CATAIN lives!

It's always a good day when I open my email to a message from the field. Kharis is in Svalbard right now, so I've been watching my email for updates. She's sent me periodic communications about sample collection, sorting larvae, and life at the research station. Aside from the normal ups-and-downs of field work, everything is going pretty well. Except for one thing: CATAIN. 

CATAIN being lifted out of the fjord by R/V Teisten.
Photo by Kharis Schrage.

We deployed CATAIN on the seafloor in Kongsfjorden last January, and Kharis was tasked with recovering it this trip. She learned how to operate our lab's ROV for the recovery operation. She flew all the way up to Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard. She went out on the Kings Bay research boat, Teisten. And...no dice.

Kongsfjorden is very different in the summer compared to the winter. In the winter, the water is crystal clear, even if it is dark out all day. In the summer, though, the glaciers release turbid water into the fjord. According to Kharis, there were whole patches of the fjord where the water was red. Operating the ROV in this high-turbidity environment proved an extreme challenge because the ROV couldn't see a thing. For Kharis on board Teisten, with just 15 m of water between her and the camera, the turbulent water turned out to be an impossible barrier.  

We talked through different search strategies over Zoom. We weighed our options if we couldn't find CATAIN during her trip. We even considered the possibility that the camera might have been scraped away by sea ice in the last 8 months. 

One of the photos CATAIN captured. Look at the barnacles!

And then it came: the victorious email from Kharis. "It's up!" read the subject line. Kharis's message had very little content - she must have sent the email before even opening CATAIN's housing. In subsequent messages, she told me the camera had worked, the batteries looked barely used, and the data were downloaded to her laptop. I was excited beyond belief. 

By the time CATAIN was recovered, Kharis had only one more day left at the research station. She quickly charged the batteries, sealed CATAIN's housing, and checked its seal by pulling a vacuum. The good news is that deploying equipment in the ocean is always easier than recovering it - just go to the spot, lower it over the side, and you're done. 

CATAIN has been returned to her rightful place on the seafloor, at 15 m in Kongsfjorden. We will be back for one more recovery next spring. I'm very excited to see the data that CATAIN will collect!