We spent a long but successful night climbing up Southern Hydrate Ridge as we surveyed a 10 km cable route that will connect Primary Node 1B to instrumentation located at the summit. As expected, the entirely sedimented route will be very suitable for the cable that will need to be buried a meter deep to protect it from fishing activity that is common near the site.
After completing the cable route survey, we revisited Einstein’s Grotto, identified during VISIONS’11 to be an ideal site to instrument for the characterization of an active methane seep site. This site will be instrumented with a digital still camera, mass spectrometer, fluid sampler, seismometers, an OSMO sampler, and current meter. It has only been two years since we visited this site and we were quite surprised by the changes that have taken place in that short time. These changes, though, highlight the need for long-term timeseries measurements with the Ocean Observatories Initiative at Hydrate Ridge so that we may better understand how these sytems evolve through time.