Month: November 2018

Last week we were wrapping up our science operations, this week we are wrapping up the science season. After we successfully recovered the mooring, we went into full steam back to Dutch Harbor. Within hours of wrapping up with science, the USCGC Healy was called into action and used as a refueling station for a rescue mission for one of the Coast Guard helicopters, which went late into the night. Semper Paratus, Always Ready! The hard working men and women of the Healy have definitely earned their well deserved rest after this 6+ month deployment, wrapping up 3 successful science missions in the Alaskan High Arctic.

After the science party departed in Dutch Harbor, Unalaska, it went from a busy beehive to a ghost town. The marine science technician’s office is near our work quarters, so we still see them, and we have the occasional watch stander walking thru on their rounds, but nothing like it was before. The deck team is busy with flight training operations, instead of on-deck running CTD, XCTD, and Van Veen deployments. We are not calling down to the engineers requesting pumps to be turned on and off; we are not out on deck observing science evolutions. We went from the science labs being full of scientists running and analyzing their water samples, to an empty compartment. We went from having minimum two STARC techs working 24/7, to only two of us onboard working 0800 to 1800, packing up and preparing for the overhaul. I have the entire science sleeping quarters to myself, since the other STARC Tech and C4IT are on the 3^rddeck. I have never gotten to say I have an entire deck aboard a ship to myself! Yesterday was Thanksgiving, and what a great feast the culinary specialists put out for us. The moral is highly affected by the quality of dishes the chefs put out, and we definitely lucked out with the delicious meals prepared onboard.  I am not even saying that because the CSCS (Culinary Specialist Senior Chief) was my A-school instructor. 

It is hard to make cleaning up, breaking down, organizing, and packing sound fun and exciting, but something that has to be done, and you actually learn a lot taking apart the equipment, especially in how it works. When breaking down the CTD’s I discovered that one of the brands of hose clamps shared my name, but of course they spelt it wrong!

Tomorrow we are due to arrive in Juneau and that’s when I will catch my flight and head back home. I want to thank the MATE program for this amazing opportunity to come onboard the USCGC Healy, to learn with STARC, WHOI, and the U.S. Coast Guard. I am grateful to have been given the chance to help build upon my academic background through hands on training, and add to my experience in being the support of ocean exploration. I am always striving to challenge myself and continue my education to make myself a valuable contribution to the next generation of ocean explorers. In the near future I wish continue my education and eventually obtain PhD in Exploration Sciences and Technology. I had a great time, and it was a pleasure meeting with and working with everyone. 
Fair winds and following seas! Time to get some rest before my next expedition!

It certainly has been a game of ping-pong going back and forth across the Beaufort Sea. Last week when we were starting our transit back West, and near Utqia?vik (formerly Barrow) where we stumbled upon the formation of winter water, and when you stumble across a scientific phenomena, you to try and gather as much data as possible, in this case we needed to best document how it spreads across the Beaufort slope. So we headed back East, filling in the gaps between our CTD line transects, then we headed back West due to time constraints, and then because the Coast Guard crew was so amazingly efficient at the CTD cast evolutions, they bought us more time to head back East! I also want to mention, this week we also experienced our shortest days with just about 2 hours of daylight, and our coldest temperatures yet, dropping down to -21°C (-5°F) with -28°C (-18°F) wind chill. Bravo Zulu Captain and Crew of the Healy!!

The Franklin Mountains of the Brooks Range on the North Slope borders the Beaufort Sea. So on a clear day, during our two hours of sunlight, and our 6-ish hours of twilight, the majestic mountains were our backdrops. Even if it wasn’t clear, it was snowing beautiful, big, fluffy snowflakes. If you are a snowboarder like I am, this just kills you. I teach snowboarding at Rhode Island’s number one ski area, Yawgoo Valley, I also organize and lead the snowboarding staff as an Instructor Trainer and Snowboard Hill Captain, so I am very passionate about the sport. Yawgoo is pretty flat, with 95m (310ft) of elevation, so when waking up to fresh powder on the decks every day, and with the ocean between you and the soaring mountains, it’s torture! Also getting news that back home that they just got their first snow of the season, I can hear my snowboard calling my name! I am also a polar and ice diver, and happen to be one of the members of the Sedna Epic Expedition, where we are snorkeling the Northwest Passage in 2020, so between no snowboarding and no scuba diving for the past 4 weeks, I am going through withdrawals! But the reality is, the mariner in me is still just as excited being on a ship up in the High Arctic in the beginning of winter, I am truly lucky. People always assume just because the water is cold, that there is no life, and high latitudes the water is always murky because it LOOKS dark. Oh on the contrary, the ocean is teeming with life! Winter in New England is my favorite time to go diving because the water is so much clearer, and instead of the average 3m of viability you can easily have up to 10m+, and unless you are at the foot of a glacier, or the mouth of a river same generally goes for the High Arctic, with the added bonus of icebergs.

