Author: Kaleigh Ballantine

Boom! Smash! Crash! They had to get one more drill out of the way before we disembarked, and the straight-faced reading of those onomatopoeias over the pipes really set the scene for that last collision and flooding drill. Make-believe obstacles aside, the rest of the transit home was pretty smooth. At the last all-hands meeting, I was surprised and delighted to learn I had received a “Coast Guard Arctic Service Medal,” which will definitely be going on my LinkedIn accomplishments. Another highlight was the second “science talk” of the voyage, featuring a member of the Finnish Border Guard. The previous talk was from our other international guest from the French Navy. They were both a joy to listen to, and it was fascinating hearing about marine operations in other parts of the world. 

The morning we were set to arrive in Kodiak, Tyler and I woke up early to meet Maya and Micah to turn off the science systems (and hopefully to start aligning our sleep schedules a little more). Our first step was shutting off the water walls, and simply enough involved closing off the main flow valves, running a freshwater flush, and powering down the system. Of course, overachievers that we are, we also decided to take off and wash each instrument one by one so they would be squeaky clean for the next cruise. Next, we headed back to the computer lab to shut off the sonars with a simple click of a few buttons. The science data logging was officially complete! 

Data collection wrapped, Micah and I quickly pivoted to more artistic endeavors. Within the next two days, we had wound up with some 3D prints, an unofficial logo for STARC in the spirit of a Coast Guard request, and a sticker design featuring an adorably wonderful sketch that Micah drew and I digitized. I feel really lucky that I was paired with such an artistic and incredibly fun buddy for this trip, and will forever treasure Micah’s daily motivational drawings of Bing Bong the cat (and my favorite, his snarky antagonist, Ding Dong), our scrappy but ever-growing intern baton, and the polar bear journal she painted me! Good luck on the next voyages, Micah, I’ll be keeping posted!

While mindlessly staring out the window as one does, unaware there was anything other than the typical expanse of ocean to see, an IT guy informed me that I was looking in the wrong direction to see Kodiak. Land ho! Having just finished reading Endurance, a novel about Shackleton’s famous Antarctic escape, I had a special appreciation for the awe of seeing land and a new cast of characters for the first time. While not so dramatic after our monthlong, penguin-meat-free voyage, imagining the wonder in their return narratives really makes you appreciate the little things, like trees and a store that sells cashews. Unfortunately, I ate all of mine in the first three days of the trip. 

We were carefully bumped into the dock by two tug boats, which was a perk of being on such a huge ship and a new experience for me. And what better sight to greet us in port than a NOAA logo! Oscar Dyson was docked nearby. Time for liberty! We spent our time in Kodiak exploring town, getting fro-yo every day, visiting Walmart (I did secure cashews), hiking around the beaches, eating delicious and wildly affordable sushi, watching zombie salmon, and looking for bears. Before we knew it, we were saying our goodbyes and headed home from our Arctic adventure. 

Some big thank yous are due to everyone who supported me along the way! Thank you to Micah for the excellent camaraderie and constant supply of intriguing tidbits. Thank you to Tyler and Maya, our mentors, who not only taught us so much about the work of marine techs, but also kept things fun, light, and full of shenanigans. Thank you to Christina, Brendon, Emily, and the rest of the STARC team for giving us this opportunity in the first place and for keeping Kodiak exciting. Thank you to the Coast Guard for having us and giving us shiny certificates, and to AMOS for indulging my impromptu TED Talk requests. And, finally, thank you to all of you for reading this blog! I’ve truly grown an unexpected level of fondness for writing it, and I’m so happy it’s been a source of science and silliness for many of you. 

Polar bear count: 2!* 

*Folks, it came down to the wire, but I’m ecstatic to report that we finally have two real bears to report this week! Shoutout to Brendon for surrendering our dinner table to let us go check out these two adorable Kodiak bears, who were playing, fishing, standing, and generally enamoring us. Kodiak bears are a type of brown bear that only live in this area of Alaska, and are bigger than grizzlies but smaller than polar bears. It counts!

This week was all about gliders! Underwater gliders are torpedo-looking instruments that glide up and down across the water column while autonomously collecting data similar to that of the CTD and moorings. When I did an REU internship with the Northern Gulf of Alaska Long-Term Ecological Research program, I worked with data from Slocum gliders, so I had a little experience going into this. While the University of Washington Seagliders used here are fairly similar, I’ve been blown away by how much there is to learn!

