BUBBLES is an acronym for some combination of the words Bubbles the Underwater Undersea Blue Bathymetric Basal Buoyant Little Liquid Exploration Submersible or Submarine.

Bubble was previously deployed in a hot-tub and in Younger Lagoon, Santa Cruz, CA, as test sites. Recently Bubbles went swimming under the ice-covered Silver Lake near Kirkwood, CA. Due to the late season, we could not walk on the ice and the shore-based deployment was complicated by the shallow waters. Nevertheless, she again proved to be liquid-worthy, and spent some time swimming in the shallow waters with some fish.

Bubbles heading under the ice. Photo by E. Lynne Harden

Bubbles operations. Photo by E. Lynne Harden

Bubbles was built by Ken Mankoff and E. Lynne Harden.

If you want to read about the trip you can do so here or by clicking on the LMG09-09 tag to the right.

If you were on the ship here is a GPX file so you can geotag your own photos.

Other whale news I have recently come across: The Australian Antarctic Division has just performed an aerial survey of Whales in the Southern Ocean. Perhaps they saw some of the same ones I saw.

And National Geographic has a very nice Blue Whale infographic website (including how it compares to the Minke Whales in size and weight). Click around there to learn all about their weight, size, anatomy, behavior, and threats to their health and livelyhood.

I apologize my last post (More on Sextants) had a typo. 0.18 nm does convert to 333 m, but then I switched to 320 m for some reason.
 
If doing the math with your students, I suggest changing all 333 m to 320 m, (that way the 10 m offset to 310 m makes sense). Therefore, if the radar was 320 m away, it would have read 0.173 nm, not 0.18 nm.

Yesterday we excited the ice (on the Southern side) into a polynya in the Pine Island Bay. The water turned from a clear dark blue to green. We are sailing through the most biologically productive ocean on the planet. I’m not sure but the seas here might have even more life than a rainforest. And it stinks.
 
The smell is subtle inside, but when you are working outside or with the doors open there is a strong smell of rotting vegetables.
 
In other news, land ho! We still cannot see the mainland but have passed some small islands. The islands are on the maps from satellites, but we are charting new waters and making our bathymetry maps as we go. We should see the continent (or at least the ice sheet covering the continent) within a day or two depending on our meandering path.
 
Current location: lat:-74.104 lon:-105.423
Current Temperature: -1.3C Air, 1.2C Water
Wildlife today: Billions of diatoms one Minke whale and a seal.