A Busy Year!
The 2010 season began for ROPOS in February with a successful mission aboard John P. Tully to service the VENUS cabled observatory in Saanich Inlet and Georgia Strait. While we commonly operate from the Tully, this was the first time with our mid-depth system on the starboard boat deck. This configuration frees valuable space on the aft deck for observatory platform recovery, maintenance and deployment. The VENUS group had an ambitious expedition plan for a relatively short expedition spanning 5 operational days. With the LARS system onboard and the ROPOS through-frame lift capability, we completed 12 dives (over 60 hours in the water), 6 platform recoveries, 5 platform deployments, as well as the deployment of a 6 km extension cable using ROCLS.
In April there was a week long deployment of the ROPOS 1000 metre system on our favourite little ship, CCGS Vector. The mission was to survey several ocean disposal sites in Georgia Strait and Howe Sound.
In May, ROPOS returned to the open Pacific for the first of two Neptune Canada installation and maintenance cruises scheduled this year. ROPOS recovered and deployed numerous instruments and platforrms at ODP 1029 and 889. At Barkley canyon we visited Wally the Crawler to scrub his little face (camera dome) and blow his nose (methane sensor). The biggest job of the trip was recovery of the Vertical Profiler from Barkley Slope. This required a lift wire from the ships' winch to be lowered to the seabed where ROPOS intervened to connect it to the profiler.
In July we packed up the ROPOS travelling road show and shipped it all to Halifax for six weeks of science aboard CCGS Hudson in the North Atlantic. ROPOS made twenty-seven dives visiting the Gully marine proteceted Area, the Flemish Cap, Orphan Knoll and several other sites in the Gulf of Maine. Numerous unidentified species of coral and sponge were found and sampled. Video of the coral gardens that we found is truly spectacular. CCGS Hudson is nearly 50 years old, designed and built by old-school engineers from a previous era, she is a proper ship with not a flat deck surface anywhere. A good sea boat and a quiet delight to live in.
