Sept. 17, 2005
Jim Cowen

Dawn brought an incredibly beautiful, flat calm conditions that lasted all day, and well into the evening. In fact, as the sun set beautifully in the west, there was a huge, bright rainbow set off by distant dark clouds to the east. Incredibly, a group of porpoises appeared swimming and jumping directly under the rainbow. We can also add a number of Mola molas (ocean sunfish) to our list of animals that we have observed during this cruise. These are very large, lazy fish that spend much of their time floating at or near the sea surface; this morning we saw a large one (~5 feet long by ~4 feet deep) with a very old, bumpy looking head. Today’s Alvin dive, back to 1026B, went well. The dive team again verified that there was no flow at the main sampling port; but they found strong flow from the several small-bore lines intended for the ‘Osmosamplers’. Our collaborative combo-sampler devised the night before, which ustilized the osmosampler ports worked well.