Upon Scott’s arrival from his visit with the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil, we were given the location that the final recovery operation will take place in: Ubatuba (designated by the house symbol on the map above). The University has a field station there where after the recovery, the team will return there to work on the glider before redeploying within a short window of time.
Challenger continues to kill time outside of Brazil’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) as we finish the outbound portion of the second wing of the fan-sampling scheme. We will continue to fly a pattern like this for 2-3 more wings (averaging roughly 10 days per wing) as we await pending details on our recovery.
As for the currents, MyOcean continues to show the eddy most prominent at surface with lower layers continuing to flow westward. There are also a number of eddies to the east of our sampling area. RTOFS shows evidence of the currents curling but not until 900m do we see the fully rotating eddy signature while there is one massive eddy signature now over the home base portion of the sampling area. RTOFS also shows a beautiful full water column eddy sitting right at the center of our sampling region.
Force Wind Sea & Honor