Author: Amanda Dostie Page 2 of 3

I am approaching my final weeks at LUMCON and I cannot help but to feel melancholy. While it is exciting to move on to new endeavors, it is sad to leave a crew and ship I have grown so fondly of. I will be riding my last cruise solo, and will be the only technician on board. I am excited to work independently, but even more excited to spend time with the crew before I leave.

On my final cruise, we worked with an organization named fugro- whose mission was to retreive, service and deploy a weather buoy. In addition to assisting with deck duties, I spent a majority of my time assissting in the deep CTD casts.

Fortunately no major issues, that I could not problem solve, occured- aside from some small monitor and electrical failures. During buoy operations, our aft driving station monitor blew out. Luckily our captain was able to drive without them, but the issue proved to be an exercise in futilty because after reterminating all the RJ-45 cables and rewiring our VGA cables, I found the monitor had simply gone bad.

Prior to the screens going out, our gfi outlet tripped when both our hydraulic crane and winch were powered on. The outlet tripping resulted in several computers and breakers down. The problem was easily fixed by resetting our systems, but the monitor was not completed until after the cruise. Aside from a few scratches, it was exciting to solve issues independently and I felt proud when I finally conquered an issue. 

Leaving LUMCON is a bittersweet experience. I am happy to move onto new endeavors, but saddened to leave friends who taught me so much. During my internship I have learned and grown immensely. I say with a chuckle- I did not know how to properly fasten a ratchet strap prior to my internship. Now, I have a well-rounded knowledge of tools, scientific instruments, practical engineering, computer softwares and I can even terminate most cables. I am very proud of myself and to this program, for the accomplishments I have achieved. I am excited to see what Bermuda holds for me!

A picture of our group from Dr. Leila Hamdan’s multi-coring cruise! Though it was my first time using the multi-core, I learned a lot through troubleshooting and working with both the science and boat crew alike.

Before our incliment weather abruptly hit, I spent the weekend on the boat getting some side projects done. Our hold in the tech lab was severely rusted and corroded. I hit it with a needle gun for the day, removed a majority of the rust and painted it over with an anti-rusting paint enamel. I also serviced the CTD, fixed a mast light and several of our AIS speakers along the boat.

Monday into Tuesday is when our weather and flooding began to hit. LUMCON, as a result, has been shut down for several days as I, and a small crew, watches over the boat and premises. Fingers crossed that we will get out soon!

The back of our computer control panel       Can you spy Wilma? She made it and was set free!

-or as I like to think- my wire castle.

PC: Jason Bradley

Brittle Star                                 Sea Cucumber- ventral view                 Glass Sponge

  Stone Coral                               Translucent Sea Cucumber                     Flat Worm

   Stalk Anenome                       Translucent  Sea Cucumber                Squat Lobster

After completing our event in Baton Rouge we made our way to Morgan City, where we met several workers at the Oceaneering facility. For many years, Oceaneering has centered its ROV work in the Gulf of Mexico, laying pipelines for oil rigs. However, due to a dying industry, they have shifted their energy towards research endeavors. We will be working alongside oceaneering workers, scientists and LUMCON’s director- no pressure! The Mississippi Canyon is a region located wtihn the Gulf of Mexico-where the Deep Water Horizon tragedy occurred only several years ago. The mission of our ROV cruise is focused on deep-sea biodiversity. We will explore many sites, including the Deep Water Horizon region and several other shipwrecks. In addition to ROV footage and collection, our scientists onboard will be conducting several “woodfall” stations using a basket rigged to our side winch (see top description).

Our first day in transit set the tone for the rest of our cruise- full of problems and excitement! We spent a majority of the first day refueling and rewatering, while also fixing and ordering a port navigation light that went out during the night. During our cruise, we deployed both the ROV and a steel basket filled with logs off our side winch. However, the memo that we would be using a basket did not make it up the chain of command, and many crew members found themselves dumbfounded and flustered by the event. Because Oceaneering made our floating tether for our basket too long, we spent a majority of our trip retooling a method for disconnecting and reconnecting the basket at the bottom. The idea is to deploy the basket and ROV to the bottom with transducers on the basket, ROV and site mooring. The mooring will be dropped at our log location and the ROV then must open the basket with a robotic arm and insert logs into the sediment for later recovery. The mooring will stay down below for later return.

In short, the basket caused much more trouble before it became better. Deploying both a basket and ROV off our boat- which is not a DP vessel- is very dangerous as wires can become tangled in our wheels. Because of this, the Captain held position manually our whole trip. After a few days of refitting, and very very long nights, we found several issues wrong with our side winch. Our side winch has not been used this deep (2000m+) in a very long time. While deploying our basket, our chief engineer found several kinks at 1800m of line. We had to immediately pull and address the winch issue, which could not be fixed. Luckily, we reterminated our basket wire and fitted it to our other side winch- which worked swimmingly! Posted below is a photo of the infamous basket! Which I may add a small ancetdote- we found a lizard in there! The lizard must have came from LUMCON and got stuck in a log pile. She (which we originally thought was a he, before she laid an egg) swam all the way back to the boat when the basket was deployed. I took care of “Wilma” for several days and she made it back to LUMCON safely! I will post a photo in my later blog, when the cruise ends!

