SG141 received a final calibration CTD cast before its recovery on 27 June, confirmed aboard the R/V Saemundsson at 14:51 UTC. SG140 received its final calibration CTD cast and was recovered on 28 June, by 14:45 UTC. SG142 is presumed lost.

The science team on the Saemundsson will do more CTDs during their cruise, and are additionally acting as a vessel of opportunity, launching a few floats in the area for a French research project.

Around 25 June @ 22:30 PDT, the field team called in to say that they had finished the NE arm of the search grid and had reached the center of the bowtie, with nary a peep from SG142. They called again on 26 June @ 12:00 PDT to report that they had proceeded through the NW arm and continued to the southern half of the search grid -- and still no sign of the glider. They will finish up the search grid by nightfall, and then (assuming there's no reply from SG142) they will abandon the search.

Seaglider 142 made its last call home on 24 June 01:34 (UTC). So far, there is nothing in the logs to suggest that something was going wrong. It is a mystery that will hopefully be solved by finding the glider via accoustic tracking.

The shore-side crew have identified the 4 possible scenarios that are most likely:

1) It's stuck on the bottom. It could be snagged on something, or it might have suffered a VBD failure. (The VBD, or "Variable Buoyancy Device" is the rubber balloon outside the pressure hull that can be filled with oil to change the glider's buoyancy.)

While SG143 was recovered on 3 June 2008, shortly after Float 48, the remaining three Seagliders began a new survey pattern on the eastern flank of the Reykjanes ridge:

SG140 is executing a large bowtie pattern, and SGs 141 and 142 are repeating a 20-km bowtie: sg141 performing north-south transects on the sides of the bowtie, sg142 performing east-west transects and drawing an hourglass.

We're set to go on the rescue cruise on the R/V Bjarni Saemundsoon, leaving this evening from Reykjavik at 20:30 (or so). Mary Jane Perry is the Chief Scientist, Mike Ohmart is the Float guy, and I'm the Glider 'guy'.

Magnus (an assistant from the Icleandic Marine Research Institute) put Mary Jane's optics instruments on the CTD this morning, while Mike and I prepared float 47 for shipping. The float is much like the glider, in that it's designed so you only need two people to move it around and take it apart.