Author: Huxley Conner

This week was full of hard work, as I spent the week primarily assisting with dredging on George’s Bank, several hundred miles off Cape Cod. This area of shallows I had read about is a very productive, active fishing spot, where fishermen have been venturing for centuries. It was cool to say that I have now been out there! The habcam was back in the water on Saturday, as we were working our way out to the northeast corner of the large bank. Christian and I worked on several computer issues, such as the camera and knudsen echosunder computers restarting. It took several hours and much wire tracing, but we eventually solved the problem and got cameras back on line.

On Sunday and Monday, we spent our entire watch dredging while working our way back west, with a CTD cast mixed in every third tow. The hauls were different than in previous areas, because most of the bags were stuffed full, leaving us with much more work to do shoveling and sorting our catches after every tow. We got full bags of scallops, sand, and on some tows, massive piles of sand dollars that left green slime everywhere. There were some interesting organisms, like monkfish, several three pound lobsters, and barn door skates. The monkfish, with their ugly looking, giant mouths, actually had edible meat in the tail, which Paul, the cook, filleted and cooked up for just our watchgroup. I got to try a few bites, and it was amazing! Although the dredging was hard work, it did make time go by fast, and in general there were nice days to be out on deck.

Tuesday marked an important milestone: a month of being onboard for me. I started the day with pan fried scallops, featuring the largest ones I have ever seen (that I helped shuck)! We continued dredging with the end in sight, and luckily the loads started to get a little smaller. Christian gave me the chance to run a CTD cast completely on my own, letting me operate the computer and communicate with the bridge and engineer operating the winch to tell them when to deploy and haul back the instrument. Towards the end of the day, the weather started to turn bad, as we met a lightning storm and heavy winds, causing us to have to skip a CTD cast and dredge intermittently when the lightning was not an issue. Thanks to Captain Jimmy for watching out for us!

Wednesday was nice and warm, a good day to arrive back in Woods Hole for several hours as a planned stop to refuel, get more food, and change out several scientists. I helped catch lines, shut off the flow through system, stop data collection, clean the boat, and prep rooms for the new scientists. I got in a quick call home before it was time to cast off again for the second part of leg three, this time surveying the southern side of George’s Bank. Once again, I started the flow through system in order to begin data collection by our various transducers.

Thursday was flat calm and sunny as Christian and I started our watch. We pulled up the habcam and got the boat set up for dredging again, then helped dredge and perform occasional CTD casts with a new crew of scientists. It sure was a quick transition back in to routine, almost like we were never in port at all!

Finally, today Christian and I continued dredging, pulling up starfish, sand dollars, and the occasional scallop. I saved a few organisms from our tows that hopefully I can clean and dry on the way home. By the last few hours of the watch, all of the dredge stations for the entire cruise were complete, and many of the scientists thanked us for all of our work to help make the dredging operation a success. It was good to know that we have contributed so much to this important survey. We put the habcam back in the water so we could continue to tow it through the last transects. The rest of the watch we spent securing the ship in preparation for the rough weather ahead. We got the dredge on the work table and strapped it down, hosed down the deck, replaced the solid bulkhead that holds the CTD in place, and secured miscellaneous items. It is crazy to think that I only have four more days of this cruise and only one more week on board left. The time has just been flying by! The next blog post I will be doing on my last day aboard, and I will hope to post more pictures soon. Until then!

Huxley

This week on the Sharp seemed to fly by, as I was kept busy with a lot of time on deck. I can say that every time I work with the crew, there is always a problem to solve, and I always learn something new. Last Saturday was a great day, where I continued to monitor the multibeam, as well as perform other tasks to benefit the techs like going online to get brochures for all of the sensors onboard and making a new winch calibration table. I was even able to teach KG a few skills in Microsoft Excel that I had learned in some of my science classes. The CTD winch was fixed, so we could continue to do casts. There were frequent issues with the habcam not outputting video, so we decided to pull it up and spend the rest of the cruise dredging. Unfortunately, there was a long steam to the next site, so the work would be left to the other watch. Sunday was even nicer (if that’s possible), a beautiful day to prep the boat for coming in to port at Woods Hole, Massachusetts. I washed all the sand off the deck and then KG taught me a little about dock lines and the way that we set them up on the Sharp. We passed land masses such as Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, while seeing much more activity and boat traffic. I was the first one on the boat to jump to shore, as I got off to secure dock lines and the gangway.

