Author: Cassie Ferrante

09/14/23 – 09/21/23

We just arrived back in Woods Hole! We spent the week transiting and thankfully avoiding Hurricane Lee in the Atlantic. Besides collecting data when we were outside of other country’s EEZs, we haven’t worked on any science operations so the crew has been using the time to catch up on work, start end of cruise reports, or relax. Highlight of the week was playing mario kart.

For personal projects, I cleaned the pesky PC02 filter again (if you don’t clean it periodically, it fills up with marine critters like krill and can get gross real fast, see below), made a sail bag out of old foul weather gear, 3D printed a cover for the cordless phone on the bridge so it won’t fall during a roll, wrote my resume and CV in LaTeX, organized some miscellaneous hardware pieces, helped Emily and Croy prepare for the Starlink installation once we’re docked, and packaged the final science data hard drive using Linux to give to the Chief Scientist.

The PC02 culprit

QOW: What is a marine technician, and what do they do?

The role of a marine technician depends on the ship they’re on and the institution they’re working with. For WHOI, marine technicians are classified as Engineering Assistants and are part of the Shipboard Scientific Services Group (SSG). It’s a unique niche on the ship. They act as a liaison between the ship’s crew and the science party, helping out with science operations and making sure the data that are collected underway are being archived properly. On the Armstrong, the SSGs service the science equipment like the CTD and flow-through system in the lab, and handle any troubleshooting issues with equipment that arise. At least with WHOI, marine technicians sail anywhere from 6-8 months out of the year. That might seem like a lot of time to most folks, but a huge benefit is they may have several weeks off at once. This makes it an attractive lifestyle to those who can handle being away from home for long periods of time and like having extended time and freedom to travel or explore their hobbies more in-depth.

More information here: https://www.whoi.edu/what-we-do/explore/ships/marine-facilities-operations/marine-facilities-operations-support-services/shipboard-technicians/

One of the mates took this photo from the bridge (I’m wearing the puffy jacket)! Source: Lia (Third Mate)

09/07/23 – 09/14/23

We are currently transiting back to Woods Hole! This week, we wrapped up the remaining science objectives by recovering the last of the OOI moorings. I got to hop on the A-frame, one of the lifting cranes aboard the ship that’s hydraulically powered to assist with moving operations, to help bring in the moorings and the science instruments hosted on the cable. These moorings can get up to 2830 meters meaning the recoveries can take several hours as all that cable needs to be pulled in using a series of winches. I also helped secure some of the instruments on deck after they were taken off the cable. The ship’s deck has holes all over so that the instruments like the buoys can be bolted down. I included some more background on OOI’s mission further below.

Map of the completed survey area, including the previous moorings (#9) and the ones we just deployed (#10). Zoomed out photo next to Greenland for context. 

For personal projects, I cleaned out the computer racks on the ship with a can of aero-duster and a handheld vacuum, shadowed the OOI crew while they were pulling in the moorings and hopped on the A-frame, cleaned out the PC02 filter and learned how to use the ship’s ELOG or their online record-keeping spreadsheet, replaced the syringe on the tubing that flushes out the temperature sensors on the CTD, helped the engineers repair the LARS (Launch and Recovery System) crane for the CTD since there was a loose connection in the wires that control the magnetic limit switches for the docking head, got a tour of the engine room by one of the engineers and got to crawl around in all the nooks and crannies, added CTD waypoints to OpenCPN (maritime chart plotter software), got a walkthrough of the OOI gliders and the online interface the scientists use to communicate with their acoustic modem and Iridium satellites, practiced soldering and built a new termination ending on some practice 0.322 CTD cable wire, secured the chairs in the computer lab using bungee cords, and practiced some Python coding. I’m also editing a timelapse video of the engineers servicing one of the engines since it reached the end of its lifecycle.

QOW: What are we even doing out here, anyway? Aka the NSF Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) 

The National Science Foundation (NSF) OOI is a collection of ocean monitoring platforms in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. For this trip, our focus is on the Global Irminger Sea Array off the southern tip of Greenland (highlighted with the arrow in the photo below). The Irminger Sea Array is part of two global arrays. The locations for the global arrays were chosen to target areas that were under-sampled based on challenging sailing conditions like high winds that make it harder for research vessels to visit and collect data. The benefit of having high latitude observations is that these areas provide key insight into ocean circulation processes which can help scientists understand large-scale processes like climate change better.

The Global Irminger Sea Array has four moorings, each of which is anchored to the seafloor. In between the moorings, gliders (autonomous underwater vehicles) move in between the moorings to fill in data gaps in between each platform. The gliders communicate to the moorings via an acoustic modem which is then transferred to OOI’s servers via a satellite. What’s really cool is these moorings also have acoustic sound releases that cause the cable to detach from the anchor so we can pick them up.

