With a happy change in weather that made for calmer seas (and in turn calmer stomachs), all those aboard returned to their work with jubilation.

Depending on your perspective, the scientific crew was up late Tuesday night or very early Wednesday morning (11:30 PM – 4:30 AM) for a successful CTD water column collection at the U166 shipwreck.  Now, having had some practice with their experiments in the laboratory spaces aboard the R/V Pelican, the scientific crew was working well together, instinctually reacting to their fellow researchers responses….basically, what we like to refer to as the “dance.”  This is when verbal communication is limited and scientific procedure becomes second nature.

Up at 6 AM, only a few hours later, the crew lead a series of multi-corer deployments for sediment collection at the Viosca Knoll shipwreck.  Multiple attempts were unsuccessful, however, even after several procedural and mechanical adjustments.  The CTD collection went smoothly though, continuing Dr. Lisa Fitzgerald and Dr. Preston Fulmer’s experiments of growing microbial life from seawater.

Dr. Peter Wu, our resident physicist, shared the group’s frustration with the lack of sediment collected.  However, he remains positive because he knows that in research many experiments fail, but that is never any reason to stop searching for a solution.

This afternoon we made our way to the third site of the day, the Anona shipwreck. CTD water samples were collected again and kept at least part of the scientific crew up again, “dancing” late into the night.