The winds are down to 30 knots now and we are hoping that they will continue to drop so that we can dive in 5 hours. The weather is slowing us down quite a bit as we had hoped to be diving right now. We did have a fire and boat drill yesterday and from the photos you can see that this is, as always, an enjoyable occasion. Francisco Chavez was 'volunteered' to be the one to try on the immersion suit as he was one of two who forgot his life jacket for the drill. Ginger is also measuring aluminum as well as iron.
Preliminary results indicate very little of either metal.
Kevin Raskoff spending some time working on a manuscript while we wait to get to our next ROV station. This is part of the instrumentation that processes the water samples coming in from the towfish. Ginger Elrod and Steve Fitzwater work for Ken Johnson and are interested in measuring the trace metals in the seawater, primarily iron. They use a towfish behind the boat and pump water continuously from the surface waters into this chemistry setup. We collected a siphonophore yesterday and Steve sketched the sample, photographed his sketches and is sending the images off to an expert for assistance in identification.