The flights to Dutch Harbor are always a hit or miss, but with 4 legs of flights, the flight to Dutch was the only flight NOT delayed. The previously flight delays, just happened to cause me to miss that flight, luckily there was a flight later in the day. It feels good to be back in Alaska. I cannot believe how much has changed over the past 12 years.
It is funny, after previously serving in the Coast Guard, you forget how small of a world it really is. Upon arriving I immediately ran into the Commanding Officer of the Healy, whom happened to be my previous CO when I served on the USCGC Hickory as a non-rate. I also ran into my old roommate from TranCen Petaluma and another whom was my A-School instructor. It’s a large ship, with about 120 souls on board, so I can only imagine whom else I might run into.
After a good nights sleep, I hopped right in, learning the ship and where everything was, and what my duties and responsibilities would be. I am working with STARC (Ship-based Technical Support in the Arctic) as a Tech watch stander, and WHOI (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute) is our science team aboard the Coast Guard Polar Ice Breaker Healy. We will be doing mooring work on the continental shelf of the Alaska Beaufort Sea, along with CTD work spanning the Chukchi and Canadian Beaufort Sea.
Immediately getting to work I got to fabricate a bracket to hold an instrument, the scientist wanted to add to the CTD. Loving puzzles, I got quickly figured out how we would attach the instrument close enough to their other sensor, but far enough to not cause interference. 
Photo Credit: Matt Hirsch
The other issue was creating a structure strong enough where it would not cause vibrations. A saw, dremel, and some scrap metal did the job! We are deploying two test casts later today, fingers crossed the fabrication works out.
Once getting underway we booted up all the systems that would be running over the course of our voyage such as the multibeam, knudsen echo sounder, EM122, ADCP, Hypack, QINSy, seawater flow through, pCO2, along with calibrating the instruments. Setting up, double, and triple checking the data flow, serial servers, and syncing the systems to ensure all the data is collected and it is being filed in an organized manor.
Upon departing we had a good test to make sure all of our gear was secured for sea, heading straight into 6-8m seas. It looks like there is a high-pressure system on the horizon, so it’s forecasted to have smooth sailing as we go through the Bering Straight this weekend.
Month: October 2018
And I am back to better internet. I had tried to wrote this blog post while we were out on the second leg of this cruise but the internet was spotty. A few rain storms came through and heavy cloud coverage impacting the satellites.
On this second leg of this past cruise we had Clio aboard. Clio is an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), that was shipped to the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences (BIOS) earlier this year from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI). This is the third time Clio has come aboard the Atlantic Explorer. It is being deployed at the BATS station, 45 miles (75 kilometers) off of Bermuda.
Maya and CLIO
Clio is operated by the scientist on board and can give up to a maximum depth of 3.7 miles (6 kilometers), working up to 12 -14 hours at a time. The AUV is required to travel vertical during its time in the water for long periods of time rather than horizontal and travel at a constant depth, which is more common on AUVs.
The purpose for Clio is to help gather samples for with biological and chemical analysis throughout the ocean water column. Once Clio is lowered into the water it will stop at certain depths, programmed by the scientists, collecting particles via pumps that suck the water through the filters. If all goes well during these dives, Clio could be used to collect data while other science deployments occur. Currently it is not possible to do to many deployments when a wire based deployment is in progress.
I have less than a week left here, it has all gone by too fast. I have been gaining so much information and learning the various aspects that marine technicians are responsible for on a research vessel. I have one more cruise before I head back home.
