Introduction

Participants

 

R/V Pelagia Cruise SME 117 INDUS
	Diary overview
Wednesday, 24 December 2008	Hans in the kitchen
Christmas Eve in the Arabian Sea was an eventful day for the team on RV Pelagia. In the small hours of the morning we saw ahead of us the lights of the giant commercial geophysical survey vessel "GeoWave Champion" and its attendant ships shooting a survey right across our path. As luck would have it we were reaching the end of our track in any case and so we diverted towards the southeast after a short radio conversation with them about trying to stay out of each others way.
We had the funny feeling that we might be seeing more of them than we wanted. Their "get out of our way" attitude did not exactly endear them to us on first meeting. Their curious request that we leave the area for the next three weeks (met with a polite "I don't think so") did not help matters of diplomacy either. We are a small but proud team here! When the observer on the Champion asked our naval observer what we were doing in the area they received a stoic "none of your business" reply, which seemed appropriate. After breakfast we had a couple of quite successful coring stops and recovered a great quantity of sediment including an ancient surface that we believe was formed under sub aerial conditions 20,000 yrs ago when the Pakistan Shelf was exposed above sea level during the last ice age. After lunch and feeling tired from our coring work and because the sea was still as flat as a lake for geophysics we put our equipment out again and headed off to the southeast. Imagine our horror to see our old nemesis the GeoWave Champion bearing right towards us on what was almost a collision course, albeit 10 miles away. After a little exchange over the radio we made a polite space between us and we were able to see this monster slide past a little under two miles away, which was at least a good photo opportunity. We'll see if we see them again later. Hopefully not. As I write the waves are flat and the air has a nice warm stillness, such as most of us are not used to on a Christmas Eve.