Week Four - diver down

     This week has gone by surprisingly fast. We’ve been doing a whole bunch of dives at the stations. All of them this week were to retrieve the seabed CT from a station and replace it with one that was clean and in good working order. We didn’t dive on Monday, but we did go to Pt. Adams (SATURN 03) to clean the pump and thermistor and replace the antenna. On Tuesday we had an early dive at the Sand Island Light station. It was a pretty calm day and the dive went well, but several hours after we got back to MERTS the data started looking weird from the instrument so we decided to go back and dive it again on Wednesday. That dive was also successful and the instrument hasn’t started doing funny things yet.  Today we dove at the CBNC3 station (Cathlamet Bay North Channel). It was a very quick dive and the weather was the best I’ve seen it out on the river. Apparently, good weather doesn’t mean the river isn’t pitch black at 30ft though. I’m a little dubious about diving the stations as I haven’t ever been diving in water with ½ ft visibility, but I guess it’ll be another a learning experience right? After diving CBNC3 we dropped by Rice Island to dismantle a repeater station we no longer needed. We use repeaters to amplify the information from the station radios so that we can receive them at MERTS.
     One really good thing that happened this week was that I finally got to attend one of Elizabeth Furse’s Great Tribal Leaders classes. I’ve managed to miss the first two classes, but the VTC decided to work this week. It was interesting to hear about the various Indian organizations and the law on reservations, but while VTCs are important as a method of data transfer, they are perhaps not the ideal way for me to learn.  
     My project is going well. I’ve been trying to pin down a more definitive direction for it just so I can get a handle on what it is I’m trying to achieve. I talked to my senior scientist about it, which helped, so I think I’m on track. Although, I am a little concerned about what I’ll say in the “mid-term” presentation. I think I’ll figure it out though.