​As I mentioned in previous posts, we want to use the Trident to recover our hydrophone and camera array from the seafloor. While planning for the next deployment, I took some time to perform some tests and added a pole at the front of the Trident with a carabiner. After few iterations, I found a reasonable design that does not affect too much the maneuverability of the Trident and is easy to put together (and repair in the field). Once hooked to the mooring, the carabiner detaches itself from the pole and is closed using a simple quick release mechanism. I tested it in shallow water (5m) off a dock nearby and it worked pretty well. The real test will be to use it in deeper water, but things look promising so far.

Our instruments are working again and we are planning to deploy the fish array in the next few days, as soon as the weather calms down. Stay tuned...

The weather has been absolutely crazy after we deployed the hydrophone array. A severe wind storm caused the cancellation of multiple ferries, delayed many flights, put down a number of trees (causing 1 fatality) and left about 225,000 homes without power across Southern Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland. Needless to say that I was worried about our mooring, especially with the surface buoy. On the bright side, at least this was a good stress test. If the hydrophone array survived this, I think we could call this deployment a success…

Due to the storm we delayed the recovery trip by a day and went back on the water on Friday morning with Jess and Alex MacGillivray (a good friend and colleague of mine at JASCO) who kindly agreed to come help us. Luckily, the winds had completely died down after the storm and the weather conditions were amazingly good. We couldn’t use the same boat ramp as last time since it was completely blocked off by driftwood that got washed out by the storm (see picture below). Luckily, there is another boat ramp near by that was still accessible. To be honest, at this point, I was prepared to not find the surface buoy and was already thinking about backup plans to get the instruments back. But as we approached the deployment location with the M/V Liber Ero, I could see the orange buoy in the distance. That was a relief… Once at the mooring location, we deployed the Trident to make sure everything was sitting properly on the seafloor and that the lines were not tangled in the PVC frame. It was fairly straightforward to find the hydrophone array on the seafloor. Now that we have more experience with the Trident, I am pretty confident that we will soon be able to deploy the array without a surface buoy and use the Trident to retrieve the instruments. After some heavy lifting, we managed to bring the whole unit back on the boat and go back to shore. Everything looked fine and I was pleased to see that the structure handled very well the harsh conditions of the last few days. Mission accomplished! Time to go back home [...you can imagine myself with a big smile driving my tiny car packed to the roof with all the equipment, plus the big buoy]_

So, that was the good part… now the bad… As soon as I arrived home, I started to download the data. I was excited to see if we had caught any fish on the camera. Unfortunately, my smile and excitement quickly disappeared, and my face progressively turned red. The camera did record video files… but they were all empty. I was devastated. All these efforts to have no video data… Looking at the logs, I saw that all the scripts, battery pack, power management, and buzzer worked well, but there was something wrong with the camera sensor. I am still investigating the exact reason of this failure, but it looks like the camera sensor got damaged during the transit on the boat. As for the acoustics, we collected data on all 6 hydrophones, but one of the channels seems to have issues. Here, again, I am investigating to see how this can get fixed.

To be honest, I was not to keen to write this post and report failure. But I guess it is part of the game. Failure is part of the process. Spending quality time during the Christmas holidays with my loved ones helped me step back and see the positive side of it. Stan, Francis and Rodney were also very supportive. Even though I did not collect good data, this deployment brought to light some issues that need to be fixed to improve the robustness of the system. Overall it was also good to gain experience with the deployment and recovery of the unit. I have more confidence in the structure of the array and in the deployment/recovery process.

Now back to the drawing board to fix all the issues and hopefully we’ll be able to redeploy soon.

Best fishes for 2019!