I got the rest of the day off, and went out with two of the mates and KG to explore the town, which I had never been to before. It was quite gentrified and touristy, and I was blown away by the high prices at the restaurant we ate at. When we returned to the boat, a few fresh crew members (most of whom I sailed with on the first leg) joined us to load food. Monday was cold, raw, and rainy, as we said goodbye to some crew members, like Pam, Jonathan, and KG, and picked up some new ones like Christian, Paul, and Captain Jimmy. We put fresh linens on beds, cleaned science rooms, and helped scientists secure new equipment like tanks and chillers. The engineers noticed that our holding tank was nearly full, and we would have to find a way to pump it out. I was surprised at what we did next; the solution was to move the boat a quarter mile down the harbor to use a pumpout station, then move it back to our slip. That is what we did, which I found fun because I like line handling and wanted to get more practice with it on a large vessel. Once this was done, I got the rest of the day off, so I took a much needed run to stretch out my legs and explore a little more.

Tuesday was departure day for leg three, as Christian and I worked to continue to secure the boat. I handled lines again for the departure, started up the flow through system, and calibrated the SMS. Wednesday was nicer but moderately rough, where dredging began in full force off Cape Cod. Every third dredge, we did a CTD cast, which is becoming routine now thanks to KG’s instruction on the previous leg. It was interesting that every dredge resulted in different substrates and organisms, some full of sand dollars, some with rocks, crabs, sea stars, and some with scallops. We ran into several problems along the way, such as rocks tearing dredge nets, causing us to have to use the crane to swap out the dredge for a spare so science could work on repairing them. Also, Casey, the second engineer, noticed that the ramp on the stern of the boat used to lower the habcam in to the water was bending under the strain due to a corroded frame. We discussed the possibility of an emergency stop in a port to weld it properly. I also got sight of more humpback whales, some within just a few meters of the boat (amazing pictures to come)!

Thursday resulted in more dredging, trying to finish up stations before we decided to make the emergency stop the following day to repair the ramp. One of the dredges was full of scallops, and Christian, Casey, and I saved a few buckets to shuck between tows. I’m not tired of eating scallops yet! We saw more cool organisms like hagfish and a few baby octopi, which we kept in the tanks. Dredging finished with a few hours left of our watch, so Christian and I hosed down the deck, secured the table, and raised the keel to prep for the steam back.

Today I woke up to catch a few lines, as we were back in Woods Hole again. I took a nap after this to attempt to stay on my watch routine of noon to midnight, as this was to be a quick turnaround. After lunch, I went to work, helping Sean, Casey, and TR, a deckhand, lift the ramp with the crane, grind corrosion off the bolts that hold it in place, re install the ramp, and tighten it down. By mid afternoon, we were done with the job. I was helping clean up the tool room and get the boat ready for sea again. I undid lines, started the SMS, and we were off to the habcam sites with a solid deployment ramp. This was to be a long steam out to the beginning of George’s Bank way off Cape Cod, so I had some down time on watch to read and prepare for more work ahead. I also got a chance to talk to Jimmy on the bridge, who told me to keep in touch with him once I got off the boat. As a job crewing a research vessel is definitely appealing to me, I told him that I definitely would. Soon we will be well out to sea to collect more data. Until next week!

