Well our marginal weather conditions ended and Mother Nature rendered the last few days of our SOCAL-BRS project this year ones of just trying to get back safely. We did and while we broke some things fortunately they were just things. We had to duck into Santa Barbara Island and hide in the minuscule wind shadow afforded by that speck of land and then forge north through 30 knot gusts and 6-8 foot seas yesterday (see below) to just get back. We have been blessed on this project with many periods of favorable weather and beautiful seas, but got the other end of the stick this time.
As we come to the end of our field work for this calendar year, I want to say particular thanks to a really amazing crew of dedicated and talented researchers, to all those outside our team from NOAA and other organizations that have helped us succeed, and especially to our program sponsors at the Navy’s Environmental Readiness Program (Living Marine Resources) and the Office of Naval Research. I will post a final summary of our SOCAL-12 accomplishments and status of our data analysis and upcoming publications in the next few days and will provide regular updates as well as they come about. As always, we remain dedicated to an open and transparent process with regard to this program’s goals, actions, and findings, and I encourage anyone to post comments to this blog or to contact me directly at Brandon.Southall@sea-inc.net.
Below is a parting view of the sunrise over Santa Catalina Island – just one of the very different and beautiful places in the amazing Channel Islands.
