It has been whirlwind since I arrived in Bermuda on Tuesday at 3pm. Arriving at the Baseline Explorer I had a “todo” list an arm’s length; that list kept going. Working until 11pm on Tuesday we finally got to our accommodations and were up first thing Wednesday morning for another day of lists; ending that day also at 11pm.
When doing an expedition such as the NektonMission.org, you
have a tremendous amount of moving parts.
They don’t always go as smoothly as you would like but eventually they
start to sync. We are not there yet; we
are close. My biggest challenge was
building the “stereo video underwater camera system” SVS for short. The camera housings were built in Australia,
shipped to Florida and I had to have a mount built so it would fit on our
underwater diver propulsion vehicles. I
had a great machinist in Reno and he too the manufacturer specs and my input,
he created a mount and my first task, taking me all the first day and most of
the second was to take the actual housing, mate it to our mount made in Reno
and then get it on the scooter ready for use.
It all worked and I was incredibly pleased.
The next step, which was most of today, 21 July, was to
actually calibrate the camera system underwater. We had quite the time of it. Again, the scientist that sent us the
calibration instructions is in Honduras, the scientist wanting us to do the
diving is here. The software that guides
the calibration, not sure where that was, probably the UK as that is where
NektonMission.org is, at but thanks to
YouTube….there was a calibration video!
Once we watched that, we were off to dive. WAiT…the submarine ops group (remember there
are two 1000’ deep rated submarines on our ship the Baseline Explorer - BEx for
short) wants us to calibrate their SVS camera.
Different system all together but we endeavored as we are all on the
same team. So 5 pm today, we hit the
water with both SVS systems, all set-up.
It basically took the six of us divers, Susan Bird, Kevin Dow, Meredith
Tanguay, Graham Blackmore, Todd Kincaid and myself in some capacity to
accomplish the task and we did! A short
70’ dive but very successful.
It really has been about 72 hours of organization,
coordination, gear assembly, equipment configuration, equipment location and
modification. No one gets to the summit
in one day of a major mountain climb. I
would equate this expedition to one just like Mt. Everest (if you will allow me
to use that cliché). We are not even to
base camp yet but tomorrow we will make our first foray to depth for a 300
feet/90 meter scientific research dive using the SVS camera system.
