Author: Harpoon Seabring

The schedule of our last few cruises was moved around in response to hurricanes, and I was very lucky to get to go on one extra cruise for this internship. This morning, we finished our one and only cruise mission. In fact, my internship came full circle, because we recovered one of the lost mooring lines from my first cruise with our visitors from NIOZ. The buoy started communicating its position not too long ago, and it turns out that it drifted very far from its deployment site. It took 20 hours from Bermuda just to get to the mooring. Recovery took place this morning, and it’s nice to see the familiar face of these big orange buoys on deck again.
 

One of NIOZ’s buoys

I am also grateful for the two extra days of my internship, since it’s given me more time to work on my personal project. In an earlier post, I had mentioned the project but added no specifics because the whole thing was giving me a headache. By chance, I managed to find a component that was absolutely necessary for the project’s completion, one which I thought we didn’t have. I’m extremely thankful that it showed up just in time.

The project, in summary, was to connect a data logger to a weather transmitter, which senses several meteorological parameters like wind speed, temperature, and humidity, and sends them back to the logger. The sensor had, at some point in the past, been reconfigured to communicate in a way that was incompatible with all other devices on board that we could use to talk to it. There was no way to get through to it until I found an RS-422 to RS-232 converter. The converter takes the sensor signal I can’t read and changes it to one I can. From there, I was able to reconfigure the device’s settings so it could talk to the data logger. I even found a way to deploy it just outside the ship’s bridge.

Weather sensor deployed on ship

Right now, it’s collecting data, and what I’ve seen has been consistent and accurate, so I’m very happy with the state of the project. If I can find time, I will plot the data over the collection period and compare it to data from other ship-board sensors. 

We are currently headed back to Bermuda, and I will depart from BIOS soon afterwards. I am going to wrap up my project and, importantly, document as much of it as I can in case someone else picks up the same weather sensor and needs help communicating with it. I’ll leave some parting words on this blog site once the internship is over and I’ve had some space for reflection.
 

This week, we wrapped up our cruise with our visitors from WHOI and Stanford. The last couple days went just as well as the rest of the trip, with the scientist successfully collecting data and having a good time doing it. They were barely sleeping, staying up to participate in as many deployments as possible, and somehow managed to carry their level of enthusiasm through to the end of the cruise. 

A group photo with our visitors, MTs, the captain, and two of the crew

Most of the week has been in port, and there’s never a shortage of things to fix before the next cruise. Most notably, we wanted to replace the device which feeds data to winch operators. We tried to do this before the last cruise, but ran into issues the first time using the winch and swapped it back to the old device. Hopefully, we have ironed out those issues this week after installing the new devices again. I spent the first day or two creating documentation for this process, which will hopefully help prevent future headaches with this device.

I have also attached a pinger to the side of the CTD, which we plan on incorporating into our CTD casts in the coming cruises. Several weeks ago, I replaced all 20 of the device’s batteries to prepare it for deployment. Attaching it to the CTD seems conceptually simple, but the pinger weighs 70 pounds and had to be lifted over my head. I probably should have gotten a second set of hands. In any case, it is now held on with 4 hose clamps and a shackle, so I’m confident it will stay put.

The pinger on the CTD

At the end of the working week, another hurricane blew over us, this one more intense than the others. It was a good incentive to stay inside, if nothing else. On Friday, the captain informed us of yet another hurricane on its way, at the time predicted to have a straight track directly over Bermuda. We pushed our cruise departure date up and worked through the weekend. No time to mourn my lost day off, since we had a lot to get done before leaving. In fact, we’re leaving BIOS in only a couple hours.

The prediction we were looking at on Friday. Luckily, the track is now predicted to head off to the east before it reaches Bermuda

I am nearing the end of my time here and have decided to take on one more big project. I would like to document as much as I can in the ship’s internal wikipedia. It houses a lot of information, mostly for MTs, and can be a valuable reference. However, I have found it to be lacking in many areas. The pinger, for example, has never once been documented. When I tried to learn more about the device, like how it has been used in the past, how the MTs want to use it in the future, or even where on the ship it was being stored, there was nothing. For future MTs, and future MATE interns especially, filling in these gaps can be a huge benefit. It would allow them to work independently far more effectively.
 

