Wiebe's hand-written notes from MOCNESS ship log book regarding tapes, etc.                                                         
8/8/03 NJC

Ship speed ~2 knots for all tows
Both ¼" and 9-track tape-recorded all tows.

EN11	July 1977

M77	Ring 'Bob' center, 1010m, night.  Good launch.  Tape recorder [1/4"] with mic [?].  New 
O2 membrane for test on 27 July; using hydrowinch with ~ 3/8" diameter wire. Net response (NR) 
did not work for net3 clode/n4 open or for n4 close/n5 open but it did for n5 close/n6 open.  
Bucket 2 cracked on bottom - possible loss of some animals.  Looks like a reasonably good tow.  
Several stops and starts as winch pulled wire in to adjust level wind and to straighten out wire on 
drum.  Flow calibration = 46m/count. (lots of Sargassum weed seen passing by ship during tow)

M78	Ring 'Bob' center, 1000m, day (5-7:30pm).  Cloudy & rainy.  Steaming into the wind and 
current.  1723 - sharp drop off in angle at 400m down to 10 degrees.  Asked for speed increase to 
3.0 kts.  Wire rate in 30m/min.  No NR on n2 open. Migration: at start of tow scattering layers at 
475m 375m, 225m but at 1850 layer moving up situated at 425m, 310m, 150m.  All nets tripped, 
samples look good.  Spurious NR's during n7 open.   Note: conductivity did some odd jumps 
on hauling net in  - went bad at ~400m.  (lots of Sargassum weed seen passing by ship during 
tow)

M79	Sargasso west of ring 'Bob', 1000m, day.  Bright sunny day with low broken stratus 
around.  Sargassum weed in low abundance around ship during tow.  Sea choppy with white 
caps.  Played around with winch for very long time at bottom of tow.  Coming in all nets 
opened/closed but on uptrace for n3, NR did not work.  Near surface, we did get some spurious 
NR's.  Had some trouble with ship's speed and winch speed toward end of haul.  N2 has small 
holes near cod-end (on Dacron sleeve)- this was repaired before next tow.

M80	Sargasso west of ring 'Bob', 1010m, night.  Launch went smoothly.  Bright full moonlight 
on sea surface broken up by clouds.  Full moon up for entire tow.  Sargassum weed not very 
abundant at this station.  No NR on n1close/n2 open.  No NR for n3 close/n4 open.  Good set of 
samples but still the problem of net responses.   Generally hauled wire in at 30m/min.  Bucket 3 
had top part of gauze come unglued - possible loss of some animals.  

M81	Sargasso east of ring 'Bob'.  (15 degree isotherm at 622m) Night calm sky clear except 
for scattered clouds.  Not much Sargassum.  No NR for n1 close/n2 open.  Good tow - good 
scattering layer record on PGR (Dick Backus).  Net response mechanism spring replaced with 
stronger spring and greased up, but it appears that this did not improve performance of 
mechanism.  

M82	Sargasso east, (15 degree isotherm at 500 m), 1010m, day. Not much Sargassum.   On 
this tow, Chip Ferguson got the aqui program going to hook us into the Tectronics GeoSecs 
computer.  This program allows us to put incoming data on cassette tape for later replay 
and calculates volume filtered.  NR adjusted so that trip finger is closer to net bars.  Steaming 
with current (what there is of it)   290m - coupling between winch drive and drum jumped out and 
winch stopped for a moment.  245m - stopped again momentarily.  142m - winch stopped for 30 
sec.  PGR scattering layer record made during tow - see Backus.

M83	Ring center, 1020m, night.  No moon but sky clear.  Tape recorder not turned on for 1st 
76m.  Fluorometer counts = 11 when net entered water on at 2058.  Cod end buckets without 
funnels.  Really excellent hauls - millions of megalops and E. krohnii

M84	Ring 'Bob center, (15 degree isotherm at 105 m - up), 1010m, day.  Lots of Sargassum in 
Langemir cells.  Bright sunny day with low scattered stratus clouds at beginning of tow and 
disappearing by end of tow.  No NR n3 close/n4 open, or n5 open, net7 open.  Buckets 3 and 5 
possibly mixed up - corrected on deck (Boyd) - bucket numbers clearly marked after haul.  Very 
nice haul.  No problems with winch or net system.  PGR record of scattering layers made during 
tow.  Hole 1" across in n0 about half way up along seam and ½" hole in n2 about 3' up from cod-
end - both sewed up.

