C-PROOF had a busy couple of days, and now has three gliders in the water, two of shich are doing somewhat unique missions, and two of which now have Oxygen sensors for the first time in a while.
Nick worked with Bamfield again to deploy dfo-hal and dfo-marvin from Barkley Sound, crossing the Vancouver Island Shelf. dfo-marvin is headed offshore on the Southern line, and will likely only complete one circuit before we turn-around in about 4 weeks. dfo-hal is enroute to Calvert Island, via Line P. He will drive along LineP until P16, and then return to Calvert Island, making a V-shape transit.
We are particularly excited about these deployments as they both had improved oxygen integrations, designed to overcome a high failure rate we have been having with oxygen sensors. dfo-hal has the same oxygen sensor placement as previous deployments, but augmented by a brace to protect the cable from flexing. This “fix” worked on a previous deployment, so we are optimistic we will get good data this deployment. dfo-marvin has the oxygen sensor deplyed in a new location, outside the cowling and near the tail (see the glider on the right, above). The goal is to avoid the cable being flexed, and ideally to capture some in-air oxygen data during the deployment.
Finally our colleagues at Hakai Institute picked up dfo-k9 at Calvert island, checked him out, recharged him, and redeployed in Fitz Hugh Sound. dfo-k9 is being replaced by dfo-hal on the Calvert Line, so dfo-k9 will head out to P16, and return along Line P, doing the reverse path of dfo-hal.
Fingers crossed that things go well - spring is an important time of year, with restratification, adn setting primary productivity for the coming year.