USGS CMG E-2-94-NC Metadata

After starting out in 20 foot seas with 30 knots of wind,
Herman/Chin and Co. have settled into a coring routine. As of yesterday
afternoon the winds were still around 25 to 30 knots but the seas were down
to 5-6 feet. They have not done any sidescan or camera work as of yet. I
receive updates twice a day, once around 9 am and then again around 4 pm.

Update as of 11/02/94 0800 hrs: wind 30 kts gusts to 40, seas 10-14
feet, unable to conduct testing, except for profiling, due to adverse weather
conditions. Waiting for break in weather pattern. Should break no later than
tomorrow.

11/02/94 1615 hours, 37 degrees 25.6 min north 123 degrees 14.7 min
west wind 35-40 knots from the nw seas 20 plus feet skys are clear and
visibility good.  Continuing with profiling. Weather continues to be a problem
for testing. Still waiting for a break in weather pattern.

11/04/94 0800 hours Just passed under Golden Gate bridge. Testing
has been completed. ETA Redwood City 1030-1100 hours this morning.

All of you have been following the cruise of the Pacific Escort
through Steve Wallace's e-mail accounts -- well we made it back safe and
sound! The purpose of the cruise was to characterize a reference site as part
of the EPA deep-ocean dumpsite project. Yes we exerienced 40 knot winds and 20
foot seas. Thank goodness the cruise was only scheduled for 6 days and not a
month! You know, for the past several years I have sat in duck blinds during
this time of the year and experienced nothing but blue skies. The first season
I'm not duck hunting and what happens! I think that Kaye Kinoshita was the only
non-green person on board as she calmly navigated us through the worst of it
(personally I was wishing that a rogue wave would put me out of my misery that
first day out). We did manage, however, to get a fair share of our very
ambitious workload done. We collected 7 excellent cores using Mike Bothnar's
Slow Corer. This is a hydraulically dampened corer that preserves the
water-sediment interface. This is the first time the apparatus has been used
in the deep ocean (in the past Mike only used in Boston Harbor/Mass Bay). Mike
learned alot about improving the core for such open ocean work. (Mike actually
told me that he's glad that he came on the cruise and enjoyed working with all
of us! I guess it must be worse working in the Altantic in February!). Anyhow,
the Slow Corer worked beautifully. We occupied several other sampling sites
and had no recovery. This didn't surprise us as sediment cover was very thin
to unresolvable on the acoustic records. We covered the study area and got
good representative samples -- this was the priority task of the cruise for
EPA. We also collected some sidescan data with the EG&G system. We had planned
a mosaic but weather didn't leave us the time. We did run representative lines
across the study area. The new cage that we had built for the EG&G fish worked
very well. Unfortunately, the SeaMac winch couldn't handle the cage in the
heavy sea states and we had to use the "naked" fish with a resultant decrease
in the data quality. We have plenty of high-resolution subbottom data using
the ODEC system and will be able to acoustically characterize the study site
very well. We weren't able to deploy the camera sled (as we concentrated our
time on sampling and sidescan in the weather windows available to us) although
Hank was ready when needed (we do have a camera transect through the area from
a previous cruise). Ironically, the camera sled was first on the agenda and
ready to go when we reached the study area, but weather didn't permit us to
launch it. All-in-all, we came away with a good data set for our EPA
client/partner.

The GIS whiz-kids -- Norm Maher and Mike Hamer -- produced a set of
labor-intensive maps at sea that are ready to go in the report. We also used
the new digital camera to good effect.

My thanks to our scientific and support crew. Everyone worked hard (at times
above and beyond the call of duty) through a very difficult cruise. Spirits
remained high throughout the cruise and everyone pulled together to make the
cruise a success.  The freezer full of Hagen Daas ice cream didn't seem to
hurt team morale one bit either!

This was the first real scientific cruise for the Pacific Escort (sister ship
of the Lee). The captain and ship's crew were extremely cooperative and wanted
very much to make it a successful cruise. Everything was done with a smile.

MarFac did yeoman work in mobilizing and demobing for this cruise. My thanks to
everyone involved!

This hard work by everyone has resulted in building a high degree of trust with
the other agencies.

Cruise Report exists at Woods Hole