Dear Friends,
From our colleagues at the Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC), we learned that we will not be able use the Harry DeWolf-Class Arctic Patrol Vessels this summer for our Baffin Bay deployment. However, together with DRDC, we are looking into chartering an industry vessel to do this work, which led us this past week to visit Leeway Marine. We are currently evaluating if their ship Leeway Odyssey is suitable for this deployment, as well as for the recovery of the 9 remaining BOBS on the Laurentian Fan. If the Odyssey ends up being suitable, this will be highly convenient for us as Leeway Marine operates from COVE where our BOBS will be stored, which is right on the water with beautiful new docks.
In preparation for future deployments, we purchased 50 burnwires and received 40 sets of XEOS recovery devices bringing the number of received sets of recovery devices to 80. We also received the Sonardyne Ranger 2 GyroUSBL system for positioning and communicating acoustically with instruments on the seafloor. This is a complex piece of kit which will take some training to learn to use, but we hope to test it this summer during the Baffin Bay deployment.
Mladen and Graeme