Life goes on here on the Melville. Due to the bad weather we have had to scrap a couple of stations that were selected as optional at the beginning of this cruise.

Other than that, nothing really to report other than that R/V Maurice Ewing, run by Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, managed to run aground on a coral reef off the Yucatan during a controversial seismic research trip. The collective “doh” resounded around the ship. That news article is a couple of days old, but there hasn’t been any new articles recently. Lamont is remaining rather tight lipped about the incident. Speculation around here is that their skipper got chit-canned on the spot, but nobody has been able to get anything out of their friends aboard the Ewing.

This couldn’t really come at a worse time for them, especially with mouthbreathing environuts like Ben White calling the Ewing “the deathstar of our story” (mid-page) and babbling on about the Ewing’s secret mission to search for oil and kill whales.

“More people gather around us. Soon there are over a dozen. All the men are fishermen. They have heard of this- a little. They have no doubt that the seismic test is really for oil, not just scientific knowledge.”

http://www.sanjuanislander.com/columns/ben-white/yucatan1.shtml

Luckily, there are a few people who see this Ben White nutjob for what he is.

Having just returned from Progresso, I can confirm that Ben White is extemely misguided in his assesment of the impact of the Ewing on fish and marine mamals off the coast of Yucatan. Having talked to the Port Captain at Progresso, the Director of the Yucatan Fisheries Research Lab. fisheries leaders and most of the other people concerned I can assure you that the Ewing and everyone else involved are taking the utmost precautions to avoid any damage to wildlife.
– George Snyder, from http://www.sanjuanislander.com/letters/response/ben-white.shtml

And another letter from the same page:

As a fellow environmentalist, I believe Ben White’s heart is in the right place. Unfortunately his “facts” about the ship the Maurice Ewing and the work is does is full of misinformation.
– Bernice Nadler http://www.sanjuanislander.com/letters/response/ben-white.shtml

The cruise we are on currently has been doing some seismic work similar to the Ewing, albeit with a much smaller air gun rig. We have dedicated marine mammal observers on watch during all seismic operations. They are required to observe for marine mammals for a minimum of 30 minutes before we can start firing the air gun, and remain on watch during daylight hours of operation. At any time, they can call down and suspend seismic operations if they see whales or other marine mammals.

The precautions that the Ewing was required to undertake were even more stringent. They were required to only fire the airguns during daylight hours, and also had small boats and aircraft on the lookout for marine mammals.