station visits not possible for going on six months

[This post is an excerpt of an email update from Steven Johnson, and is back-dated to the date of that email on January 24th, 2014.]

Background:  the last email contact from the Saipan team had been received by AOML in October of 2013, so in January we requested a status update.  The PacIOOS CTD had been removed from the station on August 2nd, 2013 and could not be reinstalled as initially expected a month later, as the station was reported to be unreachable during the months of September and October.  This was Steven's January 24th update in reply to AOML's query:

We have not been able to our routine station maintenance for some time due to a number of factors (bad weather when the boat is working; good weather when the boat hasn't been working; government agency mergers; response surveys to coral bleaching events...).