Hello, my name is Michael Smith. In a few short days I will be flying out to Galvaston, Texas to join fellow interns and scientists on the Nautilus. I will be working as an ROV intern under Reuben Mills. During my stay on the vessil from August 11th to September 1st, I will be working hands on with the ROVs Argus and Hercules. I am incredibly excited for this experience and can’t wait to be giving updates to my blog from the ship!
p.s. I will add a photo of me on the boat soon!
It’s been a week since I boarded the R/V Hugh R. Sharp. So far the experience has been amazing. The crew is pretty laid back and very helpful. The food is delicious and the weather has been great! I feel right at home.
We spent the last few days surveying a fish haven just off the coast of Delaware. We used several different instruments to map the seafloor and compile data; the ship’s multibeam sonar and sub-bottom profiler and the science teams AUV. We also did CTD casts and sediment grabs with a Smith-Mac. The science team used their ROV to check out some sites for dive ops (unfortunately all the diving happened off my watches).
I was pretty much thrown right into the thick of things starting on my first watch. I was given some direction on what was going on and how to do it and then left on my own. It was a little overwhelming at first but my training kicked in and everything went smoothly. I was even tasked with doing a hard eye splice on either end of a rope later used with a mooring. It took me a couple tries before I remembered how to do it but they came out awesome. That rope is now sitting 25 meters below the surface connecting an ADCP to a 900lb. mooring anchor.
This past week has been nothing but hard work. It’s dirty, wet, somewhat dangerous, and the work is never done. Your either working, sleeping, or eating. Before I started this internship, I expected my blogs would be a lot longer than this but man, I’m tired. I can barely keep my eyes open. At the end of the day though, that’s what I like.
I am right where I want to be.
The last cruise I was put into a situation I never thought I would have to face. I was running the High definition satellite dish that fed the live feed of the ROV JASON and associated shows back to shore as an outreach project headed by the URI Innerspace Center. It put all my trouble shooting skills to use, and proved to me that I could learn systems I had never even seen before and actually repair them.
Now I am back out in the Northern Pacific doing more multi-beaming and slowly trying to suss out a massive ongoing issue with our C-NAV gps system. I wish I could say at this moment I understood it, but I don’t. I am learning as I go, using the one tool that has rarely let me down, my uncanny ability to find underlying issues in complex systems.
On another note I can honestly say that being on a boat for three straight months, seeing science parties and crew members come and go, you begin to become much more a part of the ship crew familial group than one of the transient scientists. You develop friendships that are working relationships in such a close way that often times a glance or a small gesture can speak volumes during the chaotic times that can occur when massive problems are breaking loose.
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