We finished recovering all 39 receivers and now are just about to redeploy them. We’re splitting the fleet in half, with twenty receivers to be deployed on the abyssal plain to collect MT data and 19 to be deployed on the continental shelf at 80 – 100 m water depths, where we plan to surface-tow SUESI so we can get shallow water CSEM data sensitive to the upper crust and MT data sensitive to the crust and the deeper mantle wedge. This will extend the forearc slope data so that in total we will have a 160 km profile of CSEM and MT data from the trench up onto the shelf (plus about 50 km of CSEM and MT data from two crossing profiles on the forearc slope). And with the abyssal plain data, the MT profile will be about 240 km long. Although SUESI has a high pressure leak somewhere, we tested that it can still hold a vacuum and so we feel safe lowering it to 10 m water depth on the shelf (i.e., only 1 additional atmosphere of pressure). The weather prediction is looking great for the next week so we’re all hoping we can successfully finish this last leg of the project.
In the mean time, here’s a funny EMAGE movie trailer made by Bern: