Author: Briana Prado Page 1 of 2

Bubble Troubles: Week #9 12/02/2024 – 12/09/2024

On Nov 28th, we set sail back to Honolulu, HI. While underway, we’ll be mapping a remote corner of the ocean using the Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler and a magnetometer for Dr. David Sandwell from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography. His team is interested in studying gravity anomalies called Haxby Lineaments and seeks to figure out the origin of these features using Sound Navigation and Ranging (SONAR), the Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP), and a magnetometer. The SONAR and ADCP are already on the ship, but the magnetometer is towed from the back of the ship in the regions of interest.

Dr. Ali Chase, Hunter, and I have also been keeping busy cleaning different instrumentation: AC-S, HYPER BB, ALFA, FRRF, LIIST, pySAS, multispectral radiometer, and IFCB. I’m still trying to wrap my mind around what each instrument does, but I do know that they are orchestrated together to help build a comprehensive picture of the properties of microscopic organisms like plankton and debris taken up by the ship’s underway seawater collection system.

Every morning, we clean the pySAS instrument, making sure that it is clear of salt crystals and debris that may have become entrapped on the lenses in the past 24 hours. Then we also climbed up to the top of the bridge and clean the Hyperspectral Radiometer with a 5-meter pole, sponge, and lens paper to fight the wind and also dust off any salt crystals on the instrument. In the evenings, we alternate between cleaning the AC-S, LIST, and HYPER BB every other day, and we clean the ALFA and FRRF instruments daily. While maintaining these instruments, we also clean the optics of each sensor with thin lens paper, alcohol, and Milli-Q water, as well as running Milli-Q water to hopefully push out anything that may be trying to grow inside the tubing.

Another thing to keep an eye out for is bubbles. I had never given much thought to bubbles or their effects until I hopped on board the RV/Kilo Moana. Although fun to blow, bubbles can be quite troublesome when they get into your instrumentation or experiments. In the case of Dr. Alison Chase, bubbles inside your instrumentation must be avoided at all costs. Bubbles can cause light to scatter differently, which is not what you want when you’re studying backscatter using the HYPER-BB. Bubbles can change the flow of things, causing instruments to overheat due to not receiving the proper amount of flow. This happened multiple times to the ALFA, halting data collection for a couple of hours each time. In the case of the Imaging Flow Cytobot, the resolution of the phytoplankton images for several samples shifted and was reduced. Thankfully, Dr. Ali Chase caught the issue quickly, and we were able to fix it by running a debubbling procedure. This entails stopping the IFCB, plugging the intake line with soap, and letting the soap flow through for about 5 minutes to pop and push through the bubbles.

In the meantime, I’ve been reading manuals of the different instrumentation we’ve been maintaining, learning to code in Linux, and starting to learn more about how the ship is networked. The days left on the RV/Kilo Moana are starting to dwindle, so I’m trying to learn as much as I can before departing. I’ve been talking more to the crew and asking them the specifics of their jobs as well as  taking in as many sunsets and night skies as possible.

Cheers,

Briana

– Magnetrometer profiles

– ADCP that remains on during the duration of the transit and later uploaded to Google Maps and other data bases!

– Magnetrometer after a succesful mapping session

– Hunter Adams and Briana Prado cleaning the Hyperspectral Radiometer ontop of the Bridge

– Dr. Alison Chase cleaning the pySAS early morning

– Top to Bottom: HyperBB, LIIST, AC-S and IFCB instruments which we clean regurlarly

– Hunter Adams and I receiving a tour of the inner workings of the ship by Chief Engineer

Week #8 Tahitian Escapade (11/25/2024 – 12/1/2024)

– The SPOC 2418 Science team!

We wrapped up our last station a few days before reaching Tahiti leaving us with enough time to acid wash every bottle, spigot and syringe used during the cruise. As well as enough time to tidy up lab spaces; sweeping, mopping and wipping down counters in the labs and moving stuff into specific labs for storage while on transit back. 

We arrived in Tahiti on Nov 26th, at about 7am after 34 days at sea. Once near port, the Tahitian Port Captain came onboard using the ladders on the back deck.  The port captain then headed up to the bridge to drive the boat into the dock safely, which was a really cool and swift operation to watch.

– Tahitian Harbor Police moving towards the ship to begin driving the RV/Kilo Moana to port.

As we slowly drifted into port the anticipation kept building. Land! So close yet so far. From the ship we could now see green volcanic-jagged hills, palm trees, birds and dolphins as well as the hustle and bustle of cars and people going about their day. As the port came into focus, I felt a bit like an alien peering into a civilization of French billboard signs and aquamarine water. I think I breifly forgot cars and trees existed. Whoa, we made it! In the middle of this ginormous Pacific ocean there are people living their life on a beautiful tropical island, quite remote from any mainland and we’ve reached them, how lucky are we!

– View of Papeete as we arrived to port on the RV/Kilo Moana

The energy was high and everyone was in a bit of a scramble getting their bags downstairs, cleaning out state rooms and putting all blankets and dirty linens away.

Once we cleared immigration, we were allowed to get off the ship. Since most people were leaving that day, we got straight to action, checking out the Tahitian open air market, shops and restaurants. The scientific team picked out a place for lunch and we enjoyed tropical refreshments before tearfully saying our goodbyes. 

The following day, a couple of us took a rental car on the ferry to Moorea to circumnavigate the island and to visit some snorkeling spots. We visited 3 different beaches and saw tons of cool fish and even a sea turtle! 

– View of Tahiti from Mo’orea, note the beautiful aquamarine color from the shallower parts

The following morning, immigration came on pretty early and cleared us to leave, thus concluding our Tahitian escapadé. We then set sail back to Honolulu, HI at 10am on November 28th, with only 20 people, 5 science members (Hunter, Dr. Ali Chase, OTG and I) + 15 crew members. Today also happened to be thanksgiving. For Thanksgiving, I couldn’t help but feel really thankful for this opportunity to learn at sea with an amazing group of scientist and crew members. I have so much grattitude for everybodies willingness to share knowledge and the ropes of doing science at sea (pun intended). That evening the galley crew cooked us a lovely dinner of turkey, stuffing, mac and cheese and more which was really nice. 

– Two new passport stamps, peek the lil’ ship symbol on the stamps.

Nonetheless, it was time to get back to work. By noon, we were helping Dr. Ali Chase get a pySAS instrument set up at the bow, since it had been decomissioned going into port. The pySAS instrument is an open-source autonomous sun-tracking system that records incoming and reflecting solar radiation from the atmosphere and ocean. The data collected is used to cross reference and validate remote sensing and satellite data and can also be used to elucidate oceanographic properties of the water surface. Since the one on the bow gave us a bit of trouble, we decided to start working on the spare that her lab also has. It was fun getting a quick dive into the different parts of the instrument, moving wires around and checking whether things are working using a voltmeter. 

 – IFCB outside of its Titanium Case

This week, I also got to learn more in depth about the imaging flow cytobot instrument (IFCB).   An imaging flow cytobot is used for multiple things but it can detect, size and image cells floating in the water. It’s a great tool to get an idea of community distribution of phytoplankton in real time. Most labs have a program they run the samples through that also help identify the species of phytoplankton. 

However, there’s genuinely no better way to learn more about an instrument than when you’re learning to troubleshoot it to diagnose a problem. Due to the humid nature of the ship, we suspected that the humidity may have interfered with some of the sensors on the instrument. Therefore, we spent a couple of hours investigating until it was finally decided to just call the manufacturer and have them walk us through the different parts of the instruments and its troubleshooting. 

Ali’s set up also features Spectral Absorption and Attenuation Sensor (AC-S),  Submersible Particle Size Analyzer (LISST) and the Hyper-Spectral Backscatter Instrument (HYPER BB) all linked up to the ship’s underway system to take a look at the different properties of the water. It is super cool to say the least and I look forward to diving into more about it next week.

Cheers,

Briana

– Ferry Terminal in Mo’orea, French Polynesia

– The beautiful RV/Kilo Moana in Papeete, French Polynesia

End of Cruise: CTD Wrapped (11/17 – 11/24)

A significant portion of the work fellow MATE Intern Hunter and I did consisted of taking Conductivity, Temperature and Depth Profiles (CTD) work in two main forms; underway CTDs and CTD Rosette Cast. Over the course of this 34 day cruise, Hunter and I completed over 161 underway CTD and over 101 CTD Rosette cast, generating a nearly complete data set of a transect from 21N^o to 27 S^o. 

Our 161 underway CTD cast also appears to break a couple of records by a long shot. The second, third and fourth data sets contain an already impressive 83, 48 and 45 uCTD’s, but we doubled it!

Our mentor, Tully Rohrer praised us in casting over 161 underway CTD and experiencing very minimal problems besides some mechanical issues that came with wear and tear of the instrument. Tully once painful recalled how there was a cruise where the team kept getting tangled or as Tully calls them “Wuzzles” and how long and hard it was to untangle the line for hours. Thankfully we didn’t run into any issues with that, phew!

– Tully Rohrer rinsing the underway CTD to start packing it up at the end of the cruise

I really enjoyed casting the uCTD’s because it gave us an excuse to go out and stare at the ocean every 2 hours for about 25 minutes. I was being silly one night and calculated that over the 161 cast that we completed that we both stared at the ocean for a cumulative of over 60 hours or about 30 hours each! Pretty crazy if you ask me, but super fun!

– Fellow Mate-Intern Hunter Adams and I celebrating our last uCTD

The SPOC team celebrated our last uCTD cast #161 by standing by as Hunter and I tearfully casted our last one. Data wizard Dr. Daniel Murratore promised us to analyze our cast once it was retrieved and they delivered these beautiful graphs! I am so excited to see the paper and the research that will eventually reference this impressive data set, hopefully soon!

– SPOC Team helping us celebrate our last underway CTD thus concluding a 161 run!

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Another major and significant component of our work was the CTD Rosette Cast that took place every 3 hours while at the long stations. 

There were 5 long stations, each containing about 19 – 21 CTD casts, culminating in a total of 101 CTD casts! Most cast traveled to 250 meters ~ (820 ft) since the team was mostly interested in surface processes but we did have at least two 1000 meters cast for each long stratton (for diel studies) and a handful of cast that went down to ~3500 meters for calibration purposes.

Running the CTD console was an exciting experience that taught me a bit about double checking your work, keeping cool under pressure, reading water column profiles on the fly and communicating via radio. Running the CTD was a multi step process that typically involved empty niskins, and then caulking them i.e attaching lanyards to the hooks on the CTD Rosette. Once those are attached, you turn to the bottom of the niskin where you attach the lanyard hooks to the bottom of the bottle, opening them in the process. Once the niskins are set up, you take multiple laps around the CTD, making sure that the bottle caps at the top of the nisking which control the pressure at which water leaves the spigot are closed tightly enough. Then you take another lap making sure that all the spigots at the bottom of the nisking are sticking out, so as not to lose samples when you’re moving the CTD back onto the ship. Failure to do all the steps above could result in damage to the rosette or the niskins which should be avoided at all cost. 

– Briana Prado caulking CTD bottles 

The last lap you take is to take off the caps off the sensors. This CTD rosette was equipped with a UVP, PAR, LIST and syringes on the oxygen sensors, so I’d have to make sure that those were off and ready to collect data. Once the CTD Rosette is set up, I turn back to the lab, collect my cast sheet and relay the information on the cast sheet to the log sheet where I’d take note of starting and ending latitude and longitude, depth of the water column, time the CTD Rosette went in and out of the water, and the depths at which we are firing the bottles. While that is happening, the Ocean Technology Group (OTG) is communicating with the Hawboldt Winch operators about picking up the slack in the wire to get the CTD ready for deployment. Once the slack has tightened, I get ready to turn on the Seabird Deck Box and to start recording on the Seasave software, a software that relays all the live information from the CTD Sensors and rosette back to the ship and the computer you’re working from.  Once all that is set up and running, you communicate with the back deck and tell them the package is ready for deployment. The OTG group then checks in with the bridge to get their approval, once warranted, the OTG group checks in with the winch operators to then deploy the package. 

Intern: “Back Deck – Lab, the package is ready for deployment.”

OTG:  “Roger that lab, Bridge-Back Deck “Can we deploy this package?”

Bridge: “Back Deck- Bridge, You are clear to deploy the package.”

OTG: “Roger that, Winch-Back Deck, Are we clear to deploy the package?

Winch Operators: “Back Deck-Winch, Roger, We are now deploying the package”

Once in the water, we let the CTD soak at the surface, to allow the sensors to equilibrate with the water temperature and start pumping water through the sensors. After about a minute, I radioed the Back Deck to take the CTD to a pressure-depth of 15 deci-bars at 30 meters per minute. It is essential that the package travel at this specific speed as that is how the CTD sensors are turned on.. Once the CTD pumps are on, I communicate again with a back deck OTG person that we are now clear to take the package back to the surface and then to Target depth ~ 250 meters. Once that is done, we are now ready to take our water column profile.

The CTD profile generates right in front of your eyes. It’s always fun to take note of the chlorophyll maximum or the part of the water column, where most of the phytoplankton are hanging out and see how that changes, hour to hour, based on the time of the day, where we are in the ocean and other oceanographic parameters like oligotrophic waters. Other things we keep an eye out for is the Cpmax or the area of the water column with the highest concentration of particles. 

Once we reach our desired depth of lets say ~250 m, we are clear to start firing bottles. The winch operator will declare they have reached the desired pressure/depth.

Winch: “Lab-winch we’ve have hit target depth 250 db or 2-5-0 decibars”

Intern: “Winch- lab, next target depth is 125 db or 1-2-5 decibars”
Winch: “Roger that “Next target depth is 125 or 1-2-5 decibars”

We then wait for the winch to call out 125 decibars, which we double confirm by looking at the screen and reading where the CTD tells us it is in the water column. Once we’ve reached the desired depth, I wait 30 seconds to fire the first bottle. This time is allotted to allow for any disturbances in the water column to settle. Once I fire the first bottle any subsequent bottles are fired at 10 second intervals, for the same reason. 

Once I’ve fired the bottles I call out to the winch our next target depth and repeat.

Once we’re near the surface, I call out to the back deck and tell them that we are now clear to recover the package and OTG begins checking in with the winch and bridge folk to confirm they are also ready to recover. 

Once the package is recovered, I finish jotting down the meteorological data, log the event in the event page and turn off the deck box. It is paramount to turn off the deck box because you don’t want to electrocute anybody when they start releasing the slack on the wire. 

For our last cast, cast #101, we went down to a depth of 3500 meters (~11,480 ft). This cast was used to calibrate the CTD’s oxygen sensors and also collected water from the Antarctic Deep Water water mass. As the name implies, this is water that last saw the surface of the ocean, when it downwelled off the coast of Antarctica.  As a result the water is super cold, oxygen rich and salty! Chief Scientist Angelicque White was super cool and boiled down the water to collect and bottle salts for us as a memoir as well as let us cast away a couple pieces of styrofoam to crush them underpressure. We didn’t have too much styrofoam so we had to experiment with different types… some were more succesful than others.

– Before and after pictures of our styrofoam squares that went down to a depth of 3500 meters!

