Month: May 2013 Page 1 of 2

R/V Marcus G. Langseth,

31-May-13, Vigo, Spain

R/V Marcus G. Langseth: An Explanation of How Stuff Works

            Hello again everyone.  So, I was originally planning on talking about what life is like on the boat since we are docked here in Vigo, Spain and not much is going on.  However, since life on the boat is about to change due to the actual research cruise starting and shifts beginning, I will hold off on that for a few more posts.  Instead, this post, will better explain the streamers, modules, sections, birds, acoustic devices, and all of the other stuff that is used on the boat to conduct research.  I will try to explain what all of these things do and how they work to map the bottom of the ocean floor.  Also, I will be trying to upload pictures about some of the devices and equipment so that you can see what it is I am talking about. 

            The two main components that are used to map the bottom of the ocean floor are the guns, and the streamers (streamers have a diameter of approximately 4-5 inches).  This boat has 4 sets of streamers and 4 sets of guns.  The guns are basically air guns that when fired shoot a wave of sound towards the bottom of the ocean.  This sound reaches the bottom and bounces back.  Depending on the medium, the amount of sound energy that bounces back will change.  The streamers have sensors that then detect the sound energy and pipes this information back to the main lab on the boat.  This information is then used to figure out the depth and the material on the ocean floor.

            In order to maximize the accuracy and amount of data the streamers collect, there are a number of different elements that are used in conjunction with the streamer.  First is the tail buoy.  The tail buoy is connected at the very end of the streamer and lies about 150-300 meters from the end of the streamer.  Its job is to relay GPS information back from the end of the streamer to the boat so that the main lab can identify where the end of the streamer lies in relation to the boat.  Next, on the streamers themselves, are the birds.  The birds have three major functions; 1) they give a compass reading to the main lab, 2) they give a depth reading to the main lab 3) they control the depth of the streamer using rotating wings (here is where the name bird comes from).  A bird is attached about every 300 meters and there are a total of 22 birds per streamer.  Finally, comes the acoustic devices.  There are five acoustic devices per streamer, two are near the tail-end, one is in the middle, and two are near the boat-end.  The acoustic devices talk to each other between all the streamers so that the main lab can tell where the streamers are in relation to each other.

            As the streamers are 6km long, they are built in sections.  Each section is about 150 meters in length, and contains numerous sensors as well as two coils.  The coils are used to attach birds and acoustic devices to the streamers.  Each coil is not used and so there are extras in case a coil fails (coils cannot be replaced, only whole sections can).  At the end of the sections are connectors.  These connectors can connect from streamer to streamer, but it is necessary for power and for data transfer that a module is placed in between the connectors on the ends of sections.  A module pretty much just connects the section, but I have no idea what is inside them.  At the boat-end of the streamer comes the lead end.  The lead end is basically a long cable that gives extra length to the streamer so that the streamer can be attached to the wings of the boat.  The lead end also connects directly to the boat to relay power and information.

            That is pretty much how the data collection is performed.  After that, numerous computer programs as well as the researchers sift through the data and decipher its meaning.  After all of this work, the output is a beautiful 3D map of the ocean floor in that region. 

            Well, I hope this helps explain everything a bit better.  I know that what I have been saying gets quite technical.  I hope you are all doing well and I will post again soon.  Take care everyone.

– This is Tyler Poppenwimer, singing off –

P.S. If you want to track the Marcus G. Langseth, you can use one of these websites:

http://www.sailwx.info/shiptrack/shipposition.phtml?call=WDC6698

http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/ (to track from this website, search for Marcus G. Langseth)

Well with just over a week left in my journey in the Pacific Northwest, its been a trip of a lifetime! I’ve seen places and things that never would have been possible without the MATE internship program.Going out to sea through The Bar in 15-20ft steep waves that were just stacking up, waiting to be plowed through on this 275ft ship. Waves breaking over the bow which sits 21ft above the water line.

As far as this current cruise goes, its been fairly slow for me. Reason being, we are using a laser which has been mounted on the bow and comparing it to a new radar that has been installed. With these two new systems,we are comparing wave heights and what the waves are doing within the Columbia River mouth plume. So for the most part we are going across the plume(riding in the ditch,making for a bumpy ride) and in and out of the river mouth while the two systems mentioned above collect data.

