Today Nereus had its first test dive of the cruise. Using the crane and tag lines the scientists lifted the vehicle out of the cradle, over the side of the ship, and into the water. Nereus then descended, untethered to the ship, to the bottom of the sea floor. All information was passed via acoustic transmission in the water from the vehicle to the ship and vice versa. The engineers were testing the software programs by having Nereus follow prewritten commands looking for glitches in the software code. After a few hours of running successfully the altimeter, which tells the vehicle how far it is off the bottom, stopped responding to changes in elevation and Nereus slowly ascended to the surface. The software engineers will address the issue and test the corrected software program on deck before performing any further testing in the water. Once Nereus was on the surface it transmits a radio wave at a set frequency. The Cape Hatteras is equipped with a Radio Direction F inder that tells what angle from the bow of the ship the transmission is coming from. After visually spotting Nereus on the surface the Cape Hatteras pulled along side of the vehicle. Using the crane and taglines, visible in the image, Nereus was successfully lifted out of the water and back into its cradle on deck. Tonight around 2030 we will begin the first of 32 CTD stations. Friday evening we lost DirectTV and this morning we lost Sirius satellite radio. Weather: Partly cloudy, 85 degrees, winds NE 13 knots, sea 2 feet