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The hunt for green fluorescein (5/15/09)

Mini-bat gets not batteries

What a fun exercise this has proven to be! It's pretty ambitious to inject a cloud of fluorescein dye in the Pacific ocean and expect to find it again, but it is doable. By applying wind data, drifter pathways, circulation model solutions to a general understanding of how the ocean functions, we have been able to find our dye patch. Not perfectly, mind you. The ocean still holds some of her secrets from us, but her general nature is clear -- thankfully. 

The mini-bat has been our eyes in the water. A little flying-frame, with a set of sensors strapped to it, we've been flying it up and down behind our ship. I once thought such science would be thrilling and glamorous -- like piloting a remote-controlled submarine, flying through the water at breakneck speeds. Alas, once again reality trumps fantasy. The controls for the minibat include 2 buttons -- "up" and "down". Not even a "fire" button to keep things interesting. We push the "up" button when the minibat reaches 20 meters, and "down" when it reaches 1 meter. Rinse, repeat, ad infinitum (well, at least until the batteries die).

Of course I'm exaggerating, it's not that bad, and it's certainly exciting when traces of the dye cloud show up. Nevertheless, the disaffected, irony-obsessed portion of my brain keeps imagining a Jeff Schilling produced Top-Gun style movie trailer, featuring all us science-dork bad-boys flying the minibat to a Kenny Loggins soundtrack. There's Charles, sweaty-browed, the veins bulging from his forearm. His finger poised over the "down" button as the depth indicator approaches 1 meter. Craig looks over his shoulder and says, "hey, careful hotshot. If that minibat breaches the surface the resultant fireball might destroy us all, or at the very least bias our dataset!". Charles snaps, "I got it! I got it, now back off!" Charles finally depresses the button, but the minibat is slow to respond...0.9 meters, 0.6 meters, 0.3 meters, 0.2 meters, 0.1 meters! <big pause> 0.2 meters, and everyone breathes a sigh of relief, the tension in the room finally easing.

Man that would be awesome!