It's the day after the second OOI cable landing and the work site behind the dune at the beach manhole in Pacific City looks like nothing ever happened there. (See photo to right.)
UW oceanography graduate students Alden Denny and Monica Riess joined me in staffing an OOI booth for the annual Pacific City Dory Days Festival (photo above and below right). We had the good fortune of being right next door to the Dorymen's Association Fish Fry booth, which meant lunch was deliciously convenient. Despite intermittent rain showers, our display tent was often full of visitors curious to find out about work being done by the big ship they had seen working close to shore over the past several days. From the beach today the TE SubCom Dependable was just a small dot on the horizon north of Haystack Rock, moving slowly westward as it used the seaplow to plow, deploy, and bury the northern segment of the OOI cable.
–Nancy Penrose, OOI Communications Coordinator, University of Washington, in Pacific City, Oregon.