What a difference a day makes! Well not much actually.
Today the wind is gusting to 60 knots, the air temperature
has dropped to 1°C and we have been heaved to the wind
again! 
A beautiful summer’s day at Crozet!
We did manage to do something yesterday and indeed, it
almost became flat calm for a few hours, but as yet no benthic
samples to speak of! But, SAPS worked well this time and
managed to pump thousands rather than tens of litres of
water and we got some good samples. In the meanwhile, we
have also taken time to do some extensive echo-sounding,
as it turns out that our first proposed coring site (near
the sediment traps) is rather more complicated than we had
first thought. In fact it is sitting in the middle of a
channel about 40 m deep! So we are moving a few miles to
the north to get to flatter territory and deploy our first
megacorer at M5 (easternmost station).
Detailed bathymetry of the M5 Crozet
site. Notice that the contours are very close together at
the southern margin of the area
The ROBIO lander, featured
in a previous blog, was finally launched this afternoon.
We will recover it tomorrow and, all being well, we hope
to have some nice fish photographs to add to the website.
The first deployment of ROBIO at Crozet
Finally, things are looking up weather wise – we
are now promised 3 or 4 good days in a row. Should give
us time to catch up!
