Unpacking NUI (photo by Chris German, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

As with all research expeditions, some of the trickiest moments come while getting all the equipment you need for weeks away offshore to be delivered to the ship and installed in time for sailing. You can’t really run to the store mid-cruise if you forget something.

This is particularly the case when heading into such a remote setting as we are, and the chances for things to go awry only increase when working with a ship of one nationality (in this case, Germany) and staging the expedition out of a different country (Norway). And when you are bringing a prototype robotic underwater vehicle to sea, the complexity gets that much greater.

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