Author: Emily Cheung Page 1 of 2

The heat and humidity rise as we approach the equator. The water is unbelievably warm, pushing 30 C (thirty is hot, twenty is nice, ten is cold, zero is ice) some days. Its color is a deep, clear blue: indicating oligotrophic waters, which lack the nutrients for much life to thrive. Still, flying fish scatter in all directions as the ship plows forward and kicks their flight response into full gear. Amber fronds of sargassum float by, patches growing larger and becoming more frequent with each passing day.

For the past decade or so, sargassum has bloomed in unprecedented amounts. It coagulates in massive mats (large enough to spot with satellites) that float along the warm, equatorial current and land on some unlucky beach in their path. Mounds build up and begin to rot, releasing sulfuric gas as they decompose, thus uprooting beachgoers and disrupting entire intertidal ecosystems. It is an expensive and difficult mess to clean up. For a bit, it was thought that the seagreen had potential as cattle feed or fertilizer, but when trace amounts of arsenic were found in sargassum tissues, those ideas were ditched.

As a favor to a previous chief scientist, the techs have agreed to conduct some opportunistic sampling as we transit south. As we pass through the sargassum belt, we pause to collect water and snag a few handfuls of tissue samples (using a custom-made sargassum grappling hook). I get the chance to put my undergraduate research experience to good use, since with every station there is a good 5-6 hours of filtration to process the samples. Fortunately, I actually enjoy the tedium and repetition of filtration, for with practice comes efficiency, which is so so so satisfying. It feels good to have the chance to participate in a research project in this way, especially one with such an interesting story.

Week 14

By Emily Cheung

On August 24, 2019

In MATE Blog Archive

Our time in Woods Hole has drawn to a close. The friends we have made over the past few months wave farewell from the dock as we throw our lines and head for open ocean. The quaint little New England village that has become our temporary home fades into fog, and soon, we are surrounded by water in every direction. With fair winds and weather, it will take us three weeks to reach Montevideo. The forecast, so far, appears clear. I hope it holds.

With no science party on board, the ship feels spacious. Suddenly, we all have room to work on projects that there never seems to be time for: I fix the camera network issues we’ve been having, set up a computer system in the science office, work on moving the bridge switch to a place where tall people won’t hit it with their heads (shame on you, shipyard), and in general, get the ship ready for our upcoming month-and-a-half-long cruise.

Although no scientists are present, science goes on. Along our way South, and later, when the ship transits across the Southern Atlantic to South Africa, we will be deploying a few dozen ARGO floats. The ARGO program has been around since the 90s, with the aim of generating an ocean-wide profile of oceanographic characteristics. Although satellites may estimate ocean characteristics from space, they are only able to measure what’s going on at the surface, so until ARGO, what went on below remained a mystery (unless one rented a research vessel and cast a bunch of CTDs, which would be time consuming and expensive). Each ARGO is free floating, and uses an oil-filled bladder to regulate its buoyancy, thus conducting dozens of CTD profiles as it drifts through the ocean during its two-year lifetime. Currently, there are about 3,800 ARGO floats around the world, allowing for daily updates of ocean-wide profiles. Pretty cool if you ask me. To top it off, all of this data is available, for free, to the public.

The deployments are a breeze. We slow down the ship and lower the box that contains the ARGO down to the water. A hydrostatic lock hits the water and releases the bridle, and the ARGO drifts away in our wake. The water is calm calm calm. I wonder if tomorrow it will mirror the sky, just like it did last year, off the coast of Bermuda. The clouds are just as I remember, towering and well-defined, allowing for fantastic sunrises and sunsets. For the past few years, I have moved from one place to another, every few months or so. Turns out that this time last year, I was in the exact same place: on a ship, headed South from Bermuda, on my birthday morning. It feels good to be back.

Week 11

By Emily Cheung

On August 13, 2019

In MATE Blog Archive

Our second cruise out of Woods Hole is a short one. We are set to sail for eight days, just out to the continental shelf and back. Behind us, we tow a half-a-kilometer-long streamer, dotted with an array of aluminum bottles. Using a series of electrodes and conductivity sensors, the science party is scouring the coastal area for a fresh water aquifer, which allegedly stretches all the way out to the shelf.

