Yesterday we had our first successful launch, decent to the sea floor and recovery of Nereus in ROV mode. At 0830 hours we sent the depressor in and at approximately 0900 we launched Nereus. The depressor and Nereus descend at approximately the same rate of 30 m/min to a depth of 2500 m. At 2500 m, the fiber optic wire was released and Nereus was free to descend to the sea floor bottom.. Later that afternoon (1700 GMT) Nereus lightly touched the bottom at 4900 m (>3 statute miles!) All lights, cameras and instruments worked but there was some problem with the buoyancy so, all we could do was to fly around towards the vent sites. We saw lots of rocks and sand but no seacreatures.. yet. A live feed was sent into the mess hall for all to watch By 2000 hours we had Nereus safely back on deck. But the fun did not stop there.. We did a CTD profile at a nearby location where Chris German predicted an interesting site and we did see a very strong signal at ~4000 meters. So it was a good Halloween. This morning we saw the biggest signals of the cruise - just in time to plan the route for Nereus.