wednesday is today, i am pretty sure

we are progressing quite successfully. we have surveyed our first OBS
(ocean bottom seismometer) site and it looks to be fine. i have
prepared an 'indesign' document that we will use to create OBS site
reports. these reports will be our way to let the others (who are
making the million dollar decisions) know of the conditions of any
potential OBS site. this will allow us to have a discussion regarding
the suitability of any of these sites. we have ~144 OBS sites and i
have prepared a sheet for each one. i also have a spreadsheet with
data to enter for each site (lat/long, our interpretation of site
suitability, alternative site locations, etc.). once we have maps and
sub-bottom profiles to place in them, we will send them out for review.

we also just passed over the second OBS site and think it is probably
not suitable for OBS deployment as it is in the center of a large
submarine channel. this channel is a place where turbidity currents
might (probably) travel following a large earthquake. if this were to
happen, the OBS could be translocated by the current and it would
either .1. make it difficult to recover because we would not be able
to locate it or .2. change how its position is, so data before and
after the movement could not be compared. there are many other aspects
that i will not cover here.

we noticed this and mr romsos and myself made a rapid decision about
where we needed to adjust our survey in order to make sure we had
enough bathymetric/sub-surface information to consider an alternate
site.

also, the Cascadia Initiative is the main reason we are at sea. so,
here is a link to the website that covers the workshop i attended
where we developed the plan to deploy these OBSs.
http://www.oceanleadership.org/2010/nsf-cascadia-initiative-workshop/

there is a final report that summarizes the workshop here:
http://www.oceanleadership.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/CI_Workshop-Report_Final.pdf

and finally, here are the guidelines we are using to site the OBSs:
http://www.oceanleadership.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/Guidelines_for_Cascadia_OBS_Deployments_v2.pdf