Huxley

/files/marine/files/img_0773.jpg : Tied up in Lewes, DE

/files/marine/files/img_0777.jpg : Leaving Lewes Harbor

/files/marine/files/img_0783.jpg : We steamed north past Cape May, NJ

/files/marine/files/img_0799.jpg : I spent much of this leg operating the multibeam snoar, that reveals a map of the elevation of the ocean floor 

/files/marine/files/img_0809.jpg : We steamed past Block Island and its new wind farm

/files/marine/files/img_0812.jpg : The storm we navigated through

/files/marine/files/img_0816.jpg : Scallops!

/files/marine/files/img_0819.jpg : In some dredges we caught hundreds of scallops

/files/marine/files/img_0821.jpg : In others we caught boulders

/files/marine/files/img_0825.jpg : Massimo, one of the scientists, myself, and Jonathan, the engineers, collected sediment with the grab sampler

/files/marine/files/IMG_0829.JPG : Who needs a whale watch?

/files/marine/files/IMG_0835.JPG : Sunset at sea

/files/marine/files/IMG_0841.JPG : Welcome to Woods Hole, MA!

/files/marine/files/IMG_0842.JPG : The R/V Armstrong, the research vessel for Wood’s Hole Oceanographic Institute

/files/marine/files/IMG_0846.JPG : The Sharp tied up in Woods Hole

This week was quite interesting, where I got a chance to see many different operations and learn a lot from KG, the senior tech onboard. The theme of this week was encountering a steady stream of small problems, as opposed to several larger issues onboard the previous leg.

Last Saturday, a very nice day, the scientists continued to tow the habcam near Long Island, close enough at one point that we could make out houses on the beach, so most of the crew headed up to the bridge holding their phones in the air trying to get service. We started the multibeam up again, but had issues with the computer freezing, so we opened up the unit and reset a chip which seemed to solve the problem. After a crash course from KG, I was operating the multibeam sonar on my own, adjusting settings as the bottom changed and sending profiles of the bottom to the scientists. I also installed a new camera on the stack pointing towards the dredging area, where I learned how to terminate the cable and secure connection points with splicing tape.

Sunday came with more multibeam and more freezing issues, so we took some screenshots of the issues and KG sent them to an expert on shore. I was assigned the task of writing up a procedure pertaining how to start up and operate the multibeam to help out future techs and interns on the boat. When I did my daily check of the SMS system, I noticed that the temperature and humidity were way off. We went aloft and opened up the sensor, which had water inside, so we replaced it with a spare that we had onboard. KG stressed the importance of always having spare parts while at sea. Monday started with me being awakened by the crash of pots and pans in the galley; another rough day at sea. We were on the high seas, 50 miles off Nantucket, getting prepped to start the first multibeam survey of the canyons for suitable juvenile lobster habitat. It was very difficult to watch a computer with all of that rolling, so I terminated more ethernet cables and worked with KG to learn the model numbers and names of CTD sensors.

The multibeam was having issues finding the bottom due to the contant pitching of the ship, and on Tuesday we eventually pulled out the habcam, which had a ripped open termination and a point in the fiber optic cable where some of the strands had come unlaid. We cut the cable past that point so the scientists could work on a new termination, a long process that could take more than a day. So instead we headed to the first dredging site, where the science wanted to run a CTD cast to obtain water quality data at depth. KG showed me the process and walked me through the entire thing, from setting the device up, dropping it in, recovering water samples, and recovering it with the winch. Once this was complete, we began dredging, going through the motions of launching and recovering the large, rusty dredge, then jumping on the table and shoveling our catch to the scientists who sorted out the organisms they wanted. Up here, our catch was much different than the southern leg, with much less sand, more mud, and WAY more scallops, as well as flounder and mean looking goosefish. Between dredges, KG, myself, and Jonathan, one of the engineers, shucked scallops for the cook. It was worth it, because the next few days we enjoyed great meals like bacon wrapped scallops and scallop ceviche.

