If found please return to the NBP

I guess the cruise can't happen if there isn't any excitement.  Really.  We had a great sampling morning and a great equipment prep this afternoon……until our state of the art R.O.V. (remote operated vehicle , called the phantom) broke off it's tether at the iceberg, 30m below the water surface.  Really.  What else could go wrong?  Sheesh.  Now it's time prep for sampling plan B.  nobody has seen the rov by sight yet, so we're dropping a vertical sonar in the water to see if it'll ping the rov and if the rov will ping back.  Talk about losing the one instrument we can't afford to lose.  We're on the search.  All activities (sampling wise) has been halted to search for the rov.  For those who doesn't know about it, it's an underwater instrument that carries HD video recorder and other types of sample collectors.   It would allow us to get to the iceberg and check it out below the water line.  Kinda  like a mars rover, but underwater.  A lot of the shots of underwater nature shows were done with such vehilces.

 

Sigh…..hope for the best .