The ISIIS crisis

by Jessica Luo, on

The preparation of the VISUFRONT cruise, the main research action of this year's PUF program, has been an uphill battle the entire way. Perhaps we should rename this cruise "The ISIIS crisis: a study of Murphy's Law," because nearly everything that could have gone wrong has gone wrong. To mark the battles that we have had along the way, here we go:

  1. The In Situ Ichthyoplankton Imaging System (ISIIS), the main instrument to be used on our cruise, was shipped from Miami during the first week of June by freight, and was supposed to arrive in France on July 5, and at the latest by July 12, way in advance for our July 18 start date. On July 11, we find out that ISIIS missed its transfer upon arrival in the Mediterranean and would be stuck in Algeciras, Southern Spain, for at least a week. We wouldn't expect it in Nice until July 19 at the earliest. There were no other solutions available for shipping ISIIS for an earlier arrival.
  2. The Underwater Video Profiler (UVP) that we were supposed to be using broke down. It would not be repaired in time for the cruise. In the several years that UVP5 has been in existence, it has not broken down even one time. I guess there must be a first time for everything. We looked into getting a replacement UVP from Marseille, but that took time to secure and someone to go fetch it from Marseille (3 hours away from Nice).
  3. The glider that was dedicated to VISUFRONT also broke down. A new one was being set up by someone who later called in sick. The glider would be ready for the cruise but would not be released in advance of the cruise as we had planned. There is another glider in the water at the moment, so we will have some preliminary data, but not at the temporal resolution we were expecting. This complicates sampling planning because we need to know where the front is located.
  4. Annalisa Griffa's ARGO float would not be usable during VISUFRONT. However, another similar float developed in Villefranche can be deployed, so we would not lose that aspect of the cruise.

This was all happening the week before the cruise was supposed to start. The University of Miami / RSMAS crew all arrived within a day of each other, but from very different locations. Cedric Guigand arrived in Villefranche-sur-Mer from the North of France on Monday, July 15, and then Bob Cowen from Oregon and Jessica Luo from Miami flew into Nice on July 16.

Fortunately for us, Fabien Lombard was already making a trip to Marseilles for another purpose and picked up their UVP for the VISUFRONT cruise, arriving back in Villefranche on the evening of Wednesday, July 17. Also, according to our super freight ship tracker, ISIIS has left Spain and was on its way to France. Things are looking up… For the moment.