Sub-ocean groundwater is a relatively new discovery, and the knowledge of where these untapped, freshwater caches are located is of great interest to countries with large populations and dwindling aquifers. Turns out, a future where off-shore rigs are built to pump drinking water to land is not as far-out as it sounds. In order to find these sources, a team of electromagnetic physicists and engineers from WHOI have teamed up to create an entirely new instrument-essentially a gigantic conductivity cell-that is able to determine the salinity of a huge swath of ocean as it is towed behind the ship.

It takes an entire day to deploy the array. Hand over hand, we cast 850 meters of fiber optic cable off the back deck. Every so often, an aluminum bottle, about three feet in length, is wired into the array and sent overboard. They are slightly buoyant, so I watch each one faintly disappear as they trail behind us into the silver-blue waves. When the end of the line is reached, a weight is attached and the array is drawn down, down, down, below the surface. Next, we deploy a set of copper pipes on a conductive cable. These remain at the surface, and when live, transmit an electromagnetic field through the water column that the receivers within the aluminum bottles are able to interpret.

Between the deployment on the first day and the recovery on the last, the rest of our time is spent towing at a speedy two knots per hr. I fill my time with small projects; I practice my coding skills, work my way through a Raspberry Pi tutorial, and take time to sit on the bow and watch the dolphins and whales that surf our wake. It is a relaxing cruise, and after a busy few months, I am grateful for it.

Week 10

By Emily Cheung

On July 31, 2019

In MATE Blog Archive, R/V Thomas G. Thompson, University of Washington, School of Oceanography

Back on shore, we hit the ground running. Our major NSF and Navy inspections are in a week, and there are a lot of loose ends to tie up before we are ready.

Earlier in the month, we unspooled and respooled nearly 40,000 metres of wire. Some had become too damaged and rusty and needed to be replaced. The rest that was in decent shape still needed maintenance, which meant that all wires came off the boat, foot by foot, and were lubed on their way back on board. From each spool, we cut a ten meter sample, which usually gets shipped out to the wire pool headquarters for a break test. Coincidentally, we happen to be on the same dock. So we deliver our wire samples by hand.

Barbara greets us, I recognize her name from our wire records. The wire pool lab houses two machines that are able to inflict up to 100,000 lbs of tension on a section of wire. Which is pretty amazing, but in the history of break tests, no wire has been able to withstand more than 50,000 lbs. She shows us the termination casts, which takes her hours to attach to either end of the wire. They were designed in-house, specifically for withstanding extreme tension. For a long time, the terminations were the first to break during the wire test, but with the new design, higher tensions can be reached and the true strength of the wire can be measured.

A few days later, Barbara invites us over to view a break test of our .680 cable, which is supposedly one of the more spectacular breaks. Our cable is all hooked up when we arrive, pulled tight across the break machine. A cage closes over the wire and the stretching begins. We can watch the tension increase on the monitor, and Barbara warns us once we reach 30,000 lbs to prepare for a break. I can hear the wire snap, even though im wearing earplugs, and a huge cloud of dust and rust rises from the cage. The wire has broken close to the termination, causing it to snap towards the other end of the cage, bending and warping the wire into a beautiful twist. We made it to 36,000 lbs. We pass the test.

Week 9

By Emily Cheung

On July 15, 2019

In MATE Blog Archive, R/V Thomas G. Thompson, University of Washington, School of Oceanography

After my brief stint on the R/V Rachel Carson, I catch a flight to the East coast and arrive in Woodshole to meet UW’s larger ship, the R/V Thomas G Thompson. The boat is docked all the way at the end of town, but I can see the mast towering high above the buildings as I walk down the street. This small, coastal town is a major hub for Oceanography, and essentially is built around and consists of the Woodshole Oceanographic Institution. I can overhear people discussing their research while walking down the street. There are flyers for a plankton exhibit taped on store fronts. Everyone sports shades of blue.

The Thompson is enormous. It can house about thirty crew and thirty scientists. There are four different science labs, a library, a lounge, a gym. It is much larger and more stable than any other ship I have ever sailed on. When we leave the dock, there are no sudden movements or strange noises. So, it’s only when I look up and out the porthole and see the masts of other ships going by that I realize we are underway. Out we go, to the continental shelf!

About one hundred miles off the coast of New England, the oceanic plate dives under the continental plate, resulting in a sudden drop from relatively shallow coastal shelf to deep ocean. The Gulf Stream runs northward along this boundary, and every so often, the inner edge of the stream catches and peels off in massive eddies. In the main lab across the passageway, a satellite image is displayed on the projector screen. Shades of the rainbow illustrate where the warm water from the Gulf brushes against the cold, nutrient-rich shelf water. To the south of Woodshole is a massive swirl of red that is unmatched in size by any other feature on the screen. A warm core eddy. By its side is a bright blue ribbon that snakes out into the open ocean. The scientists point and call it the streamer.

