My name is Ken and I will be an intern assisting with the upcoming routine overhaul of the HOV Alvin for the next 7 months.
I’m a undergraduate robotics student and most recently built a USV for mapping small lakes, pictured below. I have some experience with boats and ships, previously sailing aboard the Sea Education Association’s (SEA) Corwith Cramer and Robert C Seamans as an engineer. But this will be my first time working with a submersible.
I have dreamed of working with Alvin for many years and am very excited for this opportunity. Tomorrow I drive down to Woods Hole, MA and early next week I meet the Alvin Team and begin my internship.
My first week aboard the R/V Sikuliaq has flown by! After arriving in Seward, Alaska, I leapt at the opportunity to do a bit exploring. Seward is a beautiful town with a lot of history, but it’s quiet this time of year as the tourist season winds to a close.
The weather cleared up as the Sikuliaq got underway! The extended maintenance period at the dock in Seward turned out to be a blessing in disguise: the delay prevented us from sailing through an intense storm cell in the Bering Sea. So, we began our transit that would take us through Unimak Pass, along the western coast of Alaska, and eventually through the Bering Strait and across the Arctic Circle.
Today is day 8 of our transit. Winds around 30 knots have been whipping up the waves and slowing our progress towards the Bering Strait– and the turbulence was enough to knock my sea legs right out from under me! I have noticed that the color of the sea has changed the further north we have gone; I have some theories but if anyone happens to know why this is, I would love to learn!
During the transit, I have been getting acquainted with the ship, the crew, and my duties and responsibilities as a Marine Technician. Some projects I’ve tackled so far are installing and calibrating sensors on the CTD array, replacing batteries in universal power system banks, and learning the daily maintenance of tools like the uncontaminated seawater system that allow for the continuous collection of valuable environmental data. In the next week or so, I expect that we will have crossed the Arctic Circle and reached the operations area; I hope to see some ice fields and maybe a polar bear (from a distance.)
Hi everyone! As a long-time follower of this blog, I am very excited to be sharing my upcoming experience aboard the R/V Sikuliaq as a Marine Technician Intern!
There’s not much ocean to be found in Missouri, but I make do.
My name is Mackenzie Hilburn. I love visiting new places, jamming out on my bass guitar, and watching/reading/writing/all things horror! Little known fact about me: I am afraid of deep water. In spite of this (or maybe because of it!) I have always had a profound love for the ocean. Vibrant shallow reefs, bleak and mysterious abyssal plains, teeth-chatteringly frigid polar shores– every part of Earth’s largest habitat is fascinating to me. My dream is to explore every unseen corner of the oceans; in other words, to boldly go.
Photo from a prior expedition; I absolutely love being out at sea!
I’m on the edge of my seat waiting for the beginning of this expedition! No small part of my excitement is due to the research cruise objectives, which have to do with the seasonal formation of coastal ice and how it affects the strength and frequency of waves impacting other coastal regions. This is a subject that is particularly close to my own heart; you can read about the specifics and further objectives here.
A large part of my excitement also comes from the fact that this will be my first time visiting Alaska! Earlier this year I had the incredible experience of sailing aboard Ocean Exploration Trust’s EV Nautilus in an expedition to the Mariana Islands backarc. In terms of geography, climate, and my own personal learning objectives, these expeditions are in such stark contrast, and I definitely intend to take this opportunity to broaden my experience in the field of marine engineering on the whole.
I just hope the winter jacket I ordered arrives before I have to travel!
This week I finished up my last days at sea, transiting from Astoria, Oregon, to San Diego, California. We had some Woods Hole donors join us in place of the scientists so they could see the vessel and Alvin. We also had another cookout on deck to enjoy the weather since we were making pretty good time to port.
