Today we caught up on some more rock cataloguing and identification.  It seems like there will be some difficulty in keeping up with the pace of dredging in the future.  Then again, we are severely behind schedule in all areas, which in my mind is growing into an almost Orwellian scale.  So, in the end just because the dredging is behind schedule, we'll probably be able to handle the rock load.  As it is, we feel pressure, but there always seems to be a saving bell that makes the identification load possible.

We are getting some pretty large rocks, so far, we've gotten one that was so big that it was too tall and wide to have fit into the dredge in any other orientation.  It slid in lengthwise, and stuck in the bottom of the net.  It was so large that we had to beat it to smithereens with a sledgehammer, which was not as much fun as it could have been, if it had been more difficult.  I realized that the satisfaction that comes from smashing things does not spring directly from the act.  For me at least, it is much more complicated.  My satisfaction comes from winning in the end after a challenge.  I am quite sure this is not the boyish satisfaction that comes from destruction, but rather a sophisticated taste for finely aged but catastrophic dismantling.  This matured taste for mayhem was better fed later, by a more structurally sound stone that required repeated wailings.

Today we lost the last of our pingers.  We thought we had it made when we discovered a few misplaced switches and replaced some batteries with coat-hangers, but the thing finked out at 1000 meters down, and we had to abort, remove, and re-dredge.  Oh well.  With the last of the pingers gone, I guess we're going to be flying the dredges blind from now on.

Daniel Staudigel onboard the R/V Kilo Moana.