One of the most interesting things about underwater gliders is the simple principle of how they zigzag through the ocean. Rather than using a traditional engine or propeller to dive up and down, they instead rely on buoyancy by changing pumping oil in and out of an external bladder. To rise, they pump oil into the bladder, increasing their volume and making them more buoyant. To descend, they pump the oil back into an internal reservoir, decreasing their volume and making them less buoyant. Little wings on the side of the body help turn this vertical motion into horizontal propulsion. 

In tandem with this, the gliders also utilize gravity. The heaviest part is the battery, which powers them to travel through seas until recovery a year (or sometimes accidentally two!) later. The scientists use this to their advantage by placing the battery on a track, allowing the weight to slide from one side to the other, causing the glider’s path to tilt or bank in the same direction. Typically, scientists can communicate with the gliders while deployed to adjust their path, but out in the sea ice, it’s more of a “godspeed and hope to see ya next year!” In the meantime, the gliders will communicate with the moorings to check their position and with satellites if they can find an open patch of water to come up to. This can be tricky with so much ice coverage, so the glider first checks for freezing temperatures above before trying to surface.

With the hide-and-seek of glider recoveries also came small boat operations, which were fun to watch as the Coast Guard cruised around. After two recoveries and three more deployments of fresh gliders, science for the cruise was officially concluded. Onto the transit home!

Tyler and I have been continuing our organization and documentation projects. Now that we’ve retired from the cable factory, we’ve moved on to organizing other parts related to the CTD and water walls, including instruments, mounts, hardware, and tubing. I was, of course, stoked to be printing more labels on everything. I also finished up more diagrams, including ones showing the setup of the water walls themselves. Turns out, you can even make them into GIFs! At turnover, Micah has been teaching new knots, while Maya and Tyler have been assigning skills to both of us, such as making our own Ethernet cables or learning to successfully drill and tap like pros. 

Just as quickly as we came, we’ve now left both the sea ice and the Arctic Circle behind. While it’s a bummer we didn’t have a polar bear encounter, the open waters have brought the spouts and graceful breaches of whales aplenty! The transit through the Bering Sea has also brought us into the motion of the ocean that the ice secluded us from. Storm days have always been a part of being on a ship that I love, as I’ve never been seasick before. But as I’ve often heard in oceanography, “it’s not if, it’s when,” or as Christina said, “everyone has their frequency.” Turns out, big boat, little waves is just the right combo to chip away at my hubris. But nothing a power nap, whole wheat Goldfish, and some Bonine couldn’t solve! Now that we’ve moved onto some bigger 9- to 11-foot waves, I’m back to having a grand time sliding around the computer lab on my rolling chair. 

It’s also been totally bizarre to experience the pitch black of night again as we head south. The first night, a beautiful full moon kindly welcomed us back to growing darkness. Now that science is complete and the changing sky makes our late shift end extra apparent, we’ve been using our spare time to take on some goofier tasks. This week’s non-exhaustive list includes: watching The Princess Bride while diagramming, testing all the sports equipment in the hangar, reading Endurance, darning an office chair, and teaching Tyler foosball (a feature that inexplicably exists in the forward machinery room). Until next week!

Polar bear count: In the Coast Guard, if you spend 21 days or more above the Arctic Circle, you unlock “polar bear” status and are allowed to wear the highly coveted and fashionable red gear. This week, Micah and I joined Maya and Tyler in achieving that! So, you could say there are four polar bears pictured below. And Micah drew me an exceptionally wonderful polar bear on a snow day, so let’s call that 4.5 for this week…

Time is weird and often feels nonexistent when in the middle of the sea in perpetual daylight. While I frequently don’t know what day of the week it is and am now used to eating my third meal of the day at midnight, time must be progressing anyway, as last week we hit the mid-way point of the cruise! In stride with that milestone, we also concluded mooring operations this week. (If you haven’t already, check out Micah’s blog for an awesome detailed operation summary!) Throughout this, it’s been really interesting to learn more about the science behind them and how that interfaces with the work we do as techs. 