Though collecting data has been the name of the game for the most part, I have been able to conduct some science here and there. Twice a day, we are needed to do an XBT(seen in the picture)that corrects the differences in the sound velocity profile. This is basically a lead weight with a very thin copper wire attached to it. This sends a signal to the computer that the canister is attached to and we correct it from there. A few days ago we conducted a series of yoyo(up and down and up and down) CTD casts on the inside of the river mouth as the tide came in to see where the salt water and fresh water sits in the water column through the duration of the tide. My roll in the this process was exciting. I was at the “driver” seat watching the graphs of real time data. The scientists were there too, they would tell me where they wanted the CTD in the water column and I would relay the message to the winch operater via radio who was three decks above me. During deployment and recovery of the CTD I would man a tag line so nothing got broken or people hurt. All the while recording what activities we are doing on the ships wiki page.

We have also been deploying tracking drifter bouys on the inside of the mouth and recovering them on the outside daily for the past few days, a recovery is about to happen shortly after I get done writing this. So in about a week I’ll be east bound and down. Back in the south and ready to get back in the saddle and get to work. Hope you have enjoyed my story telling, until next time-Brophy out!

    I’m sitting on the ATLANTIS in the middle of the Atlantic, with the unique and amazing ALVIN. Yet it is neither of these that mesmerize me. I stare out into the seemingly infinite sea and ponder on my humanity, on my fragility of being a human so utterly out of her element. In the middle of the ocean the creaking of the ship is a constant and begins to fade quietly into the back ground. The constant movement becomes comforting. The occasional thud of the hull from things unknown no longer jostles me. The only thing that terrifies me is the thought of falling overboard. Not so much the fall itself, but the fact that on a transit there is less activity, people go about their daily routines quietly, often times not seeing one another for a day or two. So if I fell overboard I surely would not perish from the fall itself, but from the exposure to the elements. This long dwindling of hope as you see the boat drive on at 12 knots with you floating in the water, hoping only that someone, anyone, saw it happen, and knowing that probably no one did, terrifies me. So as the sun sets, and darkness begins to climb I head inside, for this is a place where the darkness owns all, and no screams would be heard, no splash would be large enough, no matter how fast you could swim it would not be enough. You would slowly meet the sun in the morning on your last day as you faced the elements, and your creator, on the planets terms. We are fragile humans, playing in the realm of giants, out here in the middle of the ocean. I am usually a night person. Anytime I am back on land, and generally during times when science is aboard I love the night. Some people are night people. My grandmother was a night person, and on an evolutionary sense it is only logical to have a certain percentage of people whose circadian rhythms awaken them when the rest of the clan is sleeping. Someone needs to keep a watch out; someone needs to be around to make sure everyone who is asleep can do so safely. I have been that person my whole life; always calling night time my home, always being comforted by the darkness and the inability to see too far. Maybe it has something to do with my poor vision. I am a rather myopic individual, only able to see unaided approximately four inches in front of my face before things become a jumble of color patches and vagary. At night I don’t need to see far. At night things seem at peace, but not out here. The darkness still holds a special place, but it is the ever churning seas whose moans and wet splashes against the hull over ride this peace I normally feel. It is during this time that I can imagine Lovecraftian deities raising up from the bottomless abyss and bringing me to meet their creator.

    Some would ask, why subject yourself to abject fear in the face of nothingness. Because I am human, and the greatest part, to me of being human is the curiosity of the mind. To let it wonder into the dark places that unsettle you in the hopes of bringing back knowledge that can change our fundamental understanding of how this vast ocean works. I can’t speak for anyone but myself, but the thirst for knowledge has driven me most of my life, that thirst to know the unknowable, to ascertain the uncertain. This has driven me to learn how to repair cars, to leave the collision repair industry and pursue an academic degree, to work in a lab, and now to live on boats for six months. Learning is not found only in text books, learning is not found only in the classroom, often times the best learning comes from doing. These are lessons no book can ever teach properly, no teacher can ever test you on, no standardized entrance exam can ever hope to quantify. These are the lessons the ocean chooses to teach you, and the lessons people you work with day in and day out choose to share with you. No one can take those from you; no one can live them but you. So as I stare out into the uncomfortable blackness that stretches before me on this over cast night, I can’t help but wonder on what lessons tomorrow will bring; what simple truths will the new day share with me. Seek out your own path, and maybe one day you too will be staring into the blackness of an overcast night in the middle of the Atlantic wondering, contemplating the mysteries of life.

R/V Marcus G. Langseth,

27-May-13, Near the Study Site off the Coast of Portugal

Hard Days of Work

Hello everyone, I am sorry that took me a bit longer than expected to post but in the last four days, we have worked a total of 55 hours!!  Yes, we have been doing a lot of work, but it needed to be done and now that the really long days are out of the way, it should be a little easier. 

