MISHAP owns its name!

Well, the last few days have been a bit disappointing due to a few
MISHAPs... Sorry if we have disappointed our readers by not posting! It
has officially been more than 24 hrs since the last post. Oops! Although
we had a couple successful CTD casts and a couple more good MOCNESS tows,
we have been hampered by mechanical failures… The winch (used to cast
our rosette - on which are mounted our analytical instrumentation) has
broken for the third time!

For those who think chronologically, I'll break this up a bit. Two
nights ago, we had a series of two MOCNESS tows planned. Starting around
midnight, we all signed in with the bridge so that they knew who was
working on the backdeck. Ending a little after 4AM, we finished the final
tow, sorting and processing of samples. We were able to net enough
plankton to submit some to the galley - they served krill pancakes!
Don't ask how they were, I unfortunately missed the experience… From
about 4-9AM, we completed another sweep of ADCP surveys – VERY basically
measures currents by depth via Doppler effect. The whale crew was up and
ready getting the boat settled for visual transects and deployment of small
Zodiac boats. By noon, it was decided to give over the boat to the krill
folks (us!). After a matter of a few CTD casts, we found that the winch
was still broken! Ahh! So, after some frustration, it was decided that we
head to Palmer Station to grab a smaller rosette and some winch replacement
parts. So in the middle of the night last night, we parked a little ways
off of Palmer and some of the marine techs made landfall to upload data and
grab the parts. Since then, we headed down to Flandres Bay, south of the
bays we have studied so far, to do echo sounder surveys.

Currently, we are waiting for sunup to for the whale teams to start.
Hopefully the parts will relieve our instrument woes and we can resume our
CTD measurements! So because of the delays and several changes in plan, we
are facing two problems: we have no pretty pictures for you and not much
to report other than the stark lack of krill in Flandres. Sigh. Oh, and I
have my first match of the official RV/IB N. B. Palmer ping pong tournament
in a couple minutes. It's a good thing I'm fresh and ready for
competition! (I have been up since 7PM yesterday! Hehe)

Attached are pictures of where I've been spending my time lately! (lab
and mess hall)