10/13/18 – 10/22/18
Week Five: Inport Dutch Harbor
This week we spent the majority of our time steaming back through the Bering Strait and Bering Sea. We saw the Diomede islands in daylight this time, which was amazing. The Big Diomede is Russia and the Little Diomede is the United States. We could also see mainland Alaska as we passed through the strait. Weather had been predicted to be a little sporty as we went through the Bering, but ended not being all that bad. We still had a couple loose ends to take care of for NOAA in two mooring recoveries south of St. Lawrence Island. The first mooring had conditions outside parameters to deploy a small boat, so the captain and chiefs decided they would release the mooring and pick it with a grapple and the aft a-frame. This proved to be really challenging as it was the first time in a very long time the Healy had done something like this. While this is standard on some UNOLS ships, the Healy is far larger and doesn’t have the manuverability that those ships have. It was an exciting recovery and you could really feel the whole crew getting into it. The conditions were challenging and the recovering was challenging and thus made the success all that much better. We ended passing the second mooring due to conditions not being favorable and that would conclude our full science operations. We were now on our way to pull into port in Dutch Harbor.
I spent my time on the bridge while we made our way into Dutch Harbor and to the pier. It was a cool site to see everyone up there anxious to finally pull in after 37 days underway. We pulled in around 1400 on October 18th.
The rest of the time spent in Dutch Harbor before I departed was spent doing some routine mantainence on our systems and improving some science seawater capabilities.
My time has come to an end on the Healy and with the crew of STARC. I enjoyed every minute of my internship aboard and had some unreal experiences and opportunities that do not come very often. Thank you for taking the time to read my blog and I hope you enjoyed hearing about our adventures in the realm of the Arctic Circle.
-Nick
October 13, 2018
1200 Local time
I am writing from picturesque Woods Hole, Massachusetts having come full circle to finish my internship at the exact location it began 6 months ago to the day. I have been land-based this past week assisting the WHOI Operational Support Services (OSS) group in setting up the International Marine Technicians Conference (INMARTECH) being hosted at Woods Hole this year. Within this brilliant community will be a handful of technicians I have had the pleasure of sailing with and I am looking forward to seeing them again on Monday. Today I am feeling particularly reflective and so, for this last sea-centered post, I am including a lot of links to various social media or data repository sites in the hopes that you can do your own exploring and stay current on any of the projects I mention that pique your interest.
Six months in I can confidently say that the most dynamic and interesting aspect of being a marine technician is that the needs of every science party differ widely. It is our responsibility to make sure that these operations happen smoothly and that the science party has what they need. On my first cruise in April on the R/V Neil Armstrong, research on continental shelf productivity included a whopping 175 CTD casts (still a personal record) as well as saltwater flow-thru and incubation chambers for grazing experiments, net tows, and lots of at-sea analysis going 24/7.
On the second science cruise on the R/V Roger Revelle, we assisted the ROV Jason engineering group to complete a series of winch and dive tests in preparation for a packed summer of Ocean Observatory Institute (OOI) cruises. It was so impressive to see the pilots controlling Jason and watch it land on the seafloor via onboard cameras. This was followed immediately by the NSF GeoPath project on the R/V Sally Ride. This third cruise focused around undergraduate and graduate students who were out there to learn about seafloor sampling and deployment and recovery of sampling equipment. We kept the students very busy with multicore sampling, sediment grabs, CTD casts, and microscopic analysis of the various organisms making their homes on the rocky seafloor – a muddy, messy delight!
Next up after the mud grabs was the California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations (CalCOFI) Spring sampling cruise. The organization was formed back in 1949 to investigate the collapse of the sardine fishery off the California coast, and they have an amazing repository of sampling reports and long-term ecological changes for this region. I took my own 12-hour technician shift for the first time on this cruise, which meant being responsible for all deck operations and data acquisitions from our various underway systems. It was a busy schedule to fulfill all 75 stations, and we had some unexpected excitement when we agreed to recover Anne, an ocean row boat from team Attack Poverty that was competing in the 2018 Great Pacific Race and had to be abandoned when one of the team members fell ill and had to be escorted to shore. Anne remained out on deck for the rest of the cruise and then was offloaded back in San Diego much to the relief and appreciation of the team, who met us at the dock.
