Introduction

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R/V Pelagia Cruise SME 117 INDUS
	Diary overview
Friday, 2 January 2009
We've reached the point in the cruise with about 48 hours until we have to leave for port when the Chief Scientist has a stopwatch running on every activity, trying to wring the last few pings from the multibeam sonar, seismic traces, and cm of core from the time that is available. Strangely the last few bytes of data or grains of sand are always going to be the most critical in solving the science problems, at least in discussions with the Captain over how long the transit will take.   Overnight we were tidying up seismic coverage on the shelf and across the Indus Canyon. With time being short, this meant getting as many lines done as possible, swapping equipment around as required, and lots of physical exercise on the fantail. Since the demise of the sparker, we have been using our boomer to try and see a bit deeper beneath the seabed than the Chirp allows; unfortunately the boomer and Chirp really don't play well together, so when one is in the water, the other must be on deck. Hauling the heavy cables on board may be fun once (although some would dispute even that) but gets old very quickly. That is unless you are just watching what looks like a particularly strange form of snake wrestling given that the cables usually prefer to arrange themselves differently from the space designated for them on deck.   As happens surprisingly frequently we arrived on site for the first coring station of the day just as breakfast was ending (so I am told - being on the 12-4 watch, I generally try and sleep until lunch at 1130) and then for the rest of the day cores arrived on deck fast enough that all we could do was put them into the fridge for analysis later. Fortunately we are back to geophysics for the next 36 hours, so will hopefully catch up with the backlog of samples before a final frenzy of coring just before we leave.   In the meantime one of the crew, Arie Jan, has managed to arrange a birthday, thus providing a suitable reason for cream cake at the coffee break, and a (short and quiet) party in the evening. With operations running on board 24 hours a day, there is almost always someone trying to get some sleep.