NORTH ATLANTIC

6:00 a.m. — I had about four hours sleep with constant interruptions from the crackle of walkie-talkies. So much was going on overnight with the boat crew out on the water and the subs in the water. I heard a call that Mir 1 was nearing recovery and was so anxious to learn about the dive that I couldn't sleep anymore. The Mir 1 crew was very excited, saying that Jim had indeed been flying bots (the ROVs) through Titanic all night and sounded elated about the exploration that he was doing.

10:00 a.m. — Mir 2 finally surfaces. The fact that Jim was down shooting so long is both good and bad news. It is good because it should mean that he acquired lots of exciting new footage. It is bad because there is probably a lot of tape to look at and many choices to make on what to include in the show, and we are running out of time. Jim hops out of the sub and tells us of some amazing discoveries below. After a quick breakfast and meeting to come up with our game plan, he heads down to the control room to start marking the shots that he wants us to use.

3:00 p.m. — Jim finishes picking video and the production team moves in to start putting the show together. We have to feed a backup show by Sunday morning, so there is a lot of work to do.

Midnight — Breaking only for a brief dinner, the crew continues putting our show together. This will certainly be an all-nighter with a satellite feed scheduled early tomorrow morning. After that, Jim plans to try a tethered dive back to Titanic, which means that everyone needs to stay at their posts.

It seems likely that we will work straight through the airing of our show. If the fiber link is successful, we will try to cut some improved pieces for the show and perhaps even do part of the show live. If not, Jim will put a few more elements on tape and quickly bring them back to us to edit into the show before air.

Bob Sitrick is vice president of live production for Discovery.

More Leg 2 Expedition Logs: Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7 | Day 8 |

Also read the entries from Leg 1 of the expedition. |