Transit work wasn’t quite as fun as the dive days; we’ve been packing nearly everything from the ship, including the hold, for offload. The amount of equipment the team keeps on board is astounding—and everything has oil on it. So, I did some of the not-so-glamorous but completely necessary work of cleaning various valves and hardware so they could be neatly packed and shipped back to Massachusetts for the maintenance period. Since the work has been a little slow with all the packing, I got a tour of the engine room with the donors. It was fascinating to see all the machinery the ship uses to operate and the power required to run science operations. Apparently, the ship had been recently refurbished, which involved swapping the engines. To do this, they cut a hole in the hull of the vessel and rewelded it. It now uses two primary diesel engines to run electric motors. During the maintenance, the ship replaced six generators with four newer ones and implemented a single bus bar for redundancy and engine efficiency. During this time, they also added a bow thruster.
One of the highlights during the transit was seeing a pod of hundreds of dolphins swimming next to the ship and at the bow—seriously, I have never seen so many dolphins at once! As we were all on the bow enjoying the view of the sunset and wildlife, a SpaceX rocket was launched, which we had a perfect view of. It was truly an amazing evening and one of my top memories from the cruise.
We arrived in port at 9:30 a.m. at Scripps. It was, again, super cool to see the docking process. Just as before, a pilot came aboard to help the captain navigate the channel, but what made this unique was how the ship was maneuvered. Due to a bend in the channel, the captain sailed the ship so that the bow was nearly perpendicular to the dock—only about 30 feet away—and then used the bow thruster to turn on a dime, almost 360 degrees. It was impressive. Since there’s a Navy base near port, we also saw a huge aircraft carrier go by on the way in, along with several jets taking off.
This is my first time on the West Coast, so after work I’ve been making an effort to explore. I went out for sushi with some members of the team and walked a beautiful path along the water to get there. I’ll definitely be doing some more exploring as I wrap up the internship—with only one week left.
San Diego is here, and compared to the relative slowness and lull of the transit leading up to our arrival (we were out of packing boxes halfway through and couldn’t really get much offloading work done after that) I’m glad that things have started to pick up. We’ve been flitting around packing oceanographic instruments and Alvin hardware into shipping containers to be hauled off by the ship cranes.
We saw dolphins again at the same time the rocket went off which was an absolutely incomprehensible experience to live through
On our way to port we spotted what I assume is a SpaceX rocket launching Starlink sattellites from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in Santa Barbara. I’m pretty sure I heard the sonic boom go off as it was going into orbit. It was a neat coincidence that we were at the right place at the right time when this happened.
The captain and the chief mate let me pilot the ship for a little while which was a lot more difficult and nervewracking than I thought it would be. You can control the Z-drives that rotate the propellers 360 degrees from the ship’s bridge, and you have to manage your speed of rotation by angling them just right so that you can get to where you’re going. There’s a lot of things to keep track of, and even when you point the vessel in the right direction it’s easy for a large wave or swell to start pushing you slightly off course. Changing the rate of rotation isn’t super responsive either, so you have to be very careful not to turn too quickly and overshoot. I had fun though! It was an excellent experience.
They call me Snake Wake due to the way I sail in erratic zigzag motions
In the San Diego port, there seems to be a navy dolphin training facility next to us, which is crazy because I genuinely thought they stopped training dolphins for military purposes after the Cold War. I assumed it was military dolphins anyway, considering the entire region south of us is a naval base and I literally saw dolphins hop around in these little sectioned-off areas in the facility. Insane.
The dolphin training facility. This can’t be real, right?
After we fully docked, it was actually time to get to work for once. There was a lot of Alvin paraphernalia we had to haul on shore such as the two lead-acid batteries in the vehicle (as well as the one spare in our battery hold), various cargo containers full of cameras, scientific equipment, lights, metal frames and hardware, and more.
Lifting a cargo container with the crane
Actual crane(s)
I did also get to explore San Diego a bit. The view from our dock is already pretty good, and the crew and I have gone into the neighboring towns and downtown districts a few times after work just to see what’s out there. It does take around 15 minutes by car to go downtown and we don’t have a lot of rental cars available, so going there is mostly reserved to special occasions or weekends. I can confirm Mexican food down here is as good as they say it is.
Downtown view at night
I just think this is a cinematic shot
who does this fella think he is
There was a great arcade here, highly recommend
I don’t really have much more to say about our work since it is mostly just packing and shipping of various items until the finish line, but I’ll keep you all updated if anything of note occurs. Look forward to my final post (or penultimate post? It’s unclear).