Although this whole region has been widely sampled and studied, scientists have yet to thoroughly examine and quantify the streamer itself. The science party on board is an interdisciplinary group, made up of labs all over the country. They have come together to seek out this streamer and learn everything they can about it. To do this, they have brought an arsenal of instruments on board with them. As one of the technicians, one of the largest aspects of the job is to assist in the safe deployment and recovery of these instruments. My first deployment on board is with the Video Plankton Recorder (VPR) which looks like a small black fixed-wing plane. In its nose is a strobe light and in the starboard wing is a camera, so as the instrument is towed behind the ship, it takes images of an area the size of a cubic centimeter. It essentially acts as an underwater microscope, which can communicate a live feed of images to us up in the lab as it “flies” through the water. On board is also one of the Remote Environment Monitoring UnitS (REMUS) from the Woodshole Institution of Oceanography. This robot comes with its own team of technicians that are responsible for programming, communicating, and troubleshooting REMUS. Although it looks like a glider, REMUS has a propeller on its tail, which gives it greater control over its movement and a greater range of travel throughout its mission. The deployment is a bit more complicated, since the robot will be free floating, we lift the 700 lb REMUS up into the air with our crane, then slowly lead it overboard and out into the water. As it hit the surface of the water, we pull a line that releases a pin mechanism on the bridle of the instrument, and the robot is free.

During our cruise, REMUS unexpectedly aborted one of its missions. Communication with the instrument while it is underwater is limited to echo sounding, which only works when the instrument is within range. To “talk” to REMUS while it is close by, but underwater, the team has a hand-held transducer that can be lowered just over the rail and into the water. There are a variety of commands that can be communicated through a series of clicks. Judson holds the transducer up to my ear and sets the dial to “Abort”. I hear it crisp and clear; click, click, click-click-click. He sets the dial to the next setting “Run”. Click, click, click-click-click. I can’t tell the difference at all. Judson is all smiles. Clearly excited, he explains that the commands may all sound the same to the human ear, but REMUS can differentiate between them and respond accordingly. However, when the robot aborted its mission, the transducer wasn’t even in the water. By some sort of miracle, that exact series of clicks was generated by something somewhere out in the ocean, and REMUS heard.

When the data from all of the instruments and sensors are combined, we are able to see the ocean in a rare and beautiful light. Instead of just a satellite surface layer image, the screen now flashes through 3D graphics of the streamer with red and blue and green swirls indicating temperature fronts, high and low salinity, blooms of phytoplankton, areas with oxygen, areas without. To the average person, this swath of sea would appear desolate and lifeless. Perhaps a few would notice amber fronds of sargassum floating by; maybe others would spot a storm petrel riding the high pressure wind under the crest of a wave. But for the most part, the North Atlantic, to the naked eye, is an endless blue desert. So if you are lucky enough to tag along with group of thirty oceanographers at sea, do not hesitate, for they will reveal to you a world that is teeming with diversity and incredible forms of life.

Week 7

By Emily Cheung

On June 19, 2019

In MATE Blog Archive, R/V Rachel Carson, University of Washington, School of Oceanography

We have reached the final station of the cruise. Our plan is to sit tight and sample here for the next day or so, then make our way back to Seattle. With only a few days to go, the chief scientist loses his balance during a roll and tumbles headfirst into the steel doorway of the ship. Todd sees him take the fall and is by his side in an instant. We head for shore.

We all sit around the galley, John in the corner with a towel pressed on his wound, and trade head injury stories to pass the time. Turns out, every decade or so, John hits his head. It’s been fifteen years since the last one, so he laughs and says he was overdue. The guy has had dozens of staples in his head, and by the end of the day, he will have nine more.

After an injury occurs, there is a twelve hour window for stitches. We are due in Neah Bay at 0200, leaving just four hours to get John to the nearest hospital. It takes the whole team, both on shore and at sea, to make arrangements to dock in Neah Bay, get a shoreside crew member to drive from Seattle to the peninsula to pick John up at the dock, make the bumpy back road drive to Port Angeles, find a hospital, seek treatment, get breakfast, and get John back on board at 0900. By some miracle, it all comes together, and we are off again.

