ROPOS deployment

These pictures are from ROPOS getting deploying at 0800 this morning. I haven’t seen it on this cruise yet, but I really enjoyed seeing the ROV Jason get deployed/come back to the ship last year at night. The lights on the ROV are so strong that even if the ROV comes to the surface a distance from the ship, you can still see it shining through the water. After ROPOS gets to a certain depth, the ROPOS team adds a bunch of float objects to the cable that connects the ROV to the ship. These help to ease the effects of surface wave action on the vehicle when it’s on the sea floor. It takes over an hour for ROPOS to reach the sea floor at a depth here at Axial Seamount of roughly 1500 meters. The transit through the water column is often uneventful with cameras that look like they’re filming a snowing winter sky, but sometimes you’ll get a glimpse of a jellyfish or fish on the way down.