Wednesday was foggy but much flatter, and we came out on deck to find a winch we need for dredging leaking hydraulic fluid. All we could do was wrap it until we got to port and hope it doesn’t get worse! We did a few more CTD casts between dredges, and KG let me operate the computer controlling the CTD. He also showed me how he processes the data, and let me explore the program that cleans up the data and produces nice looking graphs. Dredging became more tedious as we mostly recovered rocks, some quite large, that we had to pick up or roll off the table. During one of the haulbacks, there was a break in communication and I left a line tied down that ended up snapping off a cleat. It was not a critical piece, though, but it’s always important to know what is happening on deck! On the last dredge of my watch, I talked to Sean, the relief captain, up in the wheelhouse, who showed me how he maneuvers the boat during a tow. It was a long day, but I learned from a lot of different people!

Thursday, another foggy day with a little more roll, began with a few dredges, then it was time to steam to the grab sample site. Once there, we lowered the keel and turned on the ADCP to monitor currents at the stations. KG, Jonathan, and I worked to get the metal grab sampler in the water and winch it down. Due to the roll of the boat and a wire that was not marked with any sort of depths, it was hard to tell when we had hit bottom. After many hours, we only had one sample, and had to move on to another multibeam survey and more dredging. Luckily, during the second survey, the multibeam worked great under my control and science was very happy. Another problem soon struck, when the winch computer was no longer reading tension as we were launching a dredge, and later the CTD winch left the device hanging halfway down to the bottom for nearly an hour. KG and I went down to the engine room to reset the computer, but it wasn’t quite done causing problems.

Today the habcam was back in the water, and it was a nice, sunny, calm day. We were doing habcam tows off Cape Cod and working our way back south to Nantucket. I was monitoring the multibeam with no major issues, until there was commotion in the lab due to a winch tension spike, everyone thinking we had struck bottom hard with the habcam. To pass the time, KG had me work on a spreadsheet that gave information about max depths of various sensors. However, we pulled it up to reveal no damage, and it was likely another fault in the winch computer. We recalibrated the computer and dropped the habcam back in, but KG stressed to Sean and the engineers that this is an issue that needs to be looked out by a professional at electrical equipment. Later, KG gave me a brief introduction to the different types of serial and VGA connections and how computers “talk” to each other. By Sunday afternoon we will be tied up in Wood’s Hole, MA where I will post more pictures. Until then!

Huxley

Hello again from the R/V Sharp! It has been quite a crazy week on board. Last Saturday was quite rough, and many of the scientists were out of commision with sea sickness as the habcam was towed once more. Showering was quite an ordeal! I had to take a pill when I felt it coming on…but luckily soon afterwards I was fine. I learned how to terminate, or put the end plugs on, ethernet cables that we might need when we figure out what is wrong with that internet. After a little trial and error, we got our terminations to work! Dinner was amazing, where Paul, the cook, prepared seafood alfredo featuring the some of the scallops we caught yesterday. Sunday was another gorgeous day weatherwise with the seas lessening, as we reached the northern Jersey shore with the cam. The water began to change color from slightly translucent blue to the more opaque sea green I am used to. The scientists showed me a habcam image of a dolphin, which they happened to get a very clear shot of.

Monday was calm but rainy, so we spent the day inside fixing code for the winch plot graphs, which were not reading tension porperly. These are important because we need to know how much strain the habcam is putting on our deck winch. It took a while, as Christian and I are both relatively new at coding, but we talked out and worked thorugh the problem together until the front office was happy. Tuesday we got a task via e mail from KG, the senior tech who was not on board, to design a flowchart for the internet system so we can more quickly find the problem when we get back to port. It was a long day of tracing wires throughout the entire ship, and even then we did not have a complete chart! As we were working on the bridge, we got a chance to talk to Jimmy, the captain, who was very nice.  He told me to stop by his office some time so he could give me a crew shirt, affirming that I was a true crew member.