The scientists onboard use the moorings to research pockets of the ocean where sound travels more efficiently, called sound speed ducts. Underwater sound speed is affected by variations in water temperature, salinity, and pressure, causing these ducts to form in warmer, saltier, and deeper (higher pressure) waters. The researchers communicate with the moorings that are collecting these observations through acoustic pinging. To avoid interference while they chat, we turn off our acoustic instruments for that time, including the multibeam and ADCP. 

But, after we complete a successful CTD or XBT cast, we can use the temperature, salinity, and density profiles we collect to enhance these instruments using the same sound speed velocity that the science team is studying. By updating this profile in acoustic instruments like the multibeam, it can more accurately understand how quickly its pings are traveling through the water and provide us with more accurate seafloor depths and bathymetry (seafloor topographic features). Pretty cool!

That said, we did indeed conduct some more CTD casts this week. One cast happened late enough in the afternoon that my mentor, Tyler, and I got to prepare it, which involves climbing around on the frame and muscling bottles clipped open, so that they are ready to snap closed later to collect water when they’re 2000 meters away. On previous casts, we had noticed that one bottle wasn’t closing correctly and therefore wasn’t collecting water, so Tyler and I did some troubleshooting. I hypothesized that the lanyard connecting the top and bottom lid was likely too short, causing the bottom lid to be pulled too high and get stuck on a lip that the others sat below. We measured and crimped together a new, slightly longer lanyard that we then installed, and on the next cast, it shut perfectly! A win for for the scientific method.

The casts this week were also accompanied by some classic oceanography shenanigans. Because styrofoam cups have so much air in them, if you send them down with the CTD to the bottom of the ocean, the intense pressure crushes all that air out, leaving you with an adorable, tiny, shot-glass-sized version! Micah, Maya, and Christina organized the process to great success. The cup decorating skills around the Healy were impressive to see, and I’m stoked that I got to make two of my own. Under the pressure of about 3800 meters of seawater in the Beaufort Sea, they shrank to a little less than half their original size!

While I’ve still been grinding on the ship diagrams and got to deploy an Argo float myself (my first on-deck bowline knot!), the biggest project Tyler and I have been tackling this week is the “cable factory.” We’ve meticulously inventoried all the STARC cables living in drawers and storage tubs across the ship, tested them, labeled them, documented them in the spreadsheet, and stored them in new, organized homes. Shoutout to Micah for finding a real laminator to replace my janky heat gunned QR codes for the inventory lists!

This project has taught me a lot about the use and maintenance of all sorts of scientific equipment cables: CTD cables, water wall cables, sea cables, test cables, Y-cables, pigtails cables, you name it! It’s also given me a chance to better understand the workflow of how often they’re used to determine how accessible to leave them and what organizational systems are most effective onboard. Additionally, it was just pretty satisfying to complete, and will hopefully make life easier for the next techs onboard. Everyone go look at the newly organized drawers and say ooh-ahh. Thanks!

This project has also meant a fair amount of time in the science hold, which is a big area in the hull of the ship that we access through a little porthole in the floor right onto a staircase. When icebreaking, you can really hear the thrash of ice all around you, which is pretty awesome. Micah and Maya have been absolutely crushing the inventory game for literally everything else onboard, so Tyler and I naturally have been complicating it by rearranging the sprawling collection of boxes down there and consolidating some more CTD parts.

The festivities of the week gave us plenty of enrichment breaks from the “cable factory,” given two important holidays occurred: Coast Guard Day (which was celebrated jovially around the ship) and National Intern Appreciation Day (which had slightly fewer accolades). Coast Guard Day brought a feast of meats and sweets alongside a cornhole tournament on the flight deck, which Tyler and I promptly were obliterated at. However, we did secure second place in Star Wars trivia thanks to Tyler’s expertise, winning a new friend: Decibar the Inflatable Shark! The biggest win of the week for me, though, was that for one night, the galley served breakfast for dinner. Brekkie, oh, how I’ve missed you. Until next week!

Polar bear count: 0*

*Holding out hope as we return closer to land here soon…

This week, it was finally time to put all our preparation to the test: we had a CTD deployment! Despite Tyler’s and my confidence in our setup, it was still a relief to see all the sensors working properly at 3700 meters and to watch everything come back in one piece. To give the system a little extra TLC after a successful deployment, I overengineered a new syringe (used to flush the CTD’s plumbing and keep the salinity sensors wet to prevent salt crystallization, which might skew later readings) since the old ones kept falling apart. 