For the three subsurface moorings (labeled #1, 2, and 3), once the acoustic releases have been triggered and the mooring is released from the anchor, the crew hooks the red buoyant buoy to bring it in. At the end of the mooring are a series of green buoyant balls that help the mooring to come to the surface to relieve the strain on the ship’s winches.

For the yellow surface buoy mooring (#4), the order is in reverse: the crew has to grab the buoyant glass balls first and then finally wrangle the surface buoy once the rest of the cable has been secured. The rescue boat is deployed to attach a cable to the surface buoy to help bring it onto the ship. I included some photos showing the recovery process for both types of moorings below.

For the subsurface moorings:

The buoy comes up to the surface once the acoustic release has been triggered so the crew can hook onto it.

Then, using the A-frame and a series of winches on deck, they bring in the buoy and the rest of the mooring.

For the surface buoy:

The rescue boat is deployed so the crew can hook up a line to the surface buoy directly to help wrangle it back on the ship with two points of contact (one on the bottom as part of the mooring, then one on the buoy). Source: Croy (SSSG/Marine Technician)

Recovery of the old buoys was just one step – we had to both deploy the new moorings AND recover the old ones, all while working under a tight weather window. Suffice to say I’m amazed at all the crew and science party have pulled off!

For more information on OOI: https://oceanobservatories.org/ 

08/31/23 – 09/07/23

Prince Christian Sound

I’ve gotten in the groove of things on the ship. The OOI crew deployed the large SUMO-10 buoy along with the whole mooring system. We had a low-pressure system move in so we had to hide out in Prince Christian Sound, Greenland which was STUNNING. We hung out at the entrance of the fjord for a while before going on a glacier hunt and sailing farther into the channel. The blue streaks on the icebergs were amazing to see as they floated by. My favorite glacier was one that stopped at a cliff and had a waterfall coming over the side.

Iceberg with blue streaks cutting through, one of the glaciers we saw, view from the bridge.

As if seeing glaciers wasn’t enough, we also saw the northern lights!! On the first night, I saw what I thought was a faint cloud but it turned out to be the aurora borealis. The sky contained green clouds that night. Then the second night, which was when an incoming solar flare was predicted to happen, we saw a faint light behind the mountains that looked like light pollution you’d see on the horizon. But then the light magnified and streaks shone across the sky, wiggling like green snakes. The crew stood out on the bow and in the bridge watching the lights in the sky. The coolest part was looking straight up and seeing the streaks of light directly above you like there was an alien spaceship trying to pick you up. The lights danced across the sky, and at one point I saw streaks of red mixing in with the green as they were painted across the sky. It was a magical night. 

Aurora lights in the sky. My camera picked up more of the green light than we saw in person.

Besides geeking out over glaciers and the northern lights, I 3D printed covers for the Debubblers in the lab to block the light and reduce bacterial overgrowth in between their cleaning maintenance. I also cleaned out the PC02 filter which was full of krill, cleaned the transmissometers, cleaned the forward pump with Emily which was full of mussels and barnacles (yum), practiced Linux with MIT’s text-based adventure game Terminus, prepared the CTD for deployment as the resident “bottle fairy” and practiced radio commands to the winch operator, practiced more Linux with OverTheWire’s Bandit Wargame, refilled the deionized water containers with Milli-Q water, learned from one of the WHOI scientists about the Winkler titration method to look at dissolved oxygen in the water samples from the CTD, and continued working with the 3D printer to create feet to secure the new Cricut craft printer.

Question of the Week: What are the northern lights, and why do they form?

The northern lights, also called the aurora borealis, are an atmospheric phenomenon of dancing lights. Galileo coined the term aurora borealis after Aurora, the Roman Goddess of Dawn, and Boreas, the Greek god of the north wind. In the south pole, the same atmospheric effect is referred to as aurora australis, named after the Greek god of the south wind. Auroras form due to an interaction between energized particles from the sun and Earth’s magnetic field. The Earth has a magnetic field based on the way its molten, iron core circulates that redirects incoming solar particles. Energized particles from the sun hit Earth’s upper atmosphere and are deflected by this magnetic field towards the north and south poles, which then excite molecules in the atmosphere to produce a dizzying array of colors. There was green and red in the aurora I saw since the solar particles excited oxygen and nitrogen molecules, creating green and red colors respectively.

Fun fact: auroras happen on other planets too! These planets also have magnetic fields and atmospheres.

