Nortek memory chips vs. Hurricane Emily

In the fall, we received an Aquadopp profiler from Steven Czitrom at Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM).  The instrument had been scheduled to record for 70 days but was uprooted from its mooring in 15 m water and dragged 1.5 km by hurricane Emily, which struck the Caribbean coast of Mexico in June of 2005. The instrument was found by fishermen in the coral reed off Tulum but it was too late for normal operation: After weeks of abrasion, there was practically nothing left of the transducers, and a large hole in the canisters left little hope for data recovery. Mostly just for kicks, they UNAM researchers decided to send the instrument to Nortek in Norway to see what had happened to the memory chips that had been exposed to salt water for more than a month. Always willing to give it a shot, we soldered the memory chips in their 600 kHz Aquadopp profiler onto another electronics board and, lo and behold, the data was all there!!
 
This story of resilience is not the first where we have been able to recover data that have been thought lost to salt water exposure. Still, to make sure there is no misunderstanding: We still recommend all users of Nortek equipment to keep salt water out of the instrument housing :-)