We were also able to observe more mooring deployments and recoveries in varying conditions. Moorings are essentially long lines of instruments placed at specific depths, anchored to the seafloor, and held upright by big buoys. If we’re lucky during a recovery, we’ll find a nice patch of open water where the mooring is expected to pop up. But more often, the ship has to spend a few hours breaking ice in circles to clear the area, which leads to some pretty silly-looking cruise tracks.

In an ideal world, scientists send a signal to an acoustic release at the bottom of the mooring, which tells us its location and triggers it to disconnect from the anchor so the whole array can float to the surface. The ship then spots the colorful buoys, drives up to them, and the crew uses grappling hooks to pull them closer and hook them to the winch line. The mooring is then dragged to the stern, where it’s hauled up and secured piece by piece using taglines to bear the weight below each instrument. In practice, the lines can tangle, buoys get stuck in ice, and many other complications arise. There’s more to learn every time!

We’ve also been deploying a couple of expendable bathythermographs (XBTs) and Argo floats. XBTs are corded probes launched off the ship that work almost like a single-use CTD. Argo floats are devices that take continuous temperature and salinity profiles for a global data network. Because the network relies on the accessibility of putting these floats out, they’re pretty simple to deploy. In fact, some cargo ships just throw them overboard in the cardboard boxes! We handled them a little more gingerly, though. 

One of the most exciting deployments this week was…people! Which is to say, we had an impromptu ice station. Unfortunately, only the Coast Guard ice rescue team was allowed out to conduct training, but it was fun to watch anyway. While it was a serious exercise, seeing the team splash around in a pool on the ice looked like quite possibly the most fun imaginable. I was asked to take photos of the process for the NOAA Corps liaison on board, which felt like a fun crossover moment from my work back home.

Back inside, Tyler and I started our next big project: taking an inventory of all the scientific cables STARC has onboard, which we affectionately refer to as “the cable factory.” That’s meant a lot of multimeter time for me, along with building a spreadsheet. And, if you know me, you know that the spreadsheet is beyond tricked out. The idea is to make it easier for the next person to fix or redo the CTD, with useful info like instrument-specific pinouts. To keep it accessible, I printed out QR codes that link to the spreadsheet and laminated them with a heat gun, since I couldn’t find the laminator. If it’s stupid but it works…

Coming from a science background, one of the coolest parts of being a marine tech is getting to test dozens of hypotheses on a cruise instead of just a few, like the science party. For example, we have two water walls onboard, each with two oxygen sensors. On one wall, one sensor consistently reads about 5 units higher than the others, no matter which sensor is installed in that spot. I hypothesized that the spinning flow meter between the two sensors was forcing bubbles through the line and causing the higher oxygen readout. Tyler gave me the okay to test my theory, and after several trials and alternative hypotheses (the Y valve is causing a pressure drop? the short tubing is causing too high local flow?), we’ve ruled them all out so far. Onto the next one! Maybe a float test…

Tyler has also been teaching me some cool basic tech skills, like tying nautical knots (I’ve got the bowline down) and soldering, which is super cool, though I haven’t quite mastered it yet. I’ve learned more “computer stuff” too, like serial and UDP communication, and SSH, amongst all the instruments and VMs onboard. Tyler tasked me with creating diagrams for related computer and electrical systems, so I’ve been enjoying applying my graphics skills to a new technical subject.

Now that we’ve settled into the ship and its routine, I’ve begun to take more notice of the morale events happening. From Sunday sundaes and pizza parties to karaoke and crafternoons, there’s plenty of fun breaks to be found when you need them. Now that we’ve hit our highest latitude of the trip, I’m also happy to report: I’ve found the North Pole! Contrary to popular belief, it lives in storage in the hull of the Healy. Who knows what else we’ll find! Until next week.

