Month: June 2023

Our cruise retrieving Ocean Bottom Seimometers (OBS) is ahead of schedule. We’ve spent the last four days recovering OBSs around-the-clock.  As the boat floats by the sensor, the scientists attach a line to it, so that it can be raised onto the deck using the winch. During my shift, I operate the winch for the science crew. My skills have definitely improved over the last few days!

On Monday, we had successfully collected 36 out of the 40 OBSs deployed; we were unable to communicate with 4 of the instruments, making them impossible to release from the bottom or recover. With 90% of the sensors on board we began our transit back to Florida late Monday night, two days ahead of schedule.  

We will arrive back to Cape Canaveral (Florida) around 10:00AM July 1st, just an hour before the next SpaceX launch, which will be at 11:11AM! I can’t thank everyone enough for this great cruise. Shout out to Todd and the science crew for the memories.. I’ll be back soon enough..

 

We left Cape Canaveral (Florida) last Saturday, June 17, 2023. It took us roughly 5-days to transit to our survey site, which lies about 60 miles (~100km) south of the Cayman Islands. This is the site where scientists from Scripps Institute of Oceanography placed 40 Ocean Bottom Seismometeres (OBS) last Decemeber. The sensors sat on the ocean floor for approximately 6 months gathering data on the movement of the Earth under the seafloor. This site is located over two techonic plates that slowly move away from each other, increasing the elevation of the surrouding seafloor.

The 40 OBSs will be retrieved one at a time by sending a burn signal to the instrument, which releases the OBS from the bottom. They take anywhere from 50 min – 2.5 hours to rise, depending on the depth. Once the OBS reaches the surface, we use its radio beacon, its red flag, and its white light, to locate it. The boat pulls up next to it, where scientists attach at least two lines to it. One of the lines is attached to the winch, which is used to lift the OBS onto the deck. 

My job, as marine tech, is to operate the winch, lifting the OBS out of the water and onto a platform on the deck. It is fairly easy to use with only two levers; one lever moves the A-frame in and out, and the other moves the line up and down. Once on deck, we can retrieve its inner data and move onto the next OBS. We will continue in this fachion until all the OBSs have been retrieved. The other marine tech and I operate on 12-hour shifts (2:00-2:00) so that we can work around the clock with the scientists. We hope to have all OBSs onboard by Wednesday (6/28).

 

Week 4 & 5

 

May 28th

Today I did inventory on the streamer cable modules onboard the vessel and observed data for the rest of the evening. 

 

May 29th

Happy Memorial Day everyone! I woke up to the whole crew on the bridge deck grilling hotdogs and burgers. There was also cornhole and music being played while we all enjoyed our lunch. It was a great moment for everyone. After lunch I assisted Riley with moving winch cables so we could reroute them to the wet lab. After, me and Riley removed old deck units from the mainlab and placed them in the storage room above the lab. 

 

May 30th

Filled out more navigation logs and observation logs and updated certain data sheets. 

 

May 31st

Fairly easy day. I filled out logs and plotted survey lines for lines 46 and 47 on the ORCA planner software. 

 

June 1st

Today I filled out three more logs and plotted 2 more lines. I created the last log for the last survey line which would be completed overnight. 

 

June 2nd 

Today I woke up and immediately reported to the streamer deck to join the recovery of the streamer cable. We ended up recovering 12km of streamer cable because we had to deploy 6km more of streamer to set up for the next survey job. My job was to detach the digibirds off the streamer and remove the batteries out of each one before I placed them on the rack. I did this for nine hours and spent the remainder of my shift cleaning the streamer deck. I also ended my day doing inventory on all the digi birds on deck. We are now sailing towards Morehead NC right now. 

 

June 3rd 

Woke up to the boat already docked in Morehead, NC so we could unload and load some equipment and switch out some crew personnel. Claire (another mate intern) got onboard and introduced herself to the crew. After Claire, Emma and I explored Morehead, were able to get a scoop of ice cream!

 

June 4th

Today was supposed to be our first day of coring but we have sailed into five meter seas. Claire and I ran around the boat picking up stuff and strapping down more equipment. THe seas were so rough that Todd (our new mentor) told Claire and I that the conditions were unsafe to work in. 

 

June 5th

All the sediment coring spots were placed off the coast of North Carolina and South Carolina. Today we sailed to the two north coring spots so we could dodge the southward storm. Our first core was a challenge because we were in the middle of the Gulf Stream with a 3.5 knot current. The core was not stable while dropping through the water which led to us missing our exact coring target. Yet both of our cores were successful in collecting sediment. The scientists were fast to extract sediment out of the cores to test for evidence of gas in the sediment. They would also x-ray the cores and scan them for different materials. 