 

Now that we are done with all the stations, we’ve started to pack up labs. We will be arriving to Tahiti soon, stay tuned! 

Cheers,

Briana

Practicing Diligence at Sea: Week #6 (Nov 11th – Nov 17th)

Safety at sea cannot be understated. This week, I had a few close calls while conducting back-deck operations that have made me acutely aware of the importance of preventing issues before they have the opportunity to escalate.

While deploying the wirewalker at the fourth station, we had an issue with the quick release. A clamp that is supposed to release when you yank it. This release transfers the load from the main line to the release when it’s time to release the buoy onto the water. It’s essential to release the clamp at the right time because if not the buoy and its packages might get dropped into the water from a height and damage them. Or if you wait too long, it can become harder to release the clamp because there is no longer that tension that would allow it to release. 

Well… when we were deploying the buoy, the rope on the clamp got twisted under the leading line in a way that regardless of how hard I yanked, I could not get the clamp to release. I now found myself progressively getting closer to the edge of the stern and playing an unbalanced game of tug of war with the buoy as the A-frame moved the package away from the ship. Despite the rope burn, I held on because I was scared that if I’d let go, I’d lose the buoy/clamp. 

Tully and Ben stepped in with about a foot of rope left, but then quickly halted operations as it became apparent that the clamp would not release.  By stopping operations we had enough time to think about our next step, which just meant, letting go of the rope, bringing the package back onto the ship, and trying again. No biggie. The alternative situation where I could have gone overboard trying to get the clamp to release could have been much worse. If you ever find yourself in a situation between your safety and that of the instrument, safety comes first. Of course, if we could mitigate any damage to the instrumentation that would be ideal, but not if someone gets hurt. 

A couple hours later while deploying PP arrays, I was handing over the primary production bottles when the whistle on my life jacket got tangled with the samples I was holding. I only noticed this issue when I was about to pull away and couldn’t get too far because the whistle’s rope was now stuck to the line. Had we reached the point where we were about to deploy the sample, it would have taken me with it. So we took a pause to untangle my whistle and proceeded with the operation. The lesson was that it’s okay to call for an “all stop” to address an issue before proceeding and to be very mindful of things that can become snagged. Not doing so could have made this issue much worse.  

Another thing to keep in mind while conducting back deck operations is rope bights and how you handle rope. It’s easy to be focused on collecting your sample from the line when all of sudden you find yourself in a bight that could tighten around your ankle or hands at any time. 

It’s also important to not wrap the rope around your hands for the same reason. Instead, if your wrapping loops, wrap the loops on top of your hand instead of around and hold the center, this lets the rope slide through your hand instead of tightening around it. Last but not least be mindful of rope slacks from the A- frame, it can be easy to get entangled in them if you’re not paying attention to what’s happening to the rope overhead. It’s all in the details and situational awareness. 

And of course, always wear your hard hat, life vest, and steel-toe shoes when conducting back deck operations, you never know what could fall or roll onto you, but it really is just a factor of time until something does. 

Other than some close calls, I’ve been doing good. We have now completed Long Station 3&4 and are now en route to our last long station, station 5. Stay tuned for more updates!

 

Cheers,

Briana

– General idea of where the R/V Kilo Moana is currently in the Pacific ocean

We arrived at our first long station on Nov 2nd around 3 pm and arrived at our second long station on Nov 6th. The long stations are the meat and potatoes of the Ocean Carbon biological cruise as that is where scientists will be performing incubations, collecting water from depth, and conducting in situ experiments using arrays. Each long station is a 60-hour sampling storm with Conductivity Temperature and Depth (CTD) profiles taking place every 3 hours, sediment traps, primary productivity arrays, float deployments, and more! 

Immediately upon arriving at each long stratton, we deploy one of Dr. Henderikx’s floats. This float will be released into the water for the rest of its life where it will be conducting CTD profiles of the water column a couple times a day and then relaying that information to a satellite at least twice a month. This information will then be used to calibrate data collected from satellites hovering on Earth to what is happening in the water column. 

– Dr. Daniel Muratore and Tully Rohrer Deploying a Float upon arriving to a long station

The second and third orders of business are to deploy sediment traps and the wirewalker to collect the most data while we are at the station. Unlike the float, these will be retrieved at the end of the long station. To make our delicate samples and wirewalker visible and retrievable, we attach the samples to buoys that are bright yellow and have flashing lights, GPS, and a radio transmitter on them. The buoy is also connected to a string of floats that help counteract the weight of the samples, optodes, and weight at the end of the line. 

The sediment traps contain two sets of traps, one for trace metal analysis that uses brine as its trapping material and the other for overall organic matter exports outside of the photic zone that uses formaldehyde to preserve the samples. These traps are placed at a depth of about 150 meters, right under the photic zone and its goal is to trap as many of the particles that sink out of the surface. Most often it tends to be dying phytoplankton or bits and pieces of things that get stuck together and it represents carbon exiting the photic zone and beginning its slow descent into the bottom of the ocean…

– Deploying Sediment traps into the water. Top are trace metal clean sediment traps filled with brine. The bottom set of sediment traps are filled with formalyn to preserve particulates that have fallen in.