During our transits back and forth between lines, gave me some “down time” to get back to work on creating and/or updating SOPs (standard order procedures). My learning style, I am a do-er. I learn best by actually working on a skill, so if there isn’t a current opportunity to work on a task hands on, the next best option for me is to do a mock trial, allowing me to record observations, skills and steps. Especially when it comes to using different software. So far I created SOPs for importing Ice Imagery on QINSy, and updated XBT & XCTD cast procedures, and now creating processing procedures for POS MV, and updating Seapath.

Photo credit: Sarah Kaye, C4IT
With only one more science stop to recover a mooring, we are full steam back to Dutch Harbor. One day and wake up before the science party disembarks, and then we will continue our journey to Juneau, Alaska. We will be disassembling all the equipment for the end of the science season and the ships dry-dock. Good-bye the world above the Arctic Circle, hope to see you soon!
November 17th is when Utqia?vik will have their last sunset, as it begins the two months of Arctic night.

 It is funny on how many countdowns there are going on aboard the vessel. 8 Days until we arrive back in Dutch Harbor, 14 days until we arrive in Juneau, and 20 days until the ship arrives back in Seattle [15 days until I arrive back home in New England]. I can’t forget to mention it’s # days and a wake up.
We did get a nice change of pace this week switching from CTD casts to XCTDs, at least for a day and a half. Instead of an evolution involving several deckhands, deploying a large cylinder with several pipes (niskin bottles) designed to capture water at different depths, along with an ADCP (acoustic doppler current profiler- which measures how fast water is moving across an entire water column) and a few other pieces of oceanographic equipment, we are able to test for CTD (conductivity, temperature, and depth), turbidity (clarity), and get nutrient, chemical, and salinity measurements from the water samples. So the XCTD saves a lot of time when trying to get a snapshot of an area, since it involves only three people, dropping a single probe down into the water column. It records conductivity, temperature, and pressure. So when deploying the XCTDs we stumbled across some really exciting data. We were capturing the formation of winter water and how it spreads across the Beaufort slope! So we went back to CTD casts for a “higher resolution” of this phenomenon. 

Photo Credit: MST2 Cory Padron
We did our deep CTD cast this week. This is always everyone’s favorite event, getting to decorate and shrink Styrofoam cups! The cups started at 9 cm tall and shrunk to about 3.75 cm. They were sent down to just over a mile (1.1 miles) below the surface to 1784m (5853 feet)! I got carried away making three different cups.

I also got to work on splicing cables. It’s been awhile since I did soldering, so it was a nice to get down and dirty and do some precision work with my hands. I also re-terminated some CAT5 cables; this was a first for me. The wires are organized inside the cable white and color with solid color (ex. WO/O, WB/B, WG/G, and WBr/Br). Somewhere along the lines, someone inventing the terminal end thought that it would be a good idea to switch two of the white/color cables in the terminal end (WO/O, WG/B, WB/G, WBr/Br). Tell me how that makes sense?! I ended up having to splice the cable ends twice, because of that mix up. Now I will remember the order every time I terminate CAT5 cables, and to check and double check the guide, instead of looking at the black and white picture for reference.