So, what have I been up to?  Well to put it simply, we have been working on the streamers to make sure the streamer 1 and streamer 2 (which haven’t been used for months and months) were up and running smoothly.  We worked on streamer 2 on Friday, Saturday, and Monday, worked on streamer 1 on Sunday

On Friday, and Saturday, we had to let the whole of streamer 2 out into the water trailing behind the boat.  Whilst doing so, we had to check the serial numbers on the sections and the modules, as well as test the coils.  Each section is approximately 150 meters long and at the end of each is a connector where a module is placed to connect two sections.  In each section, there are two coils where a bird or acoustic device is attached.  As such, we had to stop twice during each section, lift a bird up and radio down to the main lab to have them check if they could see the bird.  Then, we would stop in between each section to check the modules.

Not only did we have to stop at each section to check the modules, we had to switch out some of the modules.  In order to do this, we would secure the tail end of the streamer and disconnect the modules.  Once this was done, we would connect the tail end of the streamer to the deck power to see if the streamers still worked properly.  Once this was done, we would connect the module and run the deck power through that to make sure that this was working properly as well.  Finally, we would then reconnect the boat-end section to the module and the rest of the tail-end sections and make sure everything was working.  We checked /replaced about 12 of the modules (there are about 39 modules per 6km streamer).

Finally, once we had made it through the entire streamer, we had to remove the old lead end and replace it with a new one.  The lead end is the part at the boat-end of the streamer that is wrapped around the reel.  It provides a connection and allows us to attach the streamers to the wings (wings will unfold from each side of the boat to increase the length of the stern so as to spread out the streamers) once deployed.  The lead-end for streamer 2 was old and so to replace it, we had to wind it off of the reel holding streamer 2 and onto a spare reel.  Once this long process was done, we had to use the hydraulic wheel to wind on the new lead end.  Whilst winding it on, myself and another crew member, Josh, had to hammer the lead end so that it was wound tightly.  This took a long time, but finally, we had completed the task.

After the lead end was reattached to the streamer, we wound some of the streamer in and had to then stop and remove two sections.  Again, we had to unwind the three sections whilst winding them onto a spare reel.  This took some time, but was completed and then the rest of streamer 2 was reeled in.  We had to take the birds off while streamer 2 was coming in and so we had to stop about every 300-350 meters to pull off the birds.

On Sunday, we worked on streamer 1.  It was supposed to be a routine, check similar to what we did on streamer 2, without removing the lead end, removing the sections, and checking/replacing the modules, but part way through we noticed that the lead end wasn’t situated on the reel correctly.  As such, we had to let the entire streamer out, then let all of the lead end out so that we could fix the way the lead end was on the reel.  Once this was done, we could then re-spool the lead end and bring in the rest of the streamer.

On Monday, more problems with streamer 2 arose.  To fix these problems, we had to let part of streamer 2 out again and work on the modules once more.  This time, the problem was that part of the streamer was not getting enough power and we couldn’t figure out why.  The power would end in section 28 which means that 12 weren’t getting power.  To check which section wasn’t getting power, we removed the modules and plugged in the deck power cord directly into each section and tested it.  Then, we put the module back on and plugged the deck power into the module and the section and tested those.  If all worked then we reconnected the sections and let out the next section and repeated the process.

This should, in theory, have worked and the problem resolved quickly.  However the problem was more complicated than originally thought.  As such, we did a lot of checking and re-checking of sections we had already checked before we realized we had a bad section that acted good and messed up what was beyond it.  To solve this problem we unwound the bad section, removed it, added three good sections (to replace the two we had already taken off), and reconnected those sections to the remainder of the streamer.  Then, all that was left to do was to pull in the rest of the streamer stopping along the way to remove the birds. 

Even though this was a lot of work, it was all worthwhile because now, our trip out to the study site after going to Port in Vigo to pick up supplies should be easy as pie.  Not only that, but since all of the streamers are now in good working condition, we should be able to put them in the water without a hitch and then the mapping of the ocean floor can begin.

That’s all for now.  If you have any questions, post them in the comments and I will try to get to them in my next post.  By the time I post again, I will be in Spain and hopefully enjoying some nice weather.  Take care everyone!