Source:

https://www.space.com/15139-northern-lights-auroras-earth-facts-sdcmp.html#section-northern-lights-faqs-answered-by-an-expert

Seljalandsfoss waterfall in Iceland 🙂

08/24/23 – 08/31/23

This week has been a whirlwind! On the 24th, I arrived to the R/V Neil Armstrong, docked in Reykjavik, Iceland. Since then, I’ve been familiarizing myself with the ship’s spaces, meeting the crew, and working on some projects. I met my mentors, Emily and Croy, who I’ll shadow for my internship. One big task the crew had to complete before sailing to Greenland was repairing the main crane. Since the seal on the inner piston for the extender arm was broken, we had to hire two cranes to hoist the crew up there and a crane to lift out the inner piston part.

Cranes to hoist the crew and the inner piston. Source: Croy

Since joining the ship, I’ve been working on side projects to support the science party. I’ve used a power drill to replace some of the rusted nails on the CTD wooden frame with stainless steel ones (aborted since the screws kept stripping as they weren’t the right type), took off the tubing from the flow-through station in the lab to clean the tubes with fresh water (and tried to remember how to put it back on), attached the CDOM (Colored Dissolved Organic Matter) fluorometer on the CTD rosette with a mounting block that Emily 3D printed, studied computer networking fundamentals and Linux, and helped prepare the CTD for a deployment and captured water samples from the Niskin bottles once the rosette came back up. Emily also taught me a nice hack to fill in stripped screw holes by breaking wooden toothpicks in the hole so the screws have something to latch onto.

In terms of life on the ship, I’ve been amazed at the variety, flavor, and amount of food on board. On my first night here, we had chocolate cake for dessert and there has been a whole spread of snacks on the counter up for grabs (Cheetos, gummy bears, candy bars!!) The food is really incredible and for me it’s a good sign to see that the ship goes above and beyond for the crew’s morale. There’s also CHEESE THIRTY, a charcuterie board that happens every day at 1530. You read that right. 

Some other cool things that happened this week was finding out my roommate had previously worked in film as part of the camera crew for television shows including the Walking Dead. I also played disc golf with Croy and company on top of a hill in Reykjavik that overlooked the city and was framed by the mountains.

For this upcoming week, the current plan is to go into Prince Christian Sound in Greenland to avoid a storm. The view there is supposed to be spectacular so I’m really looking forward to that. I’m also looking forward to working more with the 3D printer. 

I wanted to dedicate this last section to questions I’ve had since joining the ship:

What is the R/V Neil Armstrong, and why is it named after the astronaut?

The R/V Neil Armstrong is an oceanographic research vessel owned by the United States Navy and operated by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. The ship was named after Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon and a Navy veteran. Naming the vessel after Armstrong harkens back to the time when the space program named their space shuttles after WHOI oceanographic sailing vessels, such as the space shuttle Atlantis named after WHOI’s R/V Atlantis. In turn, the new class of research vessels including R/V Neil Armstrong and its sister ship R/V Sally Ride with Scripps Institution of Oceanography (like the WHOI of the west coast) were named after astronauts. During The R/V Armstrong’s naming ceremony, the Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus said:

“Naming this class of ships and this vessel after Neil Armstrong honors the memory of an extraordinary individual, but more importantly, it reminds us all to embrace the challenges of exploration and to never stop discovering.” Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus (source)

Upcoming questions:

What is the OOI Science Mission?

What does a marine technician do?

More to come 🙂

Hi everyone!

My name is Cassie Ferrante and I will be the UNOLS-MATE intern on the upcoming R/V Neil Armstrong voyage. We’re scheduled to sail from Reykjavík, Iceland to Greenland, then back home to Woods Hole, MA from the end of August through September. Our main science objective is to recover and replace the NSF Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) Irminger Sea Array in an area southeast of Greenland.

Some background on me:
In 2020, I graduated from Colgate University in Upstate New York with a degree in Marine-Freshwater Science. Due to covid travel restrictions, I participated in my study abroad program after graduation. In 2021, I joined Sea Education Association’s Ocean and Climate Program, sailing from California to Hawaii. I absolutely loved sailing and couldn’t wait to get back on the water. Last year, I sailed on the NOAA R/V Okeanos Explorer as an explorer-in-training, a similar internship program to this one except more of a focus on seafloor mapping. Since then, I’ve participated in two terms with the NASA DEVELOP program in Wyoming and Alabama using NASA Earth satellite observations to address local environmental concerns. 

I’m thrilled to join the Armstrong and to meet everyone soon!! I’ll be traveling around Iceland for a few days before meeting the boat. 🙂