This is an extremely annoying read. I was hoping for a rich dataset. The USCG and Government datasets are extremely sparse - especially in polar regions. Here you have the US Healy traversing the arctic and the only data collection this team sought to obtain from this voyage was a FLIR images and and broken up video clips (day rates for such vessels can easily run in the $50K/day US). What about filling the vast gaps in subsurface ocean and ice data? What about RF signal reception? Biological data?
"We had 100-foot cables made for this project just in case of this type of scenario, which was a good thing because we only had a few inches to spare," Emily says.
I'm sorry, but that's just 100% poor planning (read 100% "avoidable" by simply mapping the cable route ship arrangement drawings a priori) that almost jeopardized the entire data gathering effort. It's a single surveillance camera and data storage, mounted on a bulkhead. Not rocket science.
I would honestly be embarrassed to be interviewed for this article if this were me.
Apologies for venting, but this is really frustrating.