PC: Jason Bradley- an extremely talented photographer who accompanied us during our cruise! He has many more pictures coming- so stay tuned for more 🙂

In addtion to our basket and winch, I learned so much during this fun- yet extremely stressful cruise! For starters, I learned about transponders- an acoustic location system which uses pings and beeps to locate objects for later deployment. As stated, we used these devices on our ROV, basket and moorings and tracked them on a program called Tracklink 5000. It is very important to know where our equipment is while on the vessel- to ascertain nothing is under the boat or tangled (which almost happened a few times). Perhaps my favorite part of the cruise was all the amazing ROV technology! It is incredible that we can set an instrument under water and see what is happening in real time- and do scientific sampling and work! I learned how to tagline, deploy, recover and “fly” an ROV. All very dangerous- yet exciting. Posted below is a photo of my flying for the first time! The cruise is not yet over, but I am so extremely grateful for this experience, the science party and the crew I’ve grown to love with all my heart.

PC: James Aldridg from Oceaneering

And the rest! (more to come) All from Jason Bradley!

A deep sea isopod we collected!

Dreaming of beer and hamburgers.

STAY TUNED!

Our short cruise is now officially over and we spent the following late evening in transit to Baton Rouge. The trip was much longer as expected as we had several locks and bridges to go through, which never ceases to tickle my excitement! We took on board our chief scientist for our upcoming ROV cruise- along with two other scientists conducting work on micro-plastics. The Mississippi River is a huge sink for most of the United States pollution, and a large amount of that pollution is composed of micro-plastics. During a selected number of stations, along our transit to Baton Rouge, we slowed down periodically to deploy net tows. The net tows are put over the side deck and slowly drifted until sufficient plastic is accumulated. A scientist on board informed me that it’s not a matter of if fish will be filled with plastic, but a matter of how much. The information was saddening to hear, and holds greater weight knowing a very large majority of US fish bought originates in Lousiana and the Mississippi River. We arrived around 7pm to Baton Rouge, set up our gangways for our event tomorrow, demobilized and called it a night. We have a long few days ahead of us- full of legislative talks and public boat tours.

The following day marked the start of our massive ‘Meet the Fleet’ event. Over the next few days, thousands of people swarmed the boat for tours, info sessions and rides. I worked at our environmental monitoring booth today. The system Amanda and I worked on was placed in a spare lab on board, along with several posters, sensors, artifacts and informational pieces. Though the subject is not as interesting- in lieu to our 5 million USD dollar ROV on display (see picture posted below)- the subject is extremely important and I enjoyed educating the public about its place in society. I tried my best to make it fun and relatable to the public. I believe I was able to reach a large audience-which makes me very happy.

The next few days went as planned, with a premature cancellation on Sunday, due to poor weather. Unfortunately, the call was made too early and we did not receive our storms until the following day. Evidently, the following day was our most important as all Louisiana legislative would be touring the boat..

Big Wigs in Baton Rouge

Today was our last, and most important, day in Baton Rouge. This afternoon, several members of the state legislative department came aboard our vessel. Shortly after the event ended, we made our way to the state capitol for a ceremony service of LUMCON. The service, and several days of boat touring, was meant to educate the public of the importance of LUMCON, its research, educational outreach and vessels. We are hopeful that this event will help fuel funding for a new vessel, which has been extremely beneficial- physically and economically- to the state of Louisiana and Gulf of Mexico region.

For the remainder of the week, I worked on environmental monitoring with our instrumentalist Amanda. We have a “Meet the Fleet” event coming up in Baton Rouge soon- a large PR event that broadcasts our boats, instruments and different areas of research and education within the LUMCON facility. We are currently working on a weather monitoring station for the event, to rig on board within one of our labs. Amanda spent the week picking up the last of our supplies: PVC piping, and a mounting block that we will attach our sensors to for display. We spent the day rigging our display, and adding last minute aesthetic touches such as blue spray paint. The boat will return tomorrow afternoon- in the meantime, I am swinging by New Orleans to pick up my mentor John at the airport after work. All in all, I am very excited to be back on the boat with the crew!

Back at it again:

Back on the boat for demobilization and loading: We have a short three-day cruise coming up tonight until the 16^th. During my very first cruise on the Pelican, a group of scientists dropped a lander at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. This particular lab group has now returned and will be joining us on a cruise to retrieve their deployed sensors. Several CTD and MIDAS flow-through samples will be taken on the way, to maximize additional research on our transit to our lander station. I am excited to return, and this three-day cruise should be a relaxing transition back onto the boat!

We spent the first day in transit, and picked up several CTDs along the way. I spent some of the morning driving, testing our boat’s alarm systems and learned more about our navigation and anchor lights. By mid afternoon we made our way to our lander station and retrieved our device using a transducer and hydrophone system, which brought our lander afloat. We were able to pick the device up with our back a-frame and did not need to deploy our small boat. Unfortunately, upon arrival on deck, we had the discovery that the lander was fried in several spots and only recorded about ten days of data. Our chief scientist ruled out several possibilities and believes there is an issue with the stepper motor, which draws samples and data. A new part was ordered and will be delivered tomorrow morning at C6C- a common station within the Gulf of Mexico only 3 hours from LUMCON.

Following day:

Our new stepper motor was delivered around 11am, hooked up around lunchtime and tested several times. However, while the stepper motor is fixed, the issue lies in several fried wires. After a long few days of troubleshooting- to no prevail- we had to turn around and are hopeful that we can send a small boat out tomorrow to get our lander back in the water. Heading back now, we should be arriving at dock around 7pm. We will quickly mobilize, bring items on the boat for Meet the Fleet and our scientists will stay on board until our small boat trip tomorrow.

We are leaving late tonight for Meet the Fleet in Baton Rouge. Most of the boat is packed up and our scientists are planning to leave soon to deploy the lander. The wires are fixed and our boat’s MATE will be leaving soon to deploy.

 But, I am very excited for our PR event!