NFSI Community Update - March-June 2023
Dear Friends,
We moved to sending out a quarterly instead of a monthly update, and thus a few months of silence on our end. But they have been a very busy few months! The second long-term test of four of our OBS instruments offshore the island of Ischia, near Naples, Italy that started on February 11, 2023, was completed in the second half of May. Testing a few different gain settings for the hydrophones, and the instruments in general, turned out to be fruitful. At this point we feel confident regarding the needed built-in gain settings and the overall instrument performance. We also hired John Thibodeau, a new Marine Instrument Technologist. He started on April 1, 2023, and his hire has resulted in significant expansion of skills and knowledge at the NFSI. Thirty-nine people attended the 2nd NFSI Workshop in Marine Seismology held May 22-26, 2023, in Halifax. Thank you for your participation, enthusiasm, effort, and feedback that we will use to improve future workshops. We are working hard with Guralp to refit the instruments and prepare for the upcoming 2023 surveys. The first of the five survey legs of Canada’s west coast project is scheduled for Oct. 4-28, and the Hikurangi survey offshore New Zealand for Nov. 25 to Dec. 1. The most immediate, Baffin Bay and Laurentian Seaway surveys have not yet been scheduled. For the Baffin Bay survey, we are waiting to hear the results of the ship procurement process that DRDC is carrying out, and the Laurentian Seaway survey is dependent on the scheduling of the Baffin Bay survey. We are hopeful that at least one of these two surveys will materialize in the immediate future. Meantime, we are finalizing arrangements to receive 40 new instruments in the next couple of months, 20 of which will be sent directly to New Zealand and 20 to Halifax.
Best,
Mladen and Graeme
P.S. Below are several photos from the end of the May workshop. Top left: Group photo in the NFSI lab with the BOBS; Top right: BOBS on the deck while steaming to the field school site; Middle left: Boat and BOBS on the deck before departure for offshore training; Middle right: Training and data analysis in the lab; Bottom left: Student/post-doc group that won the proposal writing and presentation competition showing their awards; Bottom right: Dinner at the Lightfoot and Wolfville Winery.
