Aotearoa has departed from Devonport Naval Base and will stop in Geelong, Australia before continuing to Antarctica.
On route to Australia our first batch of global drifters have been unloaded and stored in the seamanship storeroom which opens onto the quarter deck. Being able to keep them there has been awesome. The Navy dive team helped us carry the drifters down to the storeroom. These drifters are satellite-tracked buoys that measures ocean conditions and relays info back.
We have deployed three drifters so far. The first one went in Saturday.
DST researcher and Navy student Oscar is running the buoys deployment plan. He gives the bridge the positions we are deploying the buoys at, and the bridge sets them as waypoints, so we can get a rough eta for deployment. The bridge then rings us for a 10min warning to position.
The Navy Marine Techs have hunted down a good spot for us to get seawater from. It’s down seven flights of stairs, but the water pressure is really good so we can fill the jerry cans really quick. The seawater is needed for our first eDNA sampling which will be used to help detect the types of cetaceans living in the water.
We went through our first timezone change yesterday at 1900.
I’ve done 7km today just from going up and down the stairs. Which to me seems a little low. It will be more as we go to the bridge more often for the Rutter Ice Navigation install.
- Sara