 

June 6th

Today at the start of my shift I found out that the winch had loose cables from the company that we rented the winch from. We had to coil miles of three string wire cable from the wench so we could rewind back in the winch tighter than we found it. This process started at 5 am and didn’t finish until 6:30pm. After the winch was fixed we were able to do our first piston core. While dropping our piston core our bow thruster started malfunctioning which didn’t allow us to keep the boat stationary enough to let the temperature probes that were attached on the core to collect a temperature reading. Temperature probes were placed on the cores to collect temperatures at different depths of the sediment. The sediment in the core was still collected thankfully. 

 

June 7th

We were able to complete four core drops with no sediment collection but temperature readings were able to be collected each time. For four drops we punctured the seafloor for 8 minutes to get a temperature reading. Claire and I had stayed up late to see the last coring operation of the day through but had to stop all deck operations. At 2 am due to high wind and rain the coring team decided it was too dangerous for deck operations to continue. 

 

June 8th 

When I reported on to the deck we were in the middle of recovering another core when around 2:30 pm the winch stopped working. The core was hanging 1500 meters in the water with a broken winch. The technicians, engineers and core guys got together and worked all day on figuring out how to fix the winch. Luckily by midnight we were able to get the winch fixed and recover the first core of the day. Sadly all the time spent on the winch led to us missing other coring spots. Due to loss of time and a troublesome winch coring, operations were over. We had started a 36 hour transit to Port Canaveral FL. 

 

June 9th

Today was a transit day so I spent most of my time cleaning the main deck while helping the coring team clean up their equipment as well. 

 

June 10th 

We arrived at Port Canaveral but were unable to enter until an available pilot could sail us in. A pilot boat was able to reach us around 4 pm and drop off a port pilot who took command at the bridge and got us in. I was asked to help with lines off the starboard bow of the vessel with the chief mate and bosun. Once we were tied up everyone changed into clean clothes and went into town to celebrate a successful research mission at sea! 

 

June 11th

At port helping with mobilization.

 

June 12th

Goodbye R/V Marcus G. Langseth!   

 

  

We arrived at Cape Canaveral, Florida, last Friday (06/09) seeing dolphins, sea turtles, and sharks on our way in. The first cruise has ended and the crew and I have spent the last few days demobilizing the ship and removing all the science gear. It will likely be taken to a new port to board a new vessel. The best part was that we arrived just in time for the SpaceX launch! So on Monday morning at 3:10AM, most of the crew climbed to the highest part of the ship to get the best view possible of the launch. It only lasted about 5 minutes, but it was something I will never forget.

We will be in Cape Canaveral until 06/17, completing maintance, conducting land surveys, and loading the new science gear for the next job. Our big task as marine technicians was to perform a gravity tie and land tie survey, these are done to calibrate our gravimeter. Aboard the R/V Langseth we have a BGM Gravimeter, that measures the gravity in mGal. This instrument must be recalibrated everytime we arrive to a new port to account for machine bias, this entails going to a known survey site on land to re-measure the Gravity, then comparing it to our ship’s gravimeter to reduce the bias. This in-and-of-itseft proved to be the most trying job yet, as all the sites were closed off behing highly restricted areas (one survey site was on Space Force land). It took us 5 days to access a site, only after acquiring permission from the Port Authority. 

Our next step is to meet the oncoming scientists from Scripps to onbard their equiptment for the next cruise. We will be traveling down to around the Cayman Islands to retrieve sensors placed 6 months previously. 

 

My first week aboard the R/V Langseth was definitely an adventure. After the initial seasickness ebbed, I was able to dive right in. I learned that science at-sea is best decribed as a scramble: things rarely go according to plan, and often 10 things have to go wrong before anything goes right. That being said, I’ve learned so much from the technicians, students, and scientists; they really amaze me every day with their resourcefulness and ability to think on their feet. 

We’ve been able to collect 9 deep-sea sediment cores: 4 gravity cores and 5 piston cores. The crew has been working around the clock to extract the cores, sort them, and process them. Students from OSU even have a CT scan machine aboard to take a profile of all the cores. Once docked, the cores will be sent to OSU (Oregon State University), the Univerity of Texas at Austin, and La Rochelle University, for further sampling.

Unforunatley, the first leg of the cruise is soon over and so many of the amazing people I’ve met will disembark (except Todd). Shout out to the coring team for letting me follow them around all week. I’m looking forward to meeting my new crew for the next cruise!