M85	Ring 'Bob' high velocity core (north), (15 degree isotherm at 250 m), 1010m, night.  Very 
black night.  O2 reaching surface on way up read 147.  Very nice tow - no problems, all NR 
worked.  

M86	Ring 'Bob' high velocity core (north), (15 degree isotherm at 350 m), 1000m, night.  Half 
moon just coming up at start of tow.  Had to pay out a lot of wire to get to depth.  Ship headed 
into current.  NR didn't work on 2 nets.

M87	Ring "Bob' center, (15 degree isotherm at 127 m), 1033m, day.  Bright sunny day, very 
few clouds.  O2 at surface 147.  Very good set of samples.  No problems with tow.

M88	Ring "Bob' center, (15 degree isotherm at 150 m), 805m, night/dawn.  First light at 0500.  
Really bad tow from a number of standpoints. Couldn't get net system down to 1000m so stopped 
at 800m.  Made 8 NR but saw no angle change on NR.  Got angle change at 700, 600, 400, 
300m.  Lost signal cable at ~200m.  Very likely tape has no data on it. Very bad tow, but we did 
get some samples that look all right.  Nets 7 & 8 did not open but n8 had a small catch with live 
animals in it.  Where did they come from?  Tectronics computer ran most of dive and good flow-
meter data obtained.  Upon replay of tape found recording all the way to the surface.

M89	Ring 'Bob' high velocity core, eastern edge into current, (15 degree isotherm at 430 m), 
1010m, night.  Dark night, no moon.  Good lowering. Very nice tow.  Speed of net got up quite 
high during middle portion of uptrace but catch in all buckets looks good. NR did not work on 3 
occassions.  Perseid meteor showers very abundant.  Note: on replay had trouble with line 
printer. Ribbon jammed twice and had to put computer into idle and rewind ¼" tape back - for 
double replay.  This means 9-track tape has redundant data on it in two places.

M90	Ring 'Bob' high velocity core, (15 degree isotherm at 307 m), 1010m, day.  Very good 
tow, bright sunny day only a few clouds around.  Towing into current of HVC.

M91	Gulf Stream, (15 degree isotherm at 545 m) 1008m, day.  A lot of wire paid out to get to 
1000m.  Sky dark and completely overcast with intermittent rain and showers.  Large swells and 
quite a bit of pitching.  Very nice tow.  Good catch.  No problems.  CTD#36 done here.

M92	Slope water, (15 degree isotherm at 43 m), 1020m, night.  Question of whether net 3 
opened at 2205 hrs. No problem - net 4 opened in right number of commands.  Dark night with 
clouds above.  Scattering layer recorder (ALPINE) on during tow.  Very nice tow.  Only problem 
was it look like cod end buckets for nets 7&8 were reversed based on samples in the jars.

M93	Slope water, (15 degree isotherm at 65 m) 1010m, day.  Bright sunny, cloudless day.  
Scattering layer at - . Steaming south towards end point of last night's MOC-1-92.  Net 8 closed at 
surface on command.  Very nice tow.  Good catch in all buckets.

M94	Warm core ring 'M' Eddy 'M' (15 degree isotherm at 195 m), 1012m, night.  First 
MOCNESS set in warm core ring.  Broken hydraulic line on A-frame almost caused abortion of 
tow, but we got it in before the engineers started fixing it which generated a few arguments.  Had 
a hard time keeping net speed and angle down because of a poor choice in course - actually tow 
went very well, very nice set of collections.  Started raining right near end of tow.

M95	Warm core ring,(15 degree isotherm at 230 m), 1013m, day.  Secchi disc = 25m. Very 
rough seas, launch all right but had hard time getting net angle to stay up.  Had ship going 
between 4 and 5 knots during most of shooting the net.  No net responses when angle is over 54 
degrees.  Net response 4close/5open suspect (?).  All nets appeared to open and close where 
they should have.  Basically a good tow.  Had slight spill of animals in net 2 - a few Calanus stage 
5 lost but <1% of total catch missing.

