Brewer Expedition
August 10 - August 17, 2006

August 10, 2006
Departure

The Western Flyer set sail at 7:00am this morning, leaving Newport on a 26-hour steam up to Barkley Canyon, off of Vancouver in British Columbia. With relatively calm seas and fairly sunny weather, it looks as though the trip north will be pleasant and uneventful. The science teams onboard are excited by these favorable conditions, especially in comparison to the horrible weather experienced on the previous leg of this Northward journey by the Clague group.

The Newport Bridge

DORISS II (Deep Ocean In Situ Spectrometer) and other hydrate collection and analysis equipment was loaded onto a truck this past weekend and on Monday was driven 14 hours from Moss Landing to Newport, Oregon by Peter Walz and Edward Peltzer. Tuesday and Wednesday were spent unloading the truck and testing DORISS, PUP (Precision Underwater Positioner), and various other hydrate sampling and data-collecting ROV attachments.


Survival Suits

Today, the fully assembled science crew went through the standard safety orientation, including everybody's favorite portion - donning of the survival "Gumby" suits. The rest of the day was spent in ROV dive preparation and further calibration of all instrumentation. Tomorrow will be the first dive and our first glimpse at the exposed hydrate ridge.


The Brewer Hydrate Team: (from left to right) Dendy Sloan, Edward Peltzer, Peter Brewer, Rachel Dunk, Keith Hester, Jonathan Scholl (Missing Peter Walz and Bill Kirkwood)


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