The Earth Day mooring kept us secure all night. Our science goals today are to keep working on methods, practice using and deploying the sound devices and hydrophones, and hopefully encounter actual whales for recording data.We practiced using the acoustic fish tags and saw how far we could detect them off Lime Kiln. The furthest distance was around a quarter of a nautical mile. We used the high frequency hydrophone to record the bleeps from the tags (pings). The raw data from these tests was loaded in a new folder titled with today’s date.
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It’s cold in that water.
All of our students have to complete the swim test before they can sail on the Gato Verde. It almost always makes the students nervous. Of course it happens just days before they sail (many of them for the first time), so it gets wrapped up in the mind with “what if’s” and “what’s going to happen”. Always, every one makes it just fine and with an increased sense of not wanting to do that on accident. We come away knowing that they’ll be able to take a few swimming strokes in the cold water.
Here’s what Dr. Val Veirs wrote about the plunge: “A few minutes after our ‘cold plunge’ in the waters off the Friday Harbor Labs’ dock, snow came spitting from the grey clouds above. But, all of us are now warm and dry and pretty pleased with ourselves. And, we now really know how cold that water is and we really, really won’t fall in during our weeks at sea!”
Dr. Veirs and Dr. Woods joined the students in the plunge (as they have with each program), so it was truly a team experience.
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