After a rather bumpy ride up to Newport, Oregon we next set out on the MEZCAL cruise with some lovely and hard-working OSU students, technicians, and lead scientists. Through no one’s fault, this was the Murphy’s Law of science cruises. Every piece of over-the-side and underway equipment failed at one point, leading to a rather incredible learning experience for me requiring a lot of troubleshooting and rethinking of challenging load transfers and quick fabrication of new hardware. I think what was most impressive to me about this very busy time is the comradery that came out of it and the extra time and effort that people can dedicate to a task when called to do so.
A small break came at the perfect time and I got to see family and friends during a week at home. This was followed by 1.5 months on the USCG Cutter Healy as part of the Science Technical Support in the Arctic (STARC) program. I had the most amazing time crossing into the Arctic circle and seeing the wild beauty of the Aleutian Islands. The men and women serving on this vessel were a true pleasure to work with and the science team were incredibly dedicated and good-natured given the very busy station schedule that was set up with net tows, CTD casts, sediment grabs, coring, and the deployment and recovery of untethered moorings.
It was nice to be able to get my feet wet with mooring operations on the Healy, which prepared me a little bit for the Ocean Observatory Initiative (OOI) mooring extravaganza that was my most recent (and final) science cruise of this internship. Deck led by two of the most bad-ass technicians I sailed with, the multi-stage operation of deploying and recovering the varied platforms comprising the Coastal Endurance Array was like participating in a complicated dance with too many dancers crowded in too little of a space. Communication and role designation were key to keep everything going smoothly. Much to the delight of all, we fulfilled all the requirements and even managed to finish early.
What an experience, right? I’ve traveled thousands of miles, spent weeks upon weeks at sea, met dozens of bright and motivated scientists, worked with the best in the business, and would do it all over again in a heartbeat!
I recommend this opportunity to those with a passion for science, sailing, and engineering. If you are willing to put in the time and work then you will get so much out of it and be ready to enter the community with some unique experiences under your belt. I am very pleased to announce that I will be sailing as a marine technician with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) after the completion of this internship. There is so much more to learn and I am looking forward to working with this incredible team. I will continue to share my experiences and actively participate in this community. You can find me here – website – so let’s keep in touch!
My sincere thanks to the amazing people at MATE and UNOLS for this opportunity and to Scripps, STARC, and WHOI for the unforgettable experiences.
– Emily
10/06 – 10/13
Week Four: Steaming Towards Dutch
We have just one more SODA mooring to put in the water and we also have to deploy one last WIMBO and a AMOS float at a secondary ice floe location along the way. We were stuck in an ice floe for approximately 6 hours, which was definitely the longest we had been stuck throughout the duration of the ice cluster stations.
We started science ops for the WIMBO and AMOS floats on October 7tharound 1000. They each went extremely fast. Usually I had been out on the ice the majority of the time to help with the ITP, but for these deployments I just went out during the end to help finalize each deployment. In total, they took about three hours to deploy. After deployments were completed we took a group science photo in front of the bow.
After the deployments commenced we transited south to find a SODA C location. While we transited, Tony, Brett and I were working on the pumps, valves, and piping of the science seawater system down in the motor room. This was a project they had been working on for quite some time and we finally got it done. There are two forms of naming for each valve and the engineering department only had some best guesses as to matching the forms of naming. I sorted everything out and then relabeled every valve with both forms. I also taped each pipe line with orange, purple, or green electrical tape to signify which line was used for what (primary deicing, secondary deicing, uncontaminated science seawater). We ended up deploying SODA C successfully and then having to recover a navigational mooring and redeploy that. Overall we took a few more days to complete this all, but were still on track to pull into Dutch Harbor early on the 18thof October.
The science party had some glider problems and we spent an extra day or two recovering and then redeploying and then recovering some more in order to get them to communicate correctly with the navigational moorings.
More awesome nature news, we saw three polar bears swimming about 50 miles from ice edge and another 300 miles from solid land. It was absolutely amazing and you could hear them all barking as they got closer to the ship. Definitely the coolest experience I saw during the trip. 