This week, we finally got to go back out to sea. The hurricanes of last week kept us in port for far too long, and another hurricane may be on its way. Our guests at the moment are from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and Stanford. Unlike the last cruise, we have a very packed ship, and our numerous visitors work round the clock deploying moorings and nets, running tests on collected samples, and gathering vast quantities of data. Every one of them is enthusiastic and more than willing to talk about their projects.

One of WHOI’s enormous net traps

Because we are on a 24-hour schedule for this cruise, the marine techs’ shifts are spread around the day, with me working from 4 AM to 4 PM. It took a couple of days to get used to the unconventional work schedule, but I’m feeling very well-rested after night three. My main focus is running the CTD deployments and recovery. While my mentor still sticks by me to make sure I do everything correctly, I can now run the entire process like a full-fledged marine tech. A special shout out to the ABs who were very patient with me in the earlier days of the cruise when I was still getting the hang of things. I’m very happy with how much progress I’ve made.

Between CTD deployments, the MTs and scientists do mooring recoveries and deployments. I am still learning the rhythms of this process, and I get hands-on when I can. We had an especially interesting recovery yesterday morning when the ship was stuck in a storm. It was already raining hard when I woke up and only got worse for the next hour or so. Coming out to the back deck was an eerie experience. The only lights were those on the ship and the occasional lightning strike off towards the horizon. Everything else was completely black. We had to find a window of relative calm to bring everything in quickly. Of course, relative calm still meant zero visibility, waves crashing over the side and back of the deck, and rain soaking everything that wasn’t already splashed by the sea. It sounds rough, but it was pretty exciting.

Me, looking very happy to get to hold a line (with chief engineer Mike in the background, looking very neutral)

This week, I am more independent than I was able to be on the first cruise. I am far more cognizant of where I need to be and what I need to do. A log entry of mine  from the last cruise reads “This job requires a lot of waiting.” I do not think that’s the case anymore. I’ve had something to do nearly every moment of this cruise, and it’s been a great experience. There’s so much to learn, and this week has been an excellent teacher.

Just as my first cruise on the Atlantic Explorer came to an end, week two of my internship began. The approaching hurricanes were, from this point on, a constant logistical concern. The first hurricane, Franklin, hit a couple days ago. It wasn’t particularly intense, but it was still windy enough that there was not much for us or our visiting scientists to do but stay on the ship. The second hurricane, Idalia, is sitting on top of Bermuda as I type this. Other than getting in the way of weekend plans, the storm has not been particularly unpleasant. The power is out on the BIOS campus, but I’m lucky enough to be on the ship’s generator power.

Idalia’s position right now

This week was quite busy. I started on a personal project, which has, unfortunately, been very uncooperative with me. I’ll write about it once I make some actual progress. For now, let’s focus on the enjoyable parts of this internship.

We’ve been doing several odd jobs around the ship now that it’s in port. We moved a temperature sensor onto the main mast, cleaned parts of the ship’s water intake system, and replaced the batteries in a pinger that we may soon attach to the CTD. BIOS has a new liquid nitrogen generator, and I got the chance to fill a dewar, pictured below, with liquid nitrogen, which we will use on a future cruise. 

Me filling a dewar

Additionally, I was given a tour of The Mid-Atlantic Glider Initiative and Collaboration (MAGIC) vehicle, and the process by which its buoyancy is adjusted so that it can fly through the ocean effectively. It is lowered into a tank of seawater and weighed by two scales, which allow scientists to compare the weight at the front and back of the vehicle and fine tune it by adding or removing weighted material from the inside of the glider.

One of MAGIC’s gliders

Lastly, today I had the chance to do something totally unrelated to work. My mentor and I used some of the liquid nitrogen from the generator to make ice cream. We mixed up a basic recipe, mostly made of half-and-half we took (with permission) from the galley. It came out pretty close to Dippin’ Dots, and we mixed up the following flavors:

Vanilla

Peanut butter chocolate

Coffee

Kiwi strawberry

Maple nut

Grape

Give it 5 or 10 years, and grape ice cream will be all the rage. It’ll be a Bermudan specialty. We hope to give this ice-cream making process another go, and I’ll write about all the fun flavors we make in a future blog post!

