Morgan: Departure 7/18

(posted 12 hours behind, due to lack of internet connection)

Today we are saying bon voyage to the lovely city of Trapani, Sicily. After a few days at port, studying the first few chapters of our text, learning about side and sector scan sonar and a little sightseeing, we are all eager to get another leg of this journey going!!

The Captain and I went over our float plan. Once we leave Porto de Trapani, we sail up the north side of Sicily, untill we reach the Messina Straights. We will cruise through a small waterway and head east/northeast. As we pass the heel of Italia (Italy) we will continue on our coarse straight to Abania. Here we will visit Saranda, Vlorë, 100 nautical miles from Saranda and Sazan, which is to the west of Vlorë. However, we may stay in Albania longer than anticipated, due to our AUV having to be repaired prior to this trip and shipped. Hopefully we will be meeting the AUV soon after we arrive in Albania.

A rough detail of our travel plan.  Courtesy Emily Kovacs

Underway, we will study the software programs for operating the AUV, while we take missions, which collect data using side scan sonar. Then we will look at our results of the sonar survey. If we find any targets, they become targets of interest and then we either send a diver down to check it out or an ROV. An AUV stands for autonomous underwater vechicle, and is basically an unmanned vessel used to survey underwater sites for natural objects such as bottom composition, rocks, and other organics and unnatural objects such as vechicles, trash, pipelines, oil rigs and shipwrecks. An ROV stands for Remotely Opporated Vechicle , a robot that is opperated by someone on the ship and is used to decend to depths a diver may not be able to go to. ROV's can take real time images of the target of interest.