-Nick
The R/V Atlantic Explorer has made its way home to the Bermuda Institude of Ocean Sciences (BIOS), thursday morning. I was up for the CTD cast at 2230 and then went to bed so that I could wake up in time for the ship to arrive at the dock. Once we arrived we waited for customs to clear us. As the ship was making its way back, Jillon showed me the various tasks that marine techs are responsible for at the end of a crusie. We also had to prepare for the ship to be dockside for the next five days. After being cleared by customs, the scientists and crew on shore were able to come on to the ship and retrieve the samples they had collected during the trip and bring them to the lab. The crew on the boat began the various tasks that had to be done during the demob of the ship. There was a bunch of activity as we hadn’t seen these people for the past two weeks. This is when I met the other marine techs, Rory and Mason, that I would be sailing with during the last three weeks of my internship.
I helped out the other marine techs take apart the CTD so that we could switch the sensors out. First we had to dump all of the water that was collected in the Niskin bottles, then we had to take the Niskin bottles off so that we could get to the sensors. I had never seen a CTD without all of the bottles on. Then began the task of unplugging all of the wires, labeling each one and protecting each of the plugs. During this process we made sure that everything was labeled clearly so that when we had to put it all back together, it would be much easier. It took us the rest of thursday to get all of the sensors off.
Maya working on the CTD.
Photo Credit: Jillon McGreal
On friday, the task was to get the new sensors back on. We took our time in putting the sensors back on, making sure that they were in the right places and were accurately put together. Electrical tape and zip ties were used to secure the tubes and rings holding the sensors into place. One of the tasks that I had was to write down which sensor was used and if it was attached to the primary or secondary set or sensors. This is beacuse each sensor as its own calibration and when we set it up on the computer we have to let it know which sensor is being used. Once all the sensors were in place it was time to plug everything back in and check to see if it was working. With the labeling done correctly yesterday it was easy to see where each of the connections went. Then it was time for a deck test. This is where we go up to the CTD computer, and turn it on to see if the CTD will communicate with the program. it was all good. During this test we checked to see if the sensors were reading numbers that made sense. According to the marine techs I was working with, it looked good. This brought us to the end of the day so we cleaned up and on Monday we will finish putting the CTD back together. There are a few more tasks that have to be done before we head out mid-week for the next cruise.
10 days before I depart up to Alaska to meet the USCGC Healy!
It is funny talking about Alaska to people in general conversation. I use to be stationed there with the US Coast Guard aboard the USCGC Hickory in Homer for a year, back in 2006-2007. When I lived there, I would always get the craziest questions like “Do you live in an igloo?, Do you have a pet penguin? and even Do people ride moose to work?”, so when I mention that I am meeting the ship in Dutch Harbor, everyone always tells “stories” of what they “know” (mostly from the Deadliest Catch), not realizing that I have actually been there before. I am more than ecstatic to go back. This will be my 4th time heading above the Arctic Circle, while participating on this cruise, but I have never been there this late in the season, so I am excited to see the differences from 12 years ago, and compare to my recent time in the High Arctic in Canada, Greenland, and Russia.
With the day light hours dwindling, temperatures dropping, and the Northern Lights beginning their dance high above, I am looking forward to working with the STARC program. Polar and deep-sea exploration has always been my passion, since there is so much we can learn from our oceans, a database can be created of information needed to better understand global change, filling gaps in the unknown to convey reliable and honest science that is foundational to providing prescience about the future. From rapidly receding glaciers and ice caps, to plastics being found everywhere, to oceans chemistry changing, there is a lot we need to still learn, to better help us prepare for the future.
With participation with the internship, I am also fortunate it enough to get to attend the RVTECH and INMARTECH conferences next week in Woods Hole. Luckily it is a short 45-minute drive from my residence! Looking forward to meeting everyone. I am so grateful for the opportunities this internship has already provided for continuing my education, training, and support, and I haven’t even left yet!