On our trek back west, coming in close to land, we also came back into cell phone service off the coast of Alaska’s North Slope. It is funny when your phone hits 3g and notifications come streaming in, two plus weeks worth. I guess a lot of people didn’t listen to my voicemail saying I was out to sea for six weeks, or all the away messages I put up on my email and social media. [Verizon, I use to have service in Dutch Harbor 12 years ago, and now I do not, but I do have service off shore the coast of the North Slope?!? Thank you!] 
After three weeks, we finally had an amazing Aurora sighting! The irony is the forecast said it was a low probability (2 out of 10). The past couple of days we have entered our “W” transect. We call it that because it’s the shape of a W, so we have had a pretty solid CTD cast routine, with time between casts ranging between 15 to 30 minutes apart. It also was extremely cold this week with wind chill temperatures hitting below zero, so my morning routine heading to watch has been walk down to the mess deck, get some hot water for my tea, and head back to the lab through the interior of the ship. After I get bundled up in my foulies, I head outside in the darkness to stare at the sky in hopes to see the Aurora, or the ice illuminated around the ship until the start of my watch at 6 am. Yesterday was warm, in the mid twenties, similar was predicted for today, and something just made me want to go “walk to work outside”. So happy that I did, because as soon as my feet hit the deck, I looked up to see the dancing green stream across the sky! Some call it luck, some call it fate, either way I was so excited!
We are also up to 8 polar bear sightings! We still haven’t seen any walrus’ or whales, hopefully soon now that we are near the ice edge. 

Living aboard a ship is nothing new to me, being a Coast Guard Veteran, having steamed around the Antarctic Peninsula and Scotia Arc with the Geological Society of America, sailed around New Zealand, with SEA Semester’s Global Ocean Program, I even have served as expedition staff aboard a Russian Nuclear Ice Breaker to the Geographic North Pole.  As a licensed captain, having worked on charters, boat deliveries, and even fishing, diving, and service support vessels, I have put on many miles at sea (almost four years documented sea time last time I checked). I have spent time out on the Okeanos Explorer as a mapping watch stander with the Explorer-in-Training program out in the Western Pacific before, but the experience of living and working aboard a research vessel always feels new to me. Having a “9-5 schedule” let alone while at sea, is completely the opposite of what I am use to. From working several seasonal jobs and employment contracts, my land schedule is always changing day to day. While at sea, I am use to rotating watch schedules, on top of a daily work schedule. Serving as a captain of vessel you are always on call, but here I worked every day from 0600 to1800 (6am to 6pm) ships time. Meals are always served at the same time. The daily duties change, but the repetition does not. The closest thing to standard routine I am use to is when my animals (puppy, dog, cat, and parrot) wake me up each morning. It’s a nice change of pace (aside from missing my fur balls). When your schedule is predictable, you can get a lot more accomplished when you are smart with your time, so I am quickly knocking out tasks (such as updating SOPs and work manuals) and working on new projects to keep busy.
If you haven’t been following, I am serving my internship 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 Cutter Healy, a polar icebreaker. The primary focus of our work is moorings and CTD casts. CTD stands for conductivity, temperature, and depth (pressure) of seawater. To paint a picture, we are around 72° North, in the Arctic Ocean. Our current area is off Prudhoe Bay, North Slope in Alaska, in November. So ice is forming all around us, day is turning to night, and temperatures are dropping. Right now we have about 5 hours of daylight. Sun rises at lunch and sets at dinner. We are limited to recovering and deploying moorings during daylight hours (obvious safety reasons), so that does put some restrictions on our CTD cast transects (we have to sometimes break away to go recover a mooring).

The portable heater in our CTD compartment is broken, and so is the back up. The space is still heated, but pulling equipment out from the water, even just a minute, below freezing temperatures with wet equipment, is not good. We have been getting around the lack of heat by flushing the pumps with room temperature salt water, then slowly adding warmer saltwater, to bring them up from below freezing every time the CTD cast comes back aboard, so it is ready for redeployment. We also use a heat gun (much like a hair dryer) on some of the equipment parts to unfreeze them, being extremely careful, not to damage any of the sensors. Our saltwater flow system on the ship was even getting clogged with ice chunks. We’ve been busy.

Photo Credit: Brandon D’Andrea
Still nothing is better than stepping outside, in the clean, crisp, Arctic Air and watching jaw-dropping icescapes. We have been lucky enough to catch a glimpse of an Arctic fox out on the ice, ring seals sunning, and even a polar bear mother with her two [one year old] cubs, not to mention seabirds. We also got a glimpse of the Aurora, peeking between the clouds one night. We are entering a high-pressure system, and with a waning moon, it will give us more optimal conditions for viewing, fingers crossed! The sunset on Halloween blessed us with a sight of perihelia sun arcs! Also known as sundogs and ice halos. Think of a rainbow, but the arcs are reversed. When you see sundogs, it’s a sailor’s weather prediction that snow is coming, and lo and behold, it started to snow an hour later. 
We are continuing to push east, as far as the ice allows us. Stay warm!