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R/V Pelagia Cruise LOCO/IW 2009
	Diary overview
Thursday, 25 June
Last Sunday, after a short stop in South-America, Fortaleza Brazil to be precise, the Pelagia rushed on to work close to the equatorial Atlantic Ocean. After just over 1.5 days of steaming we started already recovering "moorings", one of the main activities during this cruise. The weather? Nice and warm, although some morning showers at first.   In order to study the variability of deep-ocean waves ("internal waves") that can reach amplitudes of 60 m and more, we have left eight lines of instruments a year and a half ago: five near Brazil and three near the Canary Islands. These so-called moorings exist of a weight of 600 kg, thin steel lines of typical lengths of 500 m and in between acoustic current meters and temperature sensors. An entire mooring measures 4000 m in length and is held upright by large buoys. The buoys are always under water, to avoid them being fished away. Although,.., so far the nearest ship was still 17 miles away.   By now we have already recovered three of such moorings, without any problems.  Instrumentation has worked without flaws, until now. We also deployed two moorings that will be left for about a week, to study in super detail, internal wave motions and breaking above a deep underwater mount. Meanwhile, some use the few spare moments to catch squid using fishing rods near the surface, very few to catch plankton by plunging into buckets water from 1000 m deep. Hans van Haren