Wednesday we went back to port in Lewes, Delaware a little early to avoid an oncoming storm. The cruise was a success, with scientists processing over 3 million images that will be used to estimate scallop populations. I helped tie up the boat, then worked with Christian to turn off the flow through system. KG and Tim Deering came on board and we all worked on the internet, adding to the flowchart. When we all ran out of ideas, it was time to call the IT company on shore that we work with. I had the rest of the day off, and felt quite landsick once I left the boat as I was not used to standing on solid ground. Yes that is a thing! Christian invited me over to his place for dinner, where we talked about his previous experices as a science volunteer on other research ships and what working on the Sharp was actually like.

Thursday it was raining once again, as all hands were on board to get set for the second leg. I helped the crew load a sediment grabber, and worked with Drew to drill into metal plates that will be used to better anchor the CTD. KG, who will be working with me on the next leg, showed me a little about how the multibeam scanner worked. We will need it to get an accurate profile of the bottom on portions of this leg. Pam, the cook for this leg, arrived, causing me to have to vacate the room I had been sharing with Paul and move down with a scientist. I spent the last few hours working with Pam and Joe, one of the shoreside workers, to load food and distribute clean linens.

Finally, Fiday morning we casted off again to begin the second leg, heading north along the shelf towards Massachusetts. Once I helped with lines again, I worked with KG and Drew to start the flowthough system, lower the keel and start the various systems for data logging like the SMS. 
After a while of steaming, during which time I worked on a spreadsheet describing all the sensors we own, taking pictures of them, and linking them all to their digital manuals. The CTD is much more complex than I thought! In the evening we deployed the habcam again, and after that time it was my day on the rotation to clean the boat and empty trash. I then was told to see Sean, the Chief Mate, who told me I have to move rooms again tonight because all of science wants to be dowwnstairs together. Since our job is to keep them happy, I told him that I would move to a pullout sofa in the conference room. I felt that I had to be willing to be flexible. At least now I have control of the ice cream freezer! I am looking forward to this next week, an learning much from KG who is an incredibly knowledgeable marine technician.

Until then,

Huxley

/files/marine/files/IMG_0720.JPG/> : Arriving at the Sharp

/files/marine/files/IMG_0728.JPG : The habcam pre deployment

/files/marine/files/IMG_0726.JPG : The scallop dredge pre deployment

/files/marine/files/IMG_0731.JPG : Leaving Lewes, DE

/files/marine/files/IMG_0735.JPG : First sunset at sea

/files/marine/files/IMG_0736.jpg : Deploying the habcam

/files/marine/files/IMG_0742.jpg : Friends I saw off the bow

/files/marine/files/IMG_0753.JPG : The scallops we caught while dredging

/files/marine/files/IMG_0754.JPG : I got a chance to shuck a bunch of scallops with the scientists

/files/marine/files/IMG_0760.JPG : The bottom that we dredged up

After quite an overnight transit adventure, I made it to the airport in Salisbury, Maryland. There I met Tim Deering, the Ocean Services Coordinator at the University of Delaware, as well as Drew, another marine tech who was hired on a temporary basis just for the scallop cruise. Tim drove us to Lewes, Delaware, where we met the ship as it was being offloaded from its last cruise. I met Ken “KG” and Chirsitan, two of the other technicians that worked onboard.  Tim gave us a tour of the boat, including the kitchen, which was well stocked and extremely impressive! My room was very nice (with a TV!) which I would be sharing with Paul, the oncoming cook. The crew and technicians eventually went home, giving Drew and I some free time on the boat. Over the weekend, we worked with the crew to prepare the boat for the first leg of three of the scallop trip.We loaded scallop dredges and repaired hydraulic lines for winches that would be used during the cruise. On Sunday, only Sean, the relief captain, Drew, and I were working, so once we finished Sean drove us to Cape Henlopen State Park and gave us a tour of the area. The views on the point were breathtaking. We then had dinner in town which was very nice. So far, the crew has been very good to work with. On Monday the scientists showed up, and it was all hands on deck to get the van, or shipping container on deck serving as additional lab space, on board. I worked with Christian to load test the CTD (a probe that measures water quality), and helped the scientists set up thier computers and habcam, a large device that will be towed that takes pictures of the ocean floor.