The third order of business is the wirewalker. The wirewalker is like a float in that it takes CTD profiles; however, it is attached to a buoy and it can take over 70 water column profiles a day. It utilizes wave energy and can be described as a pong brick moving up and down the wire up to depths of 400 meters in less than 30 minutes. This is an important instrument as it provides the oceanographic context to which we are sampling over the 60 hours. 

– Wire walker being deployed into the water

Once those are all deployed we can finally deploy the CTD rosette to start collecting water and generating a water column profile and the scientist can start doing their water incubations for upcoming experiments. There is an assortment of things that the science team samples for. Sometimes the team takes water to sample oxygen concentrations and particulate organic carbon. This cast is used to calibrate the oxygen sensor on the CTD. Then there is another cast where the scientist takes water to measure chlorophyll and uses the results of that to calibrate instrumentation.

My favorite cast is the Primary Productivity and Gas Array (PP Array). This cast is for collecting samples that will be used to test the rate of Nitrogen Fixation using N¹⁵, dissolved inorganic carbon consumption using C¹⁴ and oxygen production using O¹⁸.

– Dr. Daniel Muratore and Tully Rohrer spiking their incubations with N¹⁵ in preparation for the insitu PP/Gas Array deployment

During the CTD cast we “fire” bottles at 6 specific depths; 125m, 100m, 75m, 50m 25m, and 5m. These samples will then be placed back into the water at their respective depths, where they will sit in the water column for 24 hours replicating conditions that they were collected in. This cast always takes place at least 3 hours before sunrise, approximately ~1am in our current location. The CTD  samples are typically back on deck 30 minutes later and then put back in the water hopefully no later than 3 am – which is about when the sun is starting to rise in our current part of the world. It’s a bit of a scramble to get everything spiked with N15, C14 and O18 respectively before the samples are supposed to be in the water but it sure is exciting. While deploying this specific array, all lights have to be turned off and only red lights are allowed to prevent the phytoplankton from photosynthesizing too early, which adds to vibe ~

– Primary Productivity and Gas Array being deployed at 3am using red lights

 This ALSO provides the perfect opportunity to get a peak of the milky way and stars. There are definitly more stars in one corner of the sky than there were in the whole sky where I grew up in suburban San Diego. It take my breath away every-time!

This week I also celebrated my birthday! The galley staff were really kind and baked me a cake! It was delicious! 

Cheers,

Briana
 

Equatorial Musings While in Transit to 5°S!

Hey there! Things are well underway! When we are not conducting underway CTDs (uCTDs) or performing our daily grabs using the regular CTD Rosette 3 a.m. grab, we are cruising at a solid 9 to 10.5 knots!

Our cruise plan has changed a bit since the start of the journey due to challenges presented by weather and field conditions. Unfortunately, we were unable to conduct a long station in the northern hemisphere, but new opportunities to sample at 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25 degrees south have emerged. Therefore, the updated plan is to steamhead to 5 degrees south to begin the first long station and get underway with the bulk of our work.

While in transit, we crossed the equator on Halloween, which was highly anticipated! It was soooo anticipated that I even made a CTD Rosette costume while we were still in port, largely because I was inspired by the CTD, and I had heard that the equator crossing would be a pretty big deal,  especially because it was on Halloween!

– The subpeona inviting us to present ourselves before King Neptunes Court

Since the 1600s, crossing the equator (0°00.00) has been seen as a rite of passage, a good opportunity to boost morale and prove your seaworthiness. Despite its many variations, this seafaring tradition has persisted into modern times. The celebration typically involves a series of dares that Pollywogs, those who have never crossed the equator must complete to prove their seaworthiness. The Court of King Neptune and Davy Jones, along with his Committee of Shellbacks (those who have crossed the equator before), then judge your performance and decide whether to welcome you to the Kingdom of Neptune. In the past, they might have asked you to do some gnarly things, like crawl through chutes of rubbish, drink a “truth serum,” and eat uncooked eggs. Luckily, the Court of King Neptune aboard the Kilo Moana are much nicer and asked us humble Pollywogs to either perform a talent or sing karaoke while reading out the “crimes” we’d committed during our time on the ship. The “crimes” are not really crimes but more like hilarious superlatives. I was accused of enjoying the solitude of the night shift, hiding Hi-Chew candy, and being obsessed with the CTD, which they are not wrong… To repent for my “crimes,” I chose to sing karaoke to “Rich Girl” by Hall and Oates. Some of my fellow crewmates performed skits, told stories and jokes, and even did a whole dance routine! It was so cool to see everyone let loose and have a little fun on the back deck as the sun went down!

 

-Fellow Mate Intern, Hunter Adam and I in our Halloween Costumes 

We ended up crossing the equator later that day at around 05:06:56 UTC. My friend and I crouched by one of the consoles for a few minutes, counting down every second until 0°00.0000. The console only delivered 0°00.0001, which was a bit disappointing but still neat nonetheless.

– 

With one day away from our first long station, the Halloween/Equator Crossing was a nice “rest day” or, like its original intention, a good morale booster—a calm before the sampling science storm!