Our last day on board is spent navigating among the San Juan Islands. The water is clear and green as sea glass. We glide past cliff sides covered in evergreens above and mussels below. With the underway pumping system chugging away on its own, the entire crew and science party are out on deck, taking in the smooth seas and sunlight. At slack tide we make it to Deception Pass, Todd tells me of the insane currents he has encountered here, and of the time he once flooded a fishing boat trying to make it through at the wrong tide. But the water is calm enough right now, and as we coast along we wave to the onlookers standing on the bridge above, who eagerly wave back. Sunset hits as we head south on a run behind Whidbey Island. The Cascades and clouds turn pink as our cruise comes to an end.

Week 5

By Emily Cheung

On June 5, 2019

In MATE Blog Archive, R/V Rachel Carson, University of Washington, School of Oceanography

This cruise, so far, has been quite eventful. After beginning our journey back North, we decide to turn up the Columbia River and head inland. The transition to calm water is a relief, and I am happy to have a break, however brief, from the constant rocking and rolling of the boat. A few miles upriver, we decide to lift up the boom that has been deployed over the side of the boat for a quick inspection. As the crane lifts the end of the pole up, it bends and snaps in half.

Either end of the boom was anchored by cables at the bow of the ship, which left the length subject to the weight of our forward momentum and the ocean’s waves, allowing it to bend like the flex of an archer’s bow as it is drawn. Over time, at the center of the pole, the aft end of a welded joint began to split, until only a sliver, about an inch long, was left holding it together. We had caught it just in time.

As a testament to the strength of the team here at UW, it takes us twelve hours to find a dock, find a welder, take the whole thing apart, fix it back up, and put it all back together. By one in the morning, the only thing stopping us from going back to sea is the tide. We wait till morning.

We depart the Columbia with the ebb, with the aim of surveying the river effluent as it mixes into the Pacific. As we skirt the edge of the river plume, the water changes back and forth from a muddy turquoise to a deep, clear blue. The salinity jumps between 20 to 30 parts per million, which brings the science party unbelievable excitement. They have renamed our mission “Plume Chasers” and insist that we’re the next big Discovery Channel hit. We follow its track South until all traces of the river disappear and all that’s left is endless salty blue ocean.

I awake the next morning to Brian knocking at my stateroom door. I hear him say “orcas” and I am up on deck before my eyes are even open. A pod of about a dozen whales rides in our wake. They surface, one or two at a time, and then all together at once. A few juveniles breach and playfully rub against the adults. Farther behind, a massive dorsal fin rises slowly from the sea and a dark body with two white eye patches emerge, pointed directly towards us. It must be the alpha male, taking up the rear of the pack. Words cannot describe the sense of wonder I feel. I have never interacted with animals this large before, and my heart jumps with waves of nerves and excitement. For a moment, I am no longer the apex predator, and I feel as if I am being preyed upon. Watching the family move with coordination and intention, it becomes clear that these animals are highly intelligent. I am completely overcome with admiration for these creatures, and I am reminded that the ocean is truly a humbling place to be.

Week 4

By Emily Cheung

On May 29, 2019

In MATE Blog Archive, R/V Rachel Carson, University of Washington, School of Oceanography

For the past few days, we have been working our way down the coastline, following a zig-zag pattern as we follow the current south. We cruise with ease, with the wind and waves are at our back. The days are mostly grey and smooth, with the occasional whale spout or pod of dolphins breaking up the endless ocean.

The group of scientists on board are studying the presence and fate of methane in our coastal waters. They extract the gas from the surface of the ocean as we cruise by, and then compress it into gas cylinders for further analysis. Methane is a greenhouse gas, with a much greater ability to retain heat than its better known cousin, carbon dioxide. This means a relatively small amount of methane may have a large affect on the global climate. This research project aims to understand the role of methane in coastal ocean processes, and then using computer modeling, project how these processes contribute to the climate on a global scale.

Initially, we planned to sail all the way to central California. To everyone’s dissappointment, the forecast is calling for a storm just around the corner of Cape Blanco. If we choose to continue, a nine foot swell awaits us, and we’ve already been struggling through less. With our hopes of eating chowder in the Golden State dashed, we turn tail and head North.

With this sudden change, we need to come up with a new game plan that fits within the limits of the weather, tide, and time. We all gather around the navigation computer, the science team points out other locations they would like to sample, shooting out new research ideas and case studies on the fly. We manage to pull together a plan that everyone seems to be happy with, and I walk away pretty amazed at everyone’s flexibility and ability to improvise on such short notice.

