… write about our bittersweet last day at sea.
The 0000-0400 found John and I with a lot of spare time. Part of it I wrote the blog, but then we settled into The Life Aquatic with Bill Murray. It was appropriate for a couple sailors at sea, funny, but really strange. We ate some snacks and just generally chilled out while a vast majority of the crew slept. The watchstanding goals were to survey on our watch and the 0400-0800 watch and when the Jason team and ship’s crew were up and at ‘em, we would do a favor for the scientists over at Woods Hole and pick up one of their instruments. Come morning, as luck would have it, we deployed Jason, but the instrument responded perfectly to the release codes and surfaced on its own. After a 2100 meter ascent we brought our 25th OBS on board. Pretty impressive. I believe I forgot to mention in yesterday’s blog that after the dust settled from all the Jason ops, they had set a record for the most deployments and recoveries in a 24 and 48-hour period. Their team certainly didn’t need the extra practice, but it was fortunate anyway that it released.
From that site we began our transit in and stopped just offshore of Neah Bay which is a beautiful coastal community. On the transit we saw north of 20 humpback whales according to our mammal observers, which was incredible. I wasn’t able to get any shots myself because for as big as they are, they sure don’t like to sit still, however, I pirated some shots from Adrianne and Barry which I will unabashedly use as my own (in case you are wondering, I’ll have pictures of all this stuff up when I have internet and time… soooo… by about halfway through my trip to Italy). We also saw more pacific white-sided dolphins, not as acrobatic as the ones yesterday, but still fascinating each time they play in the ship’s wake. A new species for me today was the bola bola or the ocean sunfish, an absolutely gigantic and weird looking creature that just floats near the top of the surface soaking up the rays. I thought it was dead, but I consulted with our experts and they told me about these strange things. It looked like a giant floating mushroom, off-white in color… let’s call it cream, no, eggshell white and it just sticks it’s pectoral fin in the air and hangs out all day… not a bad gig, bola bola.
When we finally slowed, the sun was beginning to set and we were nearing the coast. We took some absolutely amazing photos while the engineers from Lamont readied their ROV for some testing. From what I’ve gathered it went ok, they found a lobster, so I guess that’s good. Honestly, I was busy soaking up some sunshine and watching the fisherman come in and out of the bay, what a life. When the sun finally set on our last day at sea, we turned it in to shoot some final scenes for our short movie about the trip (which I will invariably post on facebook), and write the blog. As we would say upon mission complete in the Navy: “it’s time to make turns for home.” We will be going through the canal around 0800 or 0830 tomorrow morning and pulling into port in Seattle around 1030. The Chief Scientists were generous enough to ask us to join them for an awesome seafood dinner tomorrow which I can’t wait for! Thanks for reading the past couple weeks, I hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as I’ve enjoyed being out here. Look for the photos and the video coming soon! Curtain call… G’night!

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