Today we returned to the Napier port. We were pleased to have a very successful voyage, with 34 out of 35 ocean bottom instruments retrieved, and 100% recovery of ocean bottom seismometers and pressure sensors. In the next months and years we will be busy analyzing the data to learn more about earthquakes, plate… Read More

Greetings from the final stages of the HOBITSS cruise. My name is Laura Wallace, and I am a Research Scientist from the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics. I have been studying slow slip event processes on the Hikurangi subduction zone for over a decade, mostly using land-based measurements with Global Positioning System (GPS) data… Read More

Last night we towed a buoy behind the ship to make GPS-Acoustic measurements. Here is a description of the method from Kido et al., Geophysical Research Letters, 2011: “The GPS/acoustic technique, which was proposed and developed by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography [Spiess , 1985], consists of two essential components: the kinematic GPS of a surface… Read More

We had to temporarily suspend our instrument recovery operations for a day while waiting for a storm to pass. This video shows the waves we rode the past few days. The first view is from 23 June with 4-5 meter swells, the second view is from 24 June when the wind started to pick up, and the last view is from yesterday when the… Read More

In addition to the safety induction we had before leaving Napier, we are all required to try on an immersion suit. These suits, also called Gumby suits, are designed to prevent hypothermia in the event that a person ends up in the water. Since they are difficult to put on, all members of the science… Read More

Here are a few photos from around the ship. Seismometer retrievals and deployments have continued to go forward as wind and swell cooperate.… Read More

Hi my name is Tom Wilson, I am a postgraduate geophysics student at Victoria University of Wellington (VUW). Early this year I received an email recruiting a kiwi postgraduate geophysics student to help out with the HOBITSS project. I instantly replied expressing my interest, and to my delight I was accepted. I was stoked, its… Read More

The sea state has picked up a bit, so the rate of deployments/recoveries has slowed. It is good that we got so much done during the first 48 hours of the cruise. We picked up 4 out of the 5 shallowest seafloor pressure recorders, which is important as calm seas are needed for that work.… Read More

The video linked below shows the recovery process for an ocean bottom seismometer and absolute pressure gauge from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University in New York. Click here. Once the instrument is recovered, it needs to be washed and disassembled in order to retrieve the data.… Read More

Guest post from Teddy K: Winter Solstice, Sunday 21 June 06:50 local, 38S. 178E. Last vestiges of NY time zone. Works out well though, 07:30 we will start to pick up the first of 5 Lamont TRM/BPR’s. (Smaller version of the big steel hulks we have worked on). Two Texas BPR’s, (Bottom Pressure Recorders), are… Read More