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Sampling of the first phase of CASO was completed as planned by 1800 yesterday evening. We then steamed directly to the polynya moorings to take advantage of a window of calm weather to recover the Pole Compass. The Pole Compass was released from the sea-bed at the eastern polynya mooring site at about midnight and within the hour was on deck and being prepared for re-deployment at the central polynya mooring site. Before re-deployment the Pole Compass must run through some data recording cycles and while waiting for this to happen the ship did east-west passes along the line of the three polynya moorings to calibrate the Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP). This data will also provide a second calibration check for the instruments on the polynya moorings. At about 1030 this morning we left the mooring site and returned westwards to continue the sea-bed sampling for CEAMARC. During the last 24 hrs several pods of killer whales have been spotted and at lunch today we saw and had radio contact with the French research vessel, L'Astrolabe, which crossed our track about 5 Nm ahead of us. It is also part of the CEAMARC Census of Antarctic Marine Life program and reported very heavy sea-ice on our planned sampling transect at longitude 140E. The first trawl for this second phase of CEAMARC went in the water about 20 minutes ago at 1305. Regards, Martin and Sarah.
Map
A map showing Australia and Antarctica. The map shows the journey of one voyage that has occured in the season, with each route highlighted in a distinct colour.