Cheers,

Briana

– Kilo Moana crew dressed for Halloween and Equator Crossing 

WEEK #3 (10/21 – 10/28)
Underway to Tahiti and Befriending the Underway CTD

– The proposed Kilo Moana’s SPOC 2418 expedition cruise track. 

Unfortunetly, per my last blog post, within the first few hours of the South Pacific Cruise, the Kilo Moana had to return to dock to address some repairs in the generator room and wait for a component to come to the island.

Sailing day couldn’t come soon enough! The Kilo Moana left Pier 35 on Oct 23 at 1730 Hawaii time into a gorgeous sunset. The goal of this mission is to characterize oceanic primary production and metabolic rates to further understand the carbon cycle along a transit of about 15° N to 30° S. This is done by collecting oxygen and optical proxies for carbon on a daily basis. This involves conducting in situ (on-site) incubation experiments using gas arrays, primary productivity arrays, and sediment traps that look at the rate at which organisms are growing in the water column (arrays) at depth or what is floating out of the photic zone (sediment traps). Additionally, we use profiling methods such as a CTD-Rosette cast every 3 hours (to varying depths), Hyperpro (which measures the optical properties of the ocean), an Underwater Vision Profiler (UVP) (which measures the size and abundance of particles and zooplankton in the water column), zooplankton net tows, and a wire walker (a CTD-like instrument that is attached to a buoy and can take up to 70 water column profiles a day)! Not to mention a wide suite of underway/continuous data like the Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler, which uses sound waves to measure the speed and direction of currents throughout the water column, the Imaging Flow Cytobot, which takes images of the phytoplankton that get sucked into the ship’s underway seawater system, meteorology, and the underway CTD!

The expedition will consist of a combination of long and short stations that last 2.5 days and 3 hours, respectively. When we are not at station, we will be doing daily water grabs for nutrient analysis as well as deploying an underway CTD (uCTD) every 2 hours.

– Briana Prado holding the underway CTD 

I’ve learned to love the underway CTD. It’s so cute! The sensor is a titanium pellet-looking thing that contains conductivity, temperature, and depth sensors; it also contains a fluorometer, turbidity, and dissolved oxygen sensors. It sits on the starboard side of the boat and can be deployed while the ship is in motion as long as the ship is going under 8 knots. Unlike a regular CTD-rosette, the uCTD does not collect water and does not need the ship to stop, therefore making it a great way to efficiently get an idea of what the water column looks like below. Plus, it provides the perfect excuse to go watch the waves for at least 20 minutes every 2 hours.

 To deploy it, you detach the spindle from the overboard handling system (OHS), set the instrument to free, and then you just drop the uCTD in the water. We’re largely interested in what’s happening at the surface, so we set a timer for 100 seconds to only collect the top 400 meters of the water column.  Once we reach 100 seconds, we apply the brakes to the feeder line, change the setting to rewind, and wait until the CTD is close to the surface. Once we can spot it on the surface, we get a cushion foam ready to slide through the line so we can reel the line in without banging the uCTD on the stern of the ship.

–  The Underway CTD overboard handling system.

Due to the high frequency with which we are deploying the underway CTD, issues can arise quickly. During the 12th cast of the cruise, while returning the line back into the spool, the power on the OHS stopped working, and the line kept spooling out until I finally realized to pull the brakes. We were startled that it had already stopped working so early in the cruise but also not surprised given the high frequency with which we use the instrument.

Tully, Ben and I were about to reel in over 400 meters of wire by HAND when we remembered that we could insert a bolt into the winch drum and use a powered tool to reel it in! Phew, that just saved us a couple of hours!

Once we reeled all of the line, we finally got to investigating what went wrong. Originally, we thought that maybe the motor on the uCTD had gone bad, but with a voltmeter in hand, we realized that the issue lay in the Pelican Power Junction box since it was not reading out any voltage.

– Taking a peak inside the underway CTD pelican box. 

After a quick dinner, Tully and I took a look at the inside of the box and realized that the positive lead in the power box had come undone, most likely due to how corroded it was. Phew, this is a workable issue! Now we just need to cut back some of the wire, attach a butt connector, and heat it into place. Once we put the box together, we double-checked with the voltmeter, and it was reading a value, so we had fixed it and could now re-install it back into the OHS and proceed with our routine underway CTD. We did it, lo hicimos! I now cross my fingers and hope that we can continue doing uCTDs throughout the cruise and that any issues that arise have workable solutions!

We’ve done a number of these so far; take a look at our data! These profiles help inform the team on areas of interest to sample as we are underway! Gaps in the data are often a result in fixing the instrument or bad weather.

Amongst other things, we got to sail over a part of the ocean that is over 19,000 ft deep (5,982 m), which really blew my mind! Wish us happy sailing! <3

 

Week #2 – In Between Days ~ In Between Cruises

Offloading HOT and Preparing for Tahiti

We arrived at port early on 10/14 after an exciting and pretty well running cruise. The scientists were quick in offloading boxes and materials, and we were off to the University of Hawaii at Manoa by about 9:00. Dan, Hunter, and I offloaded the boxes in Dan’s office, and we were done with the day by 10 a.m! Again, the HOT team has got these routine field work sampling campaigns down to a ” T”, so the rest of the day was ours!

