By Bradley W. Barr, Mission Coordinator, NOAA Office of National Marine Sanctuaries, Maritime Heritage Program
September 19, 2019
Inevitably, weather is likely to get in the way of the “best laid plans” of any at-sea mission, and ours is no exception. As a result of some storms heading toward New England, we have relocated to the more sheltered waters of Cape Cod Bay in Massachusetts, just south of the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary and the busy waters of the approaches to The Port of Boston.
While we now need to revisit our survey plan to fit in what mapping we can into the remaining days available, our work has been progressing well to this point in the mission and we should (with some careful prioritizing of areas we had planned to visit) be able to accommodate the delay. The downtime provided by this weather delay offers the opportunity to do some needed maintenance of the survey equipment to be sure we are ready to resume mapping when the weather breaks.