Time to start packing!
09/29 – 10/06
This week was filled with ice station deployments and more polar bears. There were three main ice stations in which the ITP, WIMBO and AOFB were all being deployed and then there were two secondary stations in which one more WIMBO was being deployed. The first ice station started off slowly as everyone was getting used to their roles on their teams and figuring out how to do everything. I was personally working with Peter Koski of Woods Hole to deploy the ITP. We first had to use a two-foot diameter auger to drill holes in the ice for the AOFB and then the ITP itself. At the first location the ice was over nine feet thick. This took quite a while to do and ultimately made the day long. The ITP itself is fairly straightforward to deploy. We connected four 70 pound weights to cable and then lowered the weights about 690 meters deep. Then the ITP was connected towards the top of the hole. We ran some tests on the Iridium communications and tested the ITP again. The ITP is set to profile the ice and will move itself up and down the cable to get certain data measurements at specific programmed depths. The scientists back at Woods Hole have decided the best method for surveying, so we were in charge of making sure it was deployed correctly. The cable also holds two Seabird Microcats (small CTD’s) which rest about one meter and two meters below the surface of the ice. Once the ITP was connected we transferred the cable load and then strung the rest of it through the buoy and then slowly lowered everything down. Our first time doing this whole process took about 8 or 9 hours. The second two times we were able to pre-drill the holes the day before and we had a better understanding of what we were doing, this cut down on our deployment time drastically. The image to the left is the finished ITP buoy and Iridium sensor deployed through ice.
While setting up for the ice stations we had a couple of small setbacks. During the second station, we picked a lot of the equipment to the ice with the crane and then someone from the bridge noticed a crack in the ice. This ended ice operations for that day and all the equipment had to be returned. During the second station we drifted about 50 yards aft of where we wanted to be and the bridge had to take the ship around a full circle in order to better position us to be connected to the floe. Both were small setbacks thankfully and did not eat up too much time.
We saw a mother and yearling polar bear about 300 yards off the port side of the ship during the morning of the third ice station. It was an amazing sight to see as the sun was rising and the polar bears were just crossing over our path we cut in the ice. Pretty amazing to see these animals above 80 degrees north in the Arctic.
The science party seems a little pressed for time, and as I was saying earlier, there were setbacks during the mooring deployments that ate up some of our spare days. After cranking out these ice stations though, I think we are in good shape to get done on time or even early. We are unable to pull into Dutch Harbor for port early, but there will not be as much of a rush to get science ops done.
-Nick
We have arrived in Puerto Rico! The first leg of this cruise has come to an end. During this past 8 days I have held the night shift (1500-0300) with my mentor, Nick. This was an adjustment since I am normally more of a morning person, but I made it through. Sleeping most of the day until my shift began later in the day.
During this cruise the main piece of equipment deployed was the CTD, where it would be deployed down to the bottom of the ocean. As we got closer to Puerto Rico the depths we were sending the CTD down were in the 5000 meters range. Our last station where we deployed the CTD was in the Puerto Rico Trench, which is located on the boundary between the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean and has maximum depth of 8,648 meters. Although when we got here, there we only sent the CTD down to 6000 meters, since that was the maximum depth for some of the senors we had it. Other deployments that were done during this leg were zooplankton tows and saito-pumps.
CTD being deployed
During the times that were transiting to the next station or while we wer wating for a CTD to come back to the surface, I worked on raspberry pi. This is a small single-board computer that is used to help learn about programming though various projects. I was able to make a light turn on and off along with various other projects, using linux and python, two computer coding languages. I am still just beginning to understand them, but through the practice of the different prrojects I am understanding a lot more than I started out knowing (which was none).
Maya working on Raspberry Pi Raspberry Pi breadboard set up
Image taken by Nick Mathews
We are have the rest of today and the morning of tomorrow off. Then it is time to head back to Bermuda.