– Dan Fitzgerald and I cheesing it up after a succesful HOT Cruise 🙂

The following day (10/15), I got a ride from Dan to the UH Marine Center to help the Ocean Technology Group, Ben and James set up a Connectivity, Temperature, and Depth (CTD) sensor in preparation for the Tahiti cruise. Since this is not a HOT Cruise the Ocean Technology Group (OTG) crew needs to set up a new CTD Rosette (which they have 2 of!). This is also in the best interest of the HOT Team since those cruises happen so frequently and are so short, that nothing must mess up with the instrumentation that HOT uses.

To prepare the CTD, we replaced three different types of sensors (Oxygen, connectivity, and temperature) and their duplicates. The CTD contains duplicates of each sensor as a way to verify that the data is sound and to limit the amount of sensor drift, a phenomenon where the data slowly gets skewed as it progresses through the cast. Marine Technicians or OTG observe the CTD data on the computer console inside the ship as the CTD-Rosette travels to depth, to make sure that we are not getting any drastic results that would tell us that the sensor is not working. 

Once the CTD sensors are replaced and calibrated, we lodge the CTD head back into the frame of the rosette and start strapping the CTD with zip ties and electrical tape ensuring that we don’t cross any wires or cause unnecessary rubbing on metal-to-metal or chords directly on metal that could cause bends in the wires that could damage communication from the CTD to the ship. We also strapped in other auxiliary sensors like the Photosynthetically Active Radiation (PAR), Video Plankton Recorder (VPR), Transitometer and a Radiometer that give us other information that enhances our understanding of what the water column looks like.

– Drilling in the CTD Bridal that helps hold the CTD up while its being casted. 

On Wednesday 10/16, we began loading for the South Pacific Cruise that was to set sail on Saturday 10/19. This looked like moving a lot of boxes containing incubators, filters, and bottles onto a UH van and then transporting them onto the ship, sorting them into their respective rooms and labs, and starting to unpack. This process feels a bit chaotic but it definitely builds excitement. In this process of moving in, it finally dawned on me that I was going to be at sea for 37 days, which simultaneously felt really long and very short and kinda intimidating. We are going to be so far and isolated from the rest of the world that if anything were to happen, we’d be a couple days away from your typical medical amenities which is totally not scary at all right, right?

Thursday was a bit of a rest day as the ship was on sea trial. Sea trial describes the process of taking the ship out to sea under realistic conditions to make sure that the ship’s machinery is operating properly, that equipment is working well, and getting a realistic view of the ship’s speed, maneuverability, and safety features. Due to this being ship-focused, the science team was not needed that day, which I used to catch up on some reading and emails. 

On Friday (10/18)  however, I got pretty cool training on how to utilize the Hawboldt Winch. A Hawboldt winch is the machinery that pays out or retracts coil to the Launch and Retrieval System (LARS) , a mechanical looking arm that transports the CTD Rosette on and off the boat. The Hawboldt winch is largely specific to Kilo Moana, as most other research vessels typically deploy their CTD-Rosette using an A-frame or from the side of the ship. Although I will not be using the Hawboldt winch, the OTG figured it would be good for me to know how it operates and to understand what the operator is seeing when we are deploying the rosette. It’s definitely helpful when maybe there is a miscommunication or just understanding what the winch is capable of and I could help the operator or they can help me, best handle the situation.

– Learning all about the Hawbolt Crane from one of the OTG techs aboard the KM!

On Saturday 10/19 we arrived at Kilo Moana at 0800 am to set sail at 0900. On sailing day there are a few orders of business… 

Safety Meeting – understand what the ship’s safety measures are, typically hosted by the captain and the chief mate.

Safety Drills – where we learn about the different drills and practice one. When we are dismissed from the safety meeting we go to our rooms to pick up our life vest and GUMBY suits and meet in the staging bay.

Test our instrumentation (CTD and Trace Metal CTD) in our underway station.  

We had just finished with both of our test casts when we heard a call that sounded like a dog yelping but actually turned out to be an abandoned ship siren! There had been a failure of the cooling hose which resulted in some flooding in the generator. Thankfully the crew responded to the situation swiftly, but it did result in the ship having to return to port to assess the damage, let things dry out, and get any new parts that may be needed. Not surprisingly this really dampened our spirits but we were thankful that everyone was safe and that we could make it back to port.

I stayed back on the ship to finish unpacking and to decompress. And finally got to visit Ala Moana- Magic Island to watch a nice sunset and catch a glimpse of what’s left of the comet. 

– Sunset from the Ala Moana Magic Beach Park

Cheers,

Briana 

– The Kilo Moana ^

Week #1 with the Hawaiin Oceanographic Time Series (HOTs), expedition #354 proved to be a HOT dive into the wide variety of science that takes place at Station A.L.O.H.A (A Long-Term Oligotrophic Habitat Assessment)! This is an area of the ocean that is about 60 miles north of Oahu that has been routinely sampled since 1988 and is one of the longest oceanographic time series in the world! I am very thankful to been given the opportunity to work with them this week as this short cruise was a really nice training ground for all things CTD and working at sea! 

