After a relaxing morning, we walked down to a nearby dock in the afternoon to meet up with Timmy, Chris, Karly, and Sam and travel out to sea. We stopped the boat near the starting waypoint of the mission, lowered the AUV into the water, and watched it dive down into the blue depths of the sea.
The AUV and Valletta in the distance
Hanging out on the boat
The mission consisted of four long dives, so we followed the AUV by approximating when it would resurface at turn points. Though it was nerve-wracking waiting for Vernon to reappear, nothing was more exciting than seeing it again after a 3000m dive.
Diving down
Once the mission was complete, we returned to our apartment and processed the side-scan sonar data using SonarWiz. It was truly amazing to see how clear the images turned out. We plan on making a few changes and continuing our seafloor mapping tomorrow.
Today was a great day not only because the whole team (including the AUV) survived three hours at sea, but also because this was the culmination of many days of debugging and testing. To top it all off, the team ended the day with delicious crepes and pizza.