– This is Tyler Poppenwimer, singing off –

Well, it’s been a week of much of the same as it has been for the past month for the most part. Getting the R/V Thompson ready for months of cruises, but for me its the last one. This trip is going down to “The Bar” at the mouth of the Columbia River in Oregon. For those of you who don’t know about The Bar, it’s where the Coast Guard does their big wave rescue training. What are we doing there you may ask? Well, I will tell you. Originally, this was suppose to be a Scripps trip, but was past on to us. A laser has been mounted on the bow of the boat and it collects wave height, period data etc. at a very fast pace. More about that next week, as we are not even out of the Puget Sound yet.

As far as the past week, I started out by climbing the mast to take down a meteorological sensor. This system consisted of 3 parts, two remote sensors and a control box plus the wire that was used to control the sensors. The following day was spent calibrating more oxygen bottles, fun fun! Next was running more cat-5 cable to the new radar computer rack, which had to be snaked throughout the ship to get to its final destination. Also, I took down a rain catcher from the front of the boat.

Yesterday was spent cleaning the ship up from the last month and preparing for the next trip. Mostly storing old wire that we had pulled from within the ceiling tiles and putting all the tools we had used in their proper place. This morning we pulled away from the dock at around 0900 and made our way through the lock and dam and into the Puget Sound. Soon we will be in The Straight of Juan de Fuca, followed by the North Pacific. This has been a great experience, one of a lifetime, but I’m worn out and looking forward to seeing my girl and my dog! That being said   this should be a great cruise spending the next two weeks going in and out of “The Bar”. Until next time-Brophy Out.

R/V Marcus G. Langseth

23-May-13, Somewhere Between the Azores and Vigo, Spain

The Beginning and the Transit Cruise         

I boarded the ship two days ago, but for the first day we didn’t do much since we were still in port.  I just unpacked, tidied me cabin, explored the ship, and relaxed.  The ship is a lot bigger than I thought it was going to be, and a lot more confusing.  There are so many different ways to get from A to be B that it just makes it plain old confusing.  I found all of the labs, the wet lab, main lab, dry lab, bird lab (not actual birds) lab, and the gun lab (not actual guns).  Chris, the intern whose place I was taking, showed me around, but I knew I wasn’t going to remember any of the ways he showed me. 

The next day, yesterday, at about 8:00 in the morning Azorean time (EST+4) we left Porta Delgada and headed out towards Vigo, Spain where we are going to pick up the research team and the switch out some of the crew members that have been on the boat for a while.  There wasn’t much happening yesterday since we can’t put anything into the water whilst around major shipping routes and so we sat in the lab and made sure the electronic systems were up and running smoothly.  Clayton, one of the members of the crew, showed me around the boat a bit and showed me how to work the CO2 measuring system so that I could work it later during the actual research cruise.

We did have a fire drill and an evacuation drill so that we would know what to do in case of an emergency.  Basically, for a fire drill, we just run upstairs to the mustering point behind the bridge and sit there.  For an evacuation drill, we do the same thing except we put on life vests.  Then, once the life vests are on, we wait until we absolutely have to and then release the life boats into the water, throw a ladder down the side and climb off.  Basically, I hope I don’t have to do any of these things for real!

In contrast to yesterday, today there was work to be done.  We had to look at the four streamers and make sure everything was working.  The streamers are long lines that have sensors on them and they measure the data from the air guns which fire towards the bottom of the ocean.  When I say long lines, I mean long lines; 6km long!  They can’t be made that long so they are made in smaller pieces and connected together and we had to make sure that the connectors were working fine.  It is generally easy to do this, but there some problems and so some of the crew and myself had to go and take a look at the last few connectors.  It wasn’t particularly taxing work, but it was time consuming.  We had to unspool the lines, disconnect the connectors check the power each time we disconnected one and work the whole way down the line.  Luckily, only streamer 1 and streamer 4 had problems.

My life on the boat so far has been pretty good.  The food is awesome!  The chefs prepare excellent food and none of it has let me down.  I have had roasted rosemary chicken, turkey with stuffing (and the turkey wasn’t pre-cooked they basted it and cooked it all day), fajitas, pancakes, mashed potatoes, and soup at nearly every meal.  What more could I ask for?  The guys on the boat are nice too, and a lot of them have taken to showing me how to do things so that when the research portion starts, I can start to do things on my own.  I am having fun and learning a lot too.  

~ This is Tyler Poppenwimer, signing off ~

Here I sit comfortably in Boston Massachusetts basically half way through this six month internship. It has been one of the single most difficult, yet rewarding things I have ever undertaken. I have been fortunate enough to quite literally have gone half way around the world. I started in Cape Town South Africa, and then headed east to Uruguay before flying up to Miami Florida. I can say quite confidently that living out of a suitcase is definitely not a lot of fun. The constant going 7 days a week has definitely taken a toll on me mentally. This career path is difficult, yet highly rewarding in that you get to assist with some extremely ground breaking science, and you get to travel A LOT.

