Time is really flying past, in part because our lab group has been so busy. The major goals of yesterday and today's dives were to recover two cameras that had been left on the sea floor on previous cruises. These cameras were taking time lapse pictures of patches of tube worms so the biologists can study how these colonies change over time. Leaving cameras at the bottom of the sea is no easy task. They need to be packed in water-tight pressure cases that can withstand the pressure of 2.5 km of water pressing down on them.
Sea water is also a very corrosive substance and can disintegrate many materials.
One camera seems to have weathered its stay on the sea floor, while the other does not seem to have done so well. Its cables appear to be flooded and electrically fried. But this is the way of experiments. Placing equipment on the sea floor is always a risky business. In the water lab things are going well.