By Kasey Cantwell - NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research
June 5, 2015
Yesterday afternoon we departed San Francisco, California, to head towards the location of our dry dock repair period, Bellingham, Washington. In good weather, Bellingham is about a four-day steam away. However, we have not been in good weather.
Since we left San Francisco, we have been in 10 to 20-foot seas with sustained winds over 40 knots, and gusts up to 53 knots.
With these of conditions, NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer is pitching, or pivoting from bow to stern, heavily making it impossible to map. Our sonars' transducers are mounted on the hull of the ship, so every time our bow comes out of the water, air bubbles entrapped in the water sweep down under the hull and over the transducers. When this happens, we get bad data as the sonars are not able to track the seafloor through all the bubble interference.