Sitting at the precipice of this internship I am getting ready to board the R/V Atlantis. This ship is the home of the deep sea submersibles ALVIN and JASON. Ever since I was a child and ALVIN sent back the first videos of hydrothermal vents and the life they found there I have wanted to see this amazing creation of human ingenuity and science. I am an avid diver, so I do know quite a bit about the difficulties of diving just shallow depths, I cannot say I have much knowledge about the physical demands on instrumentation that can go to the depths ALVIN and JASON both can go. I look forward very much to working with the crew and pilots of these ROVs and learning anything they are willing to teach me. This is definitely a once in a life time chance.

Leaving the WALTON SMITH for the unknown again has been a bit of a challenge. I tend to be the type of person that likes having a rhythm to my life. A certain order of every day and every week occurrences. This has completely been blown out of the water up to this point. Nothing is the same day in and day out. Nothing is constant other than the horizon and being surrounded by water. Half the time the horizon isn’t even constant when you take into account some of the horrible weather I have encountered. Not every day do you get to be on a ship as it is torn away from a dock and hearing the dock lines creak and moan under extreme stress. The ship broke free and we were sitting ducks in the middle of the harbor hoping the two barges that also broke free didn’t collide with our small ship. I also got to see a storm in the Agulhas Current that had waves higher than anything I have ever seen. There were cresting waves higher than the A-Frame on the KNORR. Needless to say the horizon those days looked very different than it normally does.

So yes I am nervous to get onto another ship full of no one I really know. But I am getting much more comfortable with constant change. I have grown so much as a person that it is almost frightening. I have never travelled much, let alone going somewhere by myself, yeah that never happened. EVER. Now I can honestly say I am much more comfortable spending time alone, of being the only person I know in a city, of figuring out how to best pack 6 month’s worth of clothes and sundries in to two suitcases, well one suitcase and one old sea bag that is usually just a laundry bag. My advice is don’t pack anything that can’t do double duty. Make sure you have enough of the important things like hair conditioner, because the salt air will take a toll on your hair, have PLENTY of sunscreen, you will get sun burnt at some point make sure it isn’t as bad as it could have been by re-applying the sunscreen every couple hours if you work on a deck with no shade. Be prepared for some boring times. Though the boring times, usually only last maybe a day or two at the most, those days drag on like nothing you have probably ever experienced. You have been on a small ship for two months working day in and day out, and then suddenly nothing is going on. Relish that day. Embrace the down time, because it really is rather rare.

So here I go again off into the wild blue; me and my two bags and a backpack for my laptop on more adventures and learning in the most unique learning environment ever. I am tired, by body aches, and I am slightly nervous about meeting a whole new crew, but would not trade this experience. It is truly unique.

It’s been a mix of rain and sunshine here in Seattle for the week of 5/13-5/17. To start out the week, I was tasked with taking apart and cleaning a titrater which is a liquid dispenser that lets out very small controlled amounts. After that, we had to make a new wet end for our CTD on the R/V Barnes with included soldering wire and making a waterproof mold to encase the soldered connection.

Next was cutting old CTD wire cable into 4ft lengths for disposal. Following this task, I finished cleaning the titrater and replaced some parts for good ones. It worked just as well as if it was new after the Broph got done with it.

Then it was time to clean and calibrate oxygen bottles and there was a stack of them to be done. Calibrating bottles is a fancy way of weighing them with and without liquid. A process that I still have to finish. Yesterday the guys from Scripps showed up to start installing a laser on the bow of the Thompson for our next trip to the Columbia River. This laser will collect wave height data for the duration of the trip. So to prep for their arrival, we had to pull out abunch of old Co-ax and Cat-5 wire from the bridge to make room for a new radar and its wire that will accompany the laser. I also had to build and install a computer rack to hold all the CPU’s for this equipment. Time to get back to work!!!

After running acoustic experiments for the past two weeks with nearly constant noise echoes bouncing off the hull of the ship, the ROV crew that has boarded is eerily quiet in comparison. This is a small Seaeye ROV that weighs little over 160lbs. After a few days of trouble shooting and getting buoyancy issues squared away they are now sitting quietly in front of a monitor doing a small transect with lasers. This whole TREX project has been rather interesting in so many respects, I have seen six, maybe more different science crews over the past month, come, run experiments and leave generally in under a week. There have been so many awesome scientists that I have met, it has made this cruise a real pleasure to work.