My internship started on October 7th, 2024 with a mini symposium held by Schmidt Sciences and University of Hawaii at Manoa (UH) oceanogrpahy professors and scientists. They presented on the work that they were working on and could potentially collaborate with the larger and developing Ocean Biogeochemistry Virtual Institute (OBVI) that is supported by Schmidt Sciences. 

This symposium was really insightful as it introduced to me a lot of the researchers and the science that they do and I might be supporting in the next 10 weeks. The symposium also drove home the impact and importance of the Hawaiian Oceanographic Time Series (HOTS) is to the larger scientific community which gave me a lot of context into the spirit of this mission. Models have demonstrated that it takes about 42 +/- 7 years for climate change signatures to appear in models, but unfortunately many time series don’t get enough funding to reach that length, thus it is essential for long standing scientific endeavors to get the consistent funding and resources they need to continue.

On Wednesday 10/9 I assisted in “Loading Day” and got to meet members of the science party, ship crew and one of my mentors, Dan Fitzgerald . After we loaded boxes onto the ship, I got to observe Dan create a termination on the sensor cable on the CTD, a HOT cruise monthly tradition. The sensor cable is responsible for relaying all the information to the ship in live time, without it can be really difficult to know where you are in the water column, or observe areas of interest that you might want to take a water sample from.

– Hunter Adam and Dan Fitsgerald working on the CTD Rosette 

Conducting a new termination (the process of exposing new wire from the cable, splicing, crimping and soldering wires together) is essential to maintaining and repairing any issues caused from things like corrosion and rusting. Conducting new terminations monthly is essential for ensuring signal integrity from the CTD and keeping things running smoothyl given that HOT cruises are short (anywhere from 4-5 days) and ship time is expensive.

Once we set sail the following day, we got to check the integrity of the CTD termination with a test deployment of a set of weights with the bridal attached in Station Kahe (an underway practice station), before deploying it later that evening at Station A.L.O.H.A. During these troubleshooting trials we observe that there was a mechanical issue with one of the oxygen sensors on the CTD so I also observed how Dan swapped out sensors while in the rosette frame, which is quite tricky! Once we left Station Kahe, I went straight to bed to get ready for my 12 hr shift starting at 3am the following morning.

– The CTD Rosette being transported by a Hawbolt Whinch crane overboard in preparation for a cast

In the following days I helped with the deployment of atleast 8 CTD Rosette Cast. I learned how to caulk the bottles and reel it in and out of our CTD shed and general CTD Rosette handling. As well as learned how to communicate with the wrench crew when firing bottles over walkie talkies. Additionally It was really interesting to learn about the wide varieties of cast to be done and how the water is used based on the researchers’ different water needs. For example some scientist are looking at oxygen, or dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC), dissolved organic carbon (DOC), nutrients (Nut), salinity, ATP, particulate carbon (PC), particualte Nitrogen (PN) all of which contribute to the great collection of data that is the Hawaiin Oceanographic time series.

– Cast sheet and schedule posted showing what depth the CTD is being sent to and what depths the bottles will be fired at. 

– I got to sit at the CTD console and fire some bottles, this is me holding my cast sheet. 

There were a lot of moments that blew my mind this week (like seeing a whale shark in the wild!), but I’d say one of the most impactful things I observed on the cruise was a Gas Array experiment take place from start to finish, a true testiment to the rigors of doing science at sea! By the time my shift started at 3am on 10/12 the CTD had already been brought up and was ready for water sampling. Mattias (an undergrad researcher) and Dan Sandler (HOT Cruise OG) invited me to collect the water in jars and enrich it with N15, a stable isotope that can help track the net production of Nitrogen by Nitrogen fixing plankton. Once those water jugs were filled, they were attached to metal rods and then attached to a line and then deployed on a buoy using the A-frame. These water samples are to sit in the water column at the depth that they were collected for 24 hours before being retrieved.     The retrieval process however, is quite dramatic given that it’s done in the pitch of dark (10/13 at 5:30 am) and the Kilo Moana is a double hulled boat that could potentially “run over” buoys or have it get caught in the propellers if the navigation team and scientific crew are not careful. I watched in suspense as we approached the buoy the samples are attached to and watched the bouy slowly dogde the middle of the R/V Kilo Moana and float past the side of the hull, phew!!! Mattias and Hunter (fellow UNOLS-MATE intern) bravely threw grappling hooks overboard to get some control on the buoy, and swing it to the stern of the boat, where the Ocean Technology Group (OTG) and deck crew were ready to latch a stick with a hook to the line and start wringing in the buoy on the back deck using the boat’s A-frame. Once the bouy was on the ship we all breath a sigh a relief, we had succesfully retrieve our samples without any issues!  

It’s astonishing how well HOT Cruise #354 went, the scientific party and crew have this expedition down to a T! HOT Cruise #354 proved to be a wonderful primer to the type of work we’ll be doing on the South Pacific Cruise I’ll be embarking on next week. We expect to be doing a lot of CTD Rosette Cast, Gas Arrays, Primary Productivity arrays and more so these skills will most definitly come in handy! 

– Fellow HOT Cruise #354 volunteers 🙂

Cheers,

Briana Prado

* hehe, here is said whale shark, taken via go-pro by one of the AB’s on aboard!