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R/V Pelagia Cruise LOCO/IW 2009
	Diary overview
Saturday, 4 July
Surprisingly today, the "on board" diary is written by one of the two French guys on board. So I guess before giving comments about the last two days, I should introduce myself.  Contrary to Louis Gostiaux, former Post-Doctorate at NIOZ with Hans, I have no link with the Institute. My name is Matthieu Mercier and I am a PhD student in Lyon doing small scale (small compare to the ocean for sure) experiments dealing with internal waves. So I am familiar with salt water, but not that much actually. I was trained as a physicist and oceanography has lots of secrets for me. But I am very lucky to be on the Pelagia for this cruise because it gives me opportunities to discover how these waves look like in real. And even if I might say it again before the end the mission, all of this is thanks to the invitation of Hans that I can discover the impressive work the oceanographers from NIOZ can achieve. So thank you Hans.   Contrasting with Edwins last message, the weather has improved a lot and the sun is back again, although it is a little windy and you can see some clouds around. No rain though. The wind helps a lot not to feel the heat when you work outside on deck. This is much better than when we were near the Equator for our first stations with a lot of moorings to be taken in and out. Since we are still in transit in between Brazil and The Canaries, no more moorings or seismic recording are done, but it does not mean there is nothing to do.    Work on deck is cleaning time and trying to make some room around to host the new moorings as Edwin said previously, but also to welcome the barbecue that is planned for next Tuesday! Who said that you can do everything you are used to do during summer when you are on a boat lost in the middle of the Atlantic? A barbecue around the pool is on the list. There is also maintenance of the boat going on for the crew members. But be sure the Pelagia is going on well.  For inside work, several things need to be done. There are the data conversion and checking of all the data we have obtained so far. This is not an easy task since several standards are used with the different software, never the same of course, and when you want to combine them all, it is tricky. When strange features are found with a quick glance at the recordings, a systematic analysis of the possible failures starts, the instruments are checked, the software also. But the quality of the instruments you have developed at NIOZ is such that this is not a very common case. Most of the time, we access the data quickly (of course "quickly" is a subjective notion, some might say it takes a while!) and are delighted by the preliminary results we see (internal waves, turbulent patches, water samples, bathymetry, plankton dynamics: see image of recorded EK-500 echo sounder data, etc).     In the end, I mention the good spirit on board, where I am glad to spend some time with nice fellows, although I do not understand a word of Dutch (you guess here that I am not the one doing the translation, but it is Hans who translates this for me).   Best wishes,   Matthieu