I have been spending the better part of most days reading and learning about the fundamentals of data transfer. After all the whole reason these ships exist is to gather data, and the transferring of that data from instruments to computers to scientists needs to be nearly seamless. There are many different options and choices when it comes to which cable needs to be run to where. On this ship there are a plethora of fiber optic outlets. I have two in my berth. Unfortunately most computers don’t have fiber optic inputs built into them so there need to be conversion devices. This is when understanding how the simple RJ-45(Ethernet) plug works, or how an RS232 plug works and how you can wire them for different purposes and what each pin does. Rather than bore you with the detail of a pin-out diagram in word form I will just say that it can be a fundamentally fascinating thing to realize that all data is functionally electricity. From the instruments generally measuring changes in voltage and sending that down the line, to the very transmission of ideas from neuron to neuron, it all takes electricity. So in essence and to not go overboard on philosophical musings as I am known to do, obtaining data and processing data is nothing but a giant physical, electrical circuit.

Once the data reaches the end user, it is up to them and their software how best to interpret it all. We all work with and around computers now. They are so ubiquitous in our everyday world that being without the internet is now a massive inconvenience and even a hindrance of productivity. Now realize that all this data transferring back and forth is primarily across wire. Granted we as a society are advancing our wireless data transfer at an exponential rate and this trend will likely continue long into the future. But fundamentally the data will begin and end at some type of terminal be it the instrument collecting the data or the computer processing it, and wires will at some point be connecting these things together. So a vital part of keeping science going on a ship is understanding the most basic unit and how it works across these wire. The electron will be doing the brunt of the work, and it travels across these wires at the speed of light. Every pin on a connector has a purpose, and if it is not connected with where it needs to be information transfer ceases, science grinds to a halt, and many people will not be very happy. 

Hey Guys,

Brophy’s back with another report from The U-Dub in sunny Seattle! Since my last blog, I’ve been doing a verity of tasks. To start out with, I was assigned to outfitting the CTD on the Thompson with new lanyards. The lanyards on the CTD are the links that connect the closable ends of the Niskin water collection bottles to the electromagnetic triggering mechanism on the Rosette which the bottles are mounted on. So in short, when the CTD is at a desired depth within the water column, the operater can hit a “fire” button on a computer and a signal is sent to the triggering mechanism via an armored conducting wire cable. The signal releases the trigger which inturn releases the lanyard and the bottle closes, and vuala, the water in trapped in the bottle at that depth.

The following day was spent reterminating the electromagnetc wire cable on the R/V Barnes, UW’s smaller research boat,that is awesome!! This was quite a task that has to be done slowly and carefully for a beginner like me. The cable has two wraps of steel wire strands, one with a right hand lay and the other a left hand lay. These two wraps must be peeled back to where the termination will take place on the wire. From their a kind of “squirrels nest” is created with the peeled back strands small enough to fit the inside diameter of the stainless steel connecter. Once the squirrels nest of wire is fitted inside the connector, we poured a type of meltable metal alloy called Serro-bend inside the connector the secure everything in place. The following day was spent running SVGA cable through the Thompson and mounting flatscreen computer moniters in various labs. This happened without a hitch, with my years in the electrical field serving me well.

The next three days where spend on the R/V Barnes out in the Puget Sound. Doing two trips a day, taking students of UW out for exposure to science operations on the water. I had a blast for these three days on that little ole tug!!! The weather was warm and clear for the most part, with mount Rainier on one side behind Seattle and the Olympic mountains on the other. Jim my mentor, Bob the Captain and Greg the mate are great guys and I truly enjoyed my time on that boat!!! During these trips I handled lines along side Greg as we went through the locks and while docking and undocking, with Greg on the bow and myself on the stern. During science operations I assisted Jim in showing the students how the operate the equipment before, during and after their deployments. While on the topic of scientific equipment, lets talk about what we did. To start out, we would to a CTD cast, usaully in about 180m of water. After that, we switched the wire on the winch from the EM cable used for the CTD to normal wire cable. This cable was then attached to a plankton net which the students used to collect phytoplankton. After the net tow, we switched to the Van Veen grab. This is a bottom grab device used to collect sediment from the bottom in an 8in x 14in area. Once collected, the sediment is sifted through using a water hose to see what was caught. Then, it was off the change the group of students for a new group. The same eqiupment was used again, but in opposite order. Overall it has been a great week here at The University of Washington, well until next time, Chow!