This morning, a baffling rumor began circulating: it seems that, after a day, we are in fact a day behind. Besides the mathematical questions such a conclusion might raise, even more profoundly inexplicable is the fact that the situation seems remarkably mundane. We're a day behind, and we still keep the same watches and follow the same protocols. I wonder, given our track record, whether by our twelfth and final day we will be twelve days behind? Perhaps, though, our already spectacular weather conditions will improve, our efficiency will increase more than tenfold, and we will arrive only two days late. It is, I think, a valid question, but only in the same baffling context from which the rumor was born.
Of course, I speak (primarily) in jest, although our fantastic weather, friendly crew, excellent food have not been uninterrupted by technical issues. The last 24 hours (indeed, nearly two-thirds) of our multibeam bathymetry data have been compromised by a false stairstepping effect introduced as a relic of the equipment's transmission sectors. Think of an equilateral triangle, point up, which is divided into eight equal sections with dividers converging at the upper point. Each division represents a transmission sector, and each is transmitted from a single source on the boat (represented by that upper point). Our problem occurs at the divisions of each of these sectors...the leftmost edge of one sector, for example, returns a depth that is offset by a constant value from the rightmost edge of the sector to the left of the first (close your eyes and visualize). The problem is less of an issue here, where our data are merely an addition to the relative plethora of bathymetric data in this area compared to our destination south of Panama.
We've all largely adjusted to life on the ship: meal times have become more intuitive, more of the ship has been explored (a tour of the engine room is supposedly in the works), and we are beginning to work our watches more independently. So far, life is interesting and exhausting...however I reserve final judgement for the flight attendants on my way home, who will almost certainly not re-transmit my almost certain oncoming contempt for not only oceanography, but science in general. Okay, okay, not true: I find bathymetry and magnetic anomalies perhaps awkwardly enthralling.
Brad Peters
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