The Search for the Grunion Blog

Donovan:

Here’s the news of yesterday: We awoke in Kiska Harbor, after a long night of scanning the video and still photos, and found the nights fog and rain and wind apparently lifting a bit. Interested in doing more underwater exploration, we decided to go after the Japanese Destroyer Arare, sunk just outside Kiska Harbor in 1942 by the sub U.S.S. Growler. After raising anchor and motoring out to the target site for the Arare, we began a bathometric search to little positive result.

After about 90 minutes of search-pattern runs over the site, the wind and seas seemed to have abated a bit, and we decided to head out to the U.S.S. Grunion site, to conduct further investigations and do a “fly-over” to gather one complete video image of the vessel on the sea floor.

Unfortunately, once out of the lee of Kiska Island, the wind and seas returned in force, which kept us from deploying the Max Rover, as the bouncing of the ROV’s cable and pulley system left us vulnerable to parting the cable and leaving the ROV and its “clump” weight (made, incidentally, from a retired locomotive wheel) on the sea floor.

Instead, we returned to the proposed site of the Destroyer Arare, and continued our search to no avail…which reinforces just how extraordinary our quick, 27-minute find of the U.S.S. Grunion really was. Sometime after midnight we returned to the safety of Kiska harbor, and, working with heavy but unpredictable winds, set anchor.

Today, we awoke in heavy storm and fog, and will shortly deploy the Aquila’s skiff to go ashore for exploration.