This kind of experience makes it clear that the nature of fieldwork taught in class just doesn’t reflect reality at all. I have yet to see a single research cruise where things go as planned, where scientists walk off the boat with the exact data and samples they expect. It is almost unfair to lead undergraduates on with the idea that fieldwork may be accomplished with a printed handout on a clipboard, and the option of a rain check if bad weather arises. The truth of it is that when the boat has been rolling nearly 180 degrees for three days straight, when your equipment keeps falling over no matter how many bungee cords you strap around them, when the prospects of weather gets even worse, you work through the nausea and figure out something better. The truth of it is, as Liz likes to say, research at sea is fast and loose.

Week 3

By Emily Cheung

On May 22, 2019

In MATE Blog Archive

Week 2

By Emily Cheung

On May 15, 2019

In MATE Blog Archive, R/V Rachel Carson, University of Washington, School of Oceanography

Our first cruise is a short one. Since the R/V Rachel Carson is operated by the University of Washington, a portion of the cruises are for undergraduate and graduate classes and research. This two-day cruise is a field section for a fisheries class, where students take what they have learned in lecture and have the opportunity to apply it in real life. They get to witness a fisheries boat in action, deploy and recover the nets they have heard of, and handle and identify the ocean creatures they have studied in their books. As a graduate from a college located nearly two-hundred miles from the ocean, I’ll admit, I am a little jealous.

We transit over to Shilshole, a marina at the mouth of Lake Union, to pick up the students. The lake level is kept a few feet higher than sea level by a set of watertight gates in the canal. So, I get to experience travelling through locks for the first time, which I am thrilled about, to the amusement of the crew. We arrive at Shilshole and the boat is suddenly flooded with students and instructors, outfitted in lifejackets and hardhats. We cast off and head West to the other side of Puget Sound.

The plan is to deploy an Otter Trawl across four set tracklines of varying depths to sample for abundance and variety of fish species over the course of twenty-four hours. Contrary to how it sounds, an Otter Trawl is not designed for (nor is it likely capable of) capturing otters. The unique net bears a set of doors, which were traditionally wooden, that kept the mouth of the net out and open as it dredges the bottom of the ocean floor. Old-time Bostonian fishermen butchered the word “outer” that described the purpose of the doors, and the name “otter” stuck.

Our first few attempts at setting the trawl end in a tangle, as it is our first time using this sort of net on RC. Figuring it out takes some troubleshooting and practice. With a line attached to each door, we raise the net off the deck and above our heads. As the net is cast of the back deck and into the water, we guide the top of the net as it swings 180 degrees. The winch lowers as the net begins to pull behind us. As the doors sink below the surface, the water catches them like a parachute. The mouth of the net opens and for a moment, the top line of floats raise to the surface, then the whole of it sinks into the darkness.

We tow for fifteen minutes, then winch the net back to the surface. As a biologist, I am enchanted by the strange and diverse creatures that our trawls have unearthed from the bottom of the Sound. But the ecologist in me knows that this survey is damaging to the benthal ecosystem, and I struggle with the pros and cons of this kind of experiential education. We release another netload into the sorting tables. Amidst a heap of algae and shrimp, a crusty old beer bottle rolls out, and an octopus emerges from its mouth. It has suddenly found itself in an alien world, being poked and prodded by dozens of academic fingers, surrounded by smooth blue walls and bright light. It turns white, then dark red. It darts back and forth and inks a couple of times before settling into a corner of the tank.

Operations continue throughout the night. I take rest during the third section of the cruise, but I am quickly reminded that it takes me a couple of days to acclimate to sleeping on board a moving and noisy vessel, so my sleep is brief and restless. At sunrise, I am back on deck.

It is Saturday, and sunrise over Seattle is gorgeous. The Olympic mountain range stands to our West. The air is cool and clear and smells of salt. Today is the first day of shrimp season, and the Sound is littered with dozens of small boats casting their pots and sitting by their buoys. In the distance, sailboats gather for a race. As we begin the final shift of our cruise, Liz gives me permission to lead the deck. The deployments and recoveries are simple enough, and it’s a good opportunity for me to get back into the swing of things and get a better feel of how operations go on a new boat. It is a good first cruise for me, and I am looking forward to all the new things that are soon to come.