On behalf of all the science party, I would like to thank the Captain and crew of the ship for helping us to conduct our science in a safe and efficient manner.  The Endeavor will be retiring from active service in the UNOLS fleet in another year or two so this will likely be the last time I sail on it, but it was nice to get back on board after being on it as a grad student in the mid-90s.

It’s the last day on the RV Endeavor, and as much as we’re excited to escape the bad weather, it’s always bittersweet leaving sea. The past few weeks have flown by, and it’s been an exciting time learning science, and learning about our shipmates. All of us, especially on night shift, have gotten really close, and it’s going to be hard to say goodbye to them on land.

This is Hali Rederer writing my last blog aboard the RV Endeavor, ADEON cruise.  We are heading back to Narragansett, Rhode Island a few days early because of stormy weather and rough seas.

Not all of us are blessed with artistic abilities. In fact, you could easily mistake my stick figures for those drawn by a second grader – no insult intended to any second graders who may be reading. Since I am interested in studying how sound reflects off of different animals, understanding their shape, size, and other internal features is really important.

Another successful lander turnaround

Hi everyone. As you know, my primary role aboard the R/V Endeavor and ADEON cruise 3 has been to refurbish the landers and the equipment they support so they can be redeployed at the next station.

The past several days have been a flurry of activity to finish recovering and deploying the final acoustic landers before the weather gets bad. After successfully deploying our last lander yesterday (!!!) and getting in some last nighttime net tows, we are now in transit back to Narragansett, RI.

Unfortunately, we are ending our cruise a few days early due to some inclement weather in the North Atlantic and will return to port on 15 Nov. While we make our way back to port, these next few days will consist of us getting our supplies packed up, playing board games, and sharing cruise photos!

We arrived at our northernmost station, off the coast of Virginia, in the middle of last night, and since there's some bad weather headed our way, the night shift got right to work doing some net tows for sampling. This site is different from the others in that the waters are much richer. We saw some common dolphin off the starboard side chasing some squid and mahi tuna as we were getting ready to deploy the bongo net.

After an exciting morning of tracking down our last lander, which had experienced a run in with some fishing gear, we were happy to find that it was mostly intact. We were even more surprised to learn that several Chain sharks had made a home of out the lander at the ADEON VAC location.

It has been a wonderful trip so far filled with good weather, bad weather, laughs, and a whole lot of hard work. Everyone has seem to fall into a rhythm which makes it not even seem like hard work. We all are sharing our personal tales at sea, struggles with our undergrad degrees, and the search for the next big move in our careers.