My introductory post is here

I arrived in Bermuda on Monday just before a brief downpour of rain. Just after boarding the RV Atlantic Explorer, I was informed of a change of plans. Our first cruise was meant to leave later in the week, giving me a couple days in port to get ready and acclimate to the ship. However, in response to the approaching tropical storms, the departure date was moved up to Tuesday. Lydia, my mentor and one of the ship’s marine techs, immediately started giving me a tour of the place. At the same time, our visitors from NIOZ (Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research) brought their equipment aboard and prepared for their experimentation. 

Once the cruise got going, each of our days were basically laid out the same way. We deployed a VMP 6000, a device which belongs to our visitors, then lowered our CTD (pictured later in this post) to a depth just above the bottom of the ocean, raised the CTD back up, recovered the VMP 6000, then set out to find and recover mooring lines, one line each day, that our visitors deployed over a year ago. 

Unfortunately, however, recovering said mooring lines was never an easy task. Out of the four lines, three were missing the uppermost section, making them difficult to bring aboard. One was missing entirely, perhaps still underwater, perhaps broken and floating off to who knows where. Every day, it took hours to locate the mooring lines. I spent those times circling the bridge deck, staring into the ocean looking for small buoys that marked the upper end of the mooring, but finding nothing but water and sargassum. Once a buoy was spotted by someone aboard, we then spent hours hauling the lines onto the ship by winch, a process that generally stretched well into the evening.

One of the mooring line’s buoys

While I may seem a little unenthused by this tedious process, I want to make it clear that I’m having the time of my life. Being able to have a hands-on interaction with this research project is very fun. I enjoy hearing about the NIOZ team’s various educational backgrounds, and their past projects. As the week goes on, I am able to do more significant tasks. Lydia has been finding good places to slot me into the process of CTD deployment and mooring recovery so that I can get some experience under my belt.

Running the CTD has been my favorite part, by far. Everything from setting up the device, launching the device into the water, running up to the bridge to begin data collection, communicating with the winch operator, watching the data plot itself, and bringing the device back on board with a winch and three control lines (one which I get to handle), is an intricate and engaging process. On the last day of CTD deployment, just for fun, our visitors sent down a mesh bag with styrofoam cups that were compressed by the extreme water pressure.

Me climbing on the CTD
 

Outside of the work, I am adjusting to the ship just fine. The food is wonderful, everyone is welcoming, and I sleep very well, even when I’m a little seasick. The onboard stationary bike is especially delightful. In fact, my laptop is zip tied to the handlebars as I write this. We are coming into port soon, and I look forward to exploring Bermuda for a bit before hurricane Franklin hits.

Next week I’ll be starting on some personal projects, and I’ll get to tell you about it in my next post!

Ahoy there!

My name is Harpoon Seabring and, with a name like that, I was bound to end up in a role like this. I just graduated from Florida Institute of Technology with a BS in Ocean Engineering. While at Florida Tech, I worked in a lab that studied biofouling, with a focus on the application of ultraviolet-C light to prevent fouling growth. I was also given the opportunity to spend a few days aboard Florida Institute of Oceanography’s R/V W.T. Hogarth to test an ROV designed by myself and my senior design group. Despite being rained on every day, despite being caught in one of the first tropical storms of the hurricane season, and despite getting very seasick after one night of particularly high waves, I had an amazing time and wanted to go back out to sea as soon as possible.

Even in my free time, I spent as much time on the water as I could. Florida Tech’s sailing team took up most of my free time, and I served as the Vice President for my final year of schooling. I live in Virginia now and, at the present moment, it’s still a bit too cold to go sailing (at least with my total lack of cold weather gear). My free time is occupied by rock climbing and cycling instead. 

I look forward to working with BIOS. My time working in a lab has no doubt left me with a skillset relevant to this internship, and I hope to be a useful member of the team. Likewise, I look forward to learning about the research performed onboard and about the instrumentation the Atlantic Explorer comes equipped with. I plan on pursuing a career on marine vessels, and I believe this experience will be one big step towards that end.