Background: monthly maintenance visits had not been possible in the period between August 2nd, 2013 and April 1st, 2014, for reasons mentioned in updates sent in September, October, January, and March. The PacIOOS CTD had been removed from the station during the August visit, and towards the end of its eight-month absence PacIOOS announced its decision to withdraw from this project. A few weeks later a maintenance visit was once again possible, although in accordance with PacIOOS' wishes its CTD was not reinstalled, as explained in Steven's April 2nd update:
Yesterday, monitoring personnel were able to go out to the ICON Station at Laolao Bay and conduct a cleaning. It had been quite some time since we were able to get out there due to a long stretch of bad weather. Biofouling on the station was noteworthy. Pocillopora sp. colonies have started to setle out fairly well on the support chains, while algae and some barnacles covered most of the stick. We were able to get the fouling off of the sensors.
At PacIOOS request, we did not redeploy the sensor and we're still waiting to hear back from them.
Ryan was able to take some photos yesterday and he will be sending those out to everyone.