Tuesday we finally left to begin surveying off the coast of Virginia. It was a beautiful, calm day to be out on the water. I stood my first 12 hour tech watch with Christian, where we worked on fixing the cellular internet, which was having issues, lowered the keel that contained transducers for various instruments such as an acoustic depth current profiler (ADCP), Knudsen echosounder, and surface mapping system (SMS), and cleaned out the filter on the flow through system. We helped drop the habcam in to the water and the scientists spent the next few days towing it along transects and taking pictures of the bottom. The equipment was working well, so we did not have a whole lot to do for several days besides occasional network issues and cables and monitors that needed to be hooked up. We continued to monitor our water quality data, It was a good chance to get some reading done, spend some time working with the second mate on the bridge, and look at the deep ocean fauna, including loggerhead turtles, pods of dolphins, a massive ocean sunfish, and even a baby whale. The weather stayed nice, and it was both wonderful and intimidating to be out at sea with no land anywhere in sight.

Today, Friday, was a little more interesting. I began my shift on deck rather than inside on another beautiful day, to find the scientists crowded around the drege table sorting through massive mounds of material from the bottom rather than watching cameras. I helped them separate scallops and crabs from sand dollars, sea mice, worms, and mud that had been pulled up. We collected gallons of scallops, and I got to try my hand at shucking them. The scientists even purified several so Christian and I could try them raw. Not bad…but hopefully the cook will make us some of the leftovers that aren’t being studied! We dredged a second time, sorted, then packed up the dredge and dropped the habcam back in. Jimmy, the captain, after viewing our slightly slow work, joked that “we’re lucky to not be on a scallop boat because we wouldn’t last long.” Now hat the dredging is done, the scientists will continue to run the habcam on transects until we get back to port in Delaware, hopefully by Wednesday, to complete the first leg. So far, my time on the Sharp has been interesting and I have learned so much already about marine technology.

Note: Since the internet is pretty slow on board, I’m going to only post pictures in each port between legs, wheteher it is a blog day or not. Until next time!

Huxley

My name is Huxley Conner, a student at Maine Maritime Academy and newly selected MATE intern for the summer of 2017. I have grown up and lived in the area around New Haven, Connecticut. From a young age, boating, going to the beach, and learning about marine science have been passions of mine. I could not imagine a life where I was not on the water. I even attended a city magnet high school that specialized in marine science and technology, which inspired me to desire a career on the water and apply to a maritime academy.

At Maine Maritime Academy, primarily made up of students training either to be a deck or engine officer on merchant ships, I have completed junior year studying Marine Science and Small Vessel Operations in the small but close knit Corning School of Ocean Studies. This program, with its own dedicated research vessel and unparalleled access to conduct research on the coast of Maine, has been immensely helpful in preparing me for a science career on the water. I originally discovered the MATE internship through two former interns of this program and graduates of my academy, Allison Mitchell and Julianna Diehl, who encouraged me to apply.

Not even a week ago, I have finished finals and have arrived home to Connecticut. Since I leave for Maryland to meet my boat, the R/V Hugh R. Sharp, in three days, I have been busy packing and reading up on how to use and maintain the equipment I will be working with. At the same time, I have been saying my goodbyes to family members and friends at home, who I likely will not see again until Thanksgiving because I am moving to Maine to be a science and sailing instructor at a day camp as soon as my cruise ends.

I will be meeting the boat in Ocean City, Maryland, and will be flying by myself from New York City to get there, a new adventure for me. I will be taking two overnight trains and a bus to get to La Guardia Airport, and then two planes! At least I have family members and friends with a lot of flying experience that I have been learning from. I remember there being an aquarium in Ocean City…but I doubt I will have time to stop. From this internship, I hope to meet many different individuals on board and find out what their experiences are like. I am eager to discover if I can see myself working on a research vessel once I graduate. I cannot wait to get started!