Mountain with a view

It was a nice and sunny Sunday in May, a great day for a hike in the mountains. We went up in the ranges on the coast.

Down in the valleys the fields and trees were dressed in the light green colors of spring. Up in the mountains, there were still patches of snow, and large areas of brown grass from last year, places were the snow melted just a few days ago.

The view from the top was great; fjords, islands and ocean. The coast is nice. Mountains are great. But there’s nothing like a mountain with an ocean view >:)

(I took the picture today. Can you see the wrecked airplane in the front of the picture? It’s a German plane from the 2^nd World War. In April 1940, the plane was hit by shell fire from a British navy ship, and crashed into the ranges by the fjord, with three men on board. The first died immediately, the second lived for a couple of days. They were buried next to the wrecked plane. The third soldier walked down fro the mountain, in hiding, and was able to re-unite with the German Nazi forces.)

The outermost island

I'm back in the north, and basically in the middle of the ocean, on the outermost populated island in this big archipelago. A weird place for a geophysics conference. I've never been here before. It's a nice place. The island is remote and manage on their own. There are two flights to the mainland per day, and two ferry departures, with four hours transit across the sea.

The population is about 600 people. They export first-class dry-cod for 150.000 dollars per citizen per year, mostly to Italy. Unemployment is zero, it's a self-sustained community. They have 100 fishing boats, one taxi and one church.

Today the weather has been perfect. Sunny, but windy. It's always windy here. Before lunch we went on a boat ride, in a fast 30 foot RIB, out between the small islands and rocks near by, where only sheep, eagles, and half a million Atlantic puffins live. I took some pics of course.

After lunch, the conference started. My talk was the second last before dinner. I presented my new invention, on nonlinear waves, and got good feed back. Apparently no one noticed my somewhat original haircut. Or maybe they're just too polite to say anything.

Tomorrow it's supposed to be a geology field trip, but it may be cancelled. There is only one man who can drive the bus here, and he's on vacation in the south >:)))

We’re ready to start

It’s a beautiful night outside. The sea is calm, no wind. The sky is clearing up, to reveal a glimpse of the midnight sun. I just took a walk outside on the helicopter deck and the bridge wing. The picture above was taken at 1 am, which means astronomical midnight, when corrected for daylight saving time.

This has been a good day. All the seismic cables and the air-guns are deployed. We have tested the guns, and checked that we record data as expected. In the instrument room the geophysical crew is ready: the navigators, the gun controllers, the quality controllers, and the on-board data processors.

Right now we are steaming towards north, before we make a ninety degree turn into the first line. Then we have an hour run-in to straighten the hydrophone cables. It’s not easy to make these turns. The seismic cable spread we are towing behind the ship is 800m (half a mile) wide, 6km (about 4 miles) long, and covers an area almost one and half times the size of Central Park.

The first shot will be fired two hours from now. When I wake up tomorrow morning, we will have some interesting data to look at. Life is good >:)

Like a small world

The ship is like a small world, in two ways. We’re physically isolated from the rest of the world, in the middle of the ocean. A few birds are still following us. They have many hours to fly, to get back to the coast. Looking around there is nothing but ocean to see, in any direction. It’s cool when you can actually see that the Earth is a sphere. The best view is from the bridge.

There are 45 people on board, from 12 different countries. There are Europeans, Americans, Canadians, Russians and Filipinos. In the mess, where we eat, there are four tables; one table for the Filipinos, one for the Russians, one for the Polish, and one for the rest. It’s not because people don't like each other. However, when English is the official working language, people are happy to talk their own language during the meals. Hot meals are served four times a day. I better be careful to not gain weight.

We’re almost done deploying cables now. Then we will deploy and test the seismic source, which will take about one day.