Drilling the Mid-Atlantic Ridge

Cruise diary


Day 11: Thursday 15 March
Sampling area: TOBI survey
Position at midnight: 13º18N, 45º00W


Today we continued working our way along our first line of the TOBI survey. Just after lunchtime we reached the end of the line and began our first turn whilst towing TOBI. This is a difficult task, similar to towing a trailer behind a car with the added complication of strong winds and moving water! Our expert crew managed to navigate this without difficulty and by 21:00GMT we were on our second TOBI track.

Whilst we are conducting this TOBI survey all the watch keepers are required to record and plot both the ships position and TOBI’s position every half an hour. By doing this we can use our bathymetric map (a map of the topography of the seafloor) to make sure that TOBI is flying above any potential seamounts or peaks. As our TOBI survey is going to last for over a week, we are going to use this time to introduce you all to the crew and technical support staff, without who this cruise would not be possible, check in tomorrow for our first victim!!!!

   
   
The TOBI monitors High resoltuion depth profile Depth