Polar bear count: 0*
^{*Everyone, PLEASE manifest bears.}

^{Side note: Thank you to everyone who reached out to check in on our safety following the massive earthquake off the coast of Russia and subsequent tsunami warnings. We are quite north and all safe! Tsunamis are generally not too big in deep water but grow to larger heights when they enter shallower water, so even if it did reach us, it would still be a small blip out in the open ocean. Thinking about those affected, and hope you are all safe!}

(dun–dun–dun da-da-da-dun)

No rest for the weary on a Coast Guard ship! My first morning on the Healy started with alarms—man overboard! Don’t worry, it was just the first of several shipboard safety drills that day to welcome us onboard. An abandon-ship drill later in the day brought me to the hangar, where Micah and I tested our ability to speedrun suiting up in immersion suits. As we did, an exciting announcement came over the speakers: we’d officially crossed into the Arctic Circle!

Just one day later brought us something to show for our crossing: sea ice! I’ve found that no matter how much you stare at the glinting white and cyan shapes bobbing by, it never gets old. The Healy is an icebreaker ship capable of continuously breaking 4.5 feet of ice, or 10 feet when backing and ramming. The continuous shudder of icebreaking is definitely a unique feeling compared to the usual sway of open water. The ship’s hull is designed not to pierce through waves like most boats, but rather to slide up onto ice and crush it beneath its weight. Watching the ice break and churn alongside the ship is mesmerizing. I worry ice pictures may be beginning to outnumber dog pictures in my camera roll! Hopefully some polar bear pictures will bridge the gap…

Throughout the week, Tyler taught me systems essential to a marine tech’s job, like the Rolling Deck to Repository (R2R) data system and e-logging requests from the science crew. I also started learning about user datagram protocol (UDP) and virtual machines (VM), which we’ll likely get into more of later. Stay tuned! Tyler additionally gave me a crash course on more instruments, including the ADCP and gravimeter. The gravimeter is an instrument that detects tiny changes in the strength of the gravitational field to give us better insight into the geological topography under the ocean.

Our first big project was updating the CTD. CTD stands for conductivity (salinity), temperature, and depth (pressure), and is considered the “bread and butter” of marine tech. The CTD package is often mounted to a rosette that also holds other sensors and Niskin bottles to collect water at various depths as it is lowered into deep water. To make it a little more confusing, “CTD” often refers to the entire setup, not just the core instrument package.

After a baseline deck test confirmed most of the system was in good shape, we discovered the fluorometer wasn’t working. A fluorometer is an instrument that can measure the fluorescence of the seawater to give an estimate of the volume of chlorophyll present, which indicates the primary production of phytoplankton (the photosynthesizing base of the marine food web). Using a power supply and multimeter, we confirmed it was faulty and tested its replacement along with new oxygen and colored dissolved organic matter (CDOM) sensors, which we would also be adding to the CTD. 

While I had worked with a CTD previously, learning about how instruments work using frequency and voltage was a new and exciting lens to explore. Tyler emphasized the importance of matching instruments to their correct pinouts. This involved digging for the correct cables in the endless cable drawer down in the science hold, testing them with the multimeter, labeling them, and then securely routing and connecting the cables on the CTD. Attaching expensive instruments to something going thousands of meters down in the ocean can be a little nerve-wracking, so we made sure everything is neatly wired and secured using hose clamps, velcro, and zip ties. After updating calibration files in Seasave and running another deck test, everything was set.

This week had no shortage of exciting sidequests. I spent lots of time with the multibeam ensuring it was running as best it could with the racket of ice all around and turning it off when the bridge spotted marine mammals. Having the most dramatic flare of the week, the metal pole supporting the wind sensor on the forward jackstaff snapped, leaving the sensor’s cable to be the only thing to hold up both. Deeming it in need of an immediate fix, the ship came to a halt and Tyler climbed the dicey jackstaff ladder off the bow to safely take it down. I was just happy to support from the deck!

We also began some more standard deck work. As of today, we’ve recovered three moorings that have been collecting data in the Arctic Ocean for a couple of years. Navigating mooring recoveries with the added obstacles of constantly moving and refreezing sea ice has been a really interesting process to learn along the basics of winches, taglines (and also in this case, grappling hooks!). I’m looking forward to observing and potentially participating more in upcoming deck work.

As we tackle tasks big and small, I’m slowly gaining familiarity with the work of a marine tech and learning more each day. It’s hard to believe it’s only been a week! Don’t worry, though, the watertight doors and eating lunch for breakfast keep me humble. