Month: July 2014

After having to stay in Woods Hole one extra day for radar repairs, we left with a mostly-different group of crew and scientists.  I was now on night watch instead of day. Transitioning between opposite sleep schedules was tough for the first couple days, but turned out alright. I was happy to get on night watch just to see how it is. Turns out it’s pretty much the same, but darker. I prefer day. Night watch doesn’t have a “lunch” and you eat breakfast for dinner and dinner for breakfast. But a lot of people like the night shift better because it’s slightly more relaxed and you don’t get sunburned. It also goes by quickly. Photographing is harder, but some night shots came out very cool looking.

As we left Nantucket sound we were met with relatively rough seas. The plan was to do over 70 dredge tows and very little habcamming. I’ve gotten better at all the steps in the dredge process on deck. I’m always amazed by what we pull up and wish I had more time to study each sculpin and identify each strange item. I really don’t like how much bycatch we kill and waste. Most things come up dead or dying in the net, and there is very little effort to save things or at least eat whatever we can. We usually keep the best flounder or haddock, but a lot gets thrown back dead. The scientists count the fish but don’t measure most, so we get some data on some things but not as much as we could. Certain critters tend to survive, like skates (no swim bladders to expand) and most crustaceans but we could definitely do better with the bycatch. Of course our fine-meshed research dredge is tiny in the vast ocean, we do short tows, and the whole purpose of this research is to help protect marine environments. But it’s still tough to watch things suffer and die on deck. That’s one awesome advantage of the habcam- it doesn’t harm the benthic habitat or organisms at all. New marine technology can do some wonderful things.

Eventually the seas subsided. The weather was remarkably good the entire time, only a few rainy watches. There was a lot of fog out on Georges Bank though. The bottom was rockier on this leg of the cruise so we sometimes used the crane to switch in our rock chain dredge for certain areas. Rock chains are simply chains across the mouth of the dredge that exclude huge boulders. Some tows come up full of rocks. Several areas were very dense in big, old scallops. Going home with a big bag of sea scallops is one of the best perks on this cruise.

Another great thing about being in my specific position on this trip is that I’m in the middle of everything. Surrounded by a perfect combination of often-separate marine fields, I can get experience in all of them. I’m working with both the scientists and crew (groups that generally end up divided). The purpose of this scallop survey is to assess stocks for regulation, so my interest in marine policy ties right in. I’m learning hands-on about research, biology, fisheries, technology, computers, engineering, and seamanship all at once. Gaining experience as a technician and an understanding of how data is really collected will be valuable in any field. Being a technician is a nice balance of everything; I never felt confined to one role. Being able to interact with everyone on board was great. There’s a rich mix of very interesting people on this trip. Several of the crew came from commercial fishing backgrounds, and the scientists work for the government. The scientists, engineers, mates, captains and technicians all have a wealth of expertise in their fields. I tried to learn as much as I could from everyone.

We finished our marathon of dredging and spent the last couple watches habcamming. I piloted and copiloted a bunch. The display computer for our flowthrough system suddenly broke on one of the last watches and we spent a while trying to diagnose and fix the problem. Eventually we switched everything over to the data computer and got the (problematic) network of monitors back and displaying water information around the ship.

We had a few more dredge tows to finish up the survey, then pulled in to Woods Hole once again. The 2014 sea scallop survey was successfully completed! The ship unloaded equipment and I disembarked, concluding a truly awesome voyage.

The storm passed without much intensity. Just some wind and rain. We left Woods Hole to cooler, clearer, beautiful weather and headed out to Georges Bank through Vineyard Sound and Nantucket Sound. On the way we had an abandon ship drill, passed one of the cape wind test towers, and saw a big colony of seals on Monomoy Point. We deployed the habcam and zigzagged with it for a couple of days. There has been a lot of wildlife already- both on the bottom and at the surface. The habcam was recording lots of scallops, sand dollars, sea stars, and hake with occasional skates, lobsters, and goosefish. On the surface we saw schools of small fish being chased by tuna, pods of dolphins riding our bow wave, and several whales. There were numerous petrels and shearwaters gliding over the surface and picking plankton out of our wake.

Within the first couple of days, seas began building and were forecast to continue increasing. Soon we had 10-15 foot swells, made more dramatic by intermittent failures of our hydraulic stabilization fins. The boat was rolling pretty hard at times. To be honest I kind of enjoyed the waves. In addition to the stabilizer problems we had a few strange, sporadic, hard-to-diagnose communications issues with our winch data network and our CTD. Troubleshooting these systems kept us techs and the engineers well occupied. As a whole, the important stuff has been working fairly well.

I learned to pilot the habcam, which is a little tricky but overwhelmingly cool. The pilot carefully watches incoming images, a sidescan display, and the depth/altimeter readings while using a winch control joystick to pay out or reel in cable. Ideally the camera sled flies two meters over the bottom. Keeping it there is easy when seas are calm and the seafloor is flat, but underwater dunes and a pitching boat complicate things.  

Dredging takes a lot of hard work out on deck. Working the dredge and sorting the catch is fun and good exercise, but tiring when we have a lot of back-to-back tows. The habcam is less work-intensive- for better or worse. Once in the water, the scientists control it from the dry lab and there isn’t much to do other than help fly it and annotate images. I do my daily sensor logs and maintenance, work on small projects or problems, clean the ship, help with whatever I can, and talk to the scientists in the lab and crew on the bridge. Until something goes wrong.

At one point we were on the bridge when a radio call came through from the lab saying that they lost all control to the habcam winch. The captain already had the ship at at full thrust so there was nothing the scientists could do but watch their picture feed and cringe as their million-dollar instrument plowed along the bottom. Ted, Casey (an engineer) and I ran down from the bridge, through the engine room, and to the winch room where we reset the winch controls and hydraulic power unit. Science raised the habcam to inspect it- luckily there was no serious damage.

We had a few more days of heavy seas and a whole lot of dredging. The variation in our dredge contents are amazing. It’s almost always a different mix, even between nearby stations. Sometimes it’s all scallops and fish, sometimes the dredge is filled entirely with sand dollars. It was cool to see all the life down there and I wished I had more time to study everything we caught.

Eventually the waves calmed down to the point that the sea became glassy. I don’t know if it was the calm water making things easy to see or some situation with currents, upwelling, nutrients and temperature- but one day we saw dozens of blue sharks, breaching and feeding whales, jumping tuna, schools of smaller fish, and enormous basking sharks leaping fully out of the water.

After a week and a half we began to work our way back towards Woods Hole to restock and change out scientists again. Ted, Max, and I disassembled part of the CTD carrousel and swapped out the sensors. This is done periodically so they can be sent in for maintenance and calibration.  We had a day in woods hole, loaded fuel, did the crew change, and bought so much food at the supermarket that their checkout computer crashed. Another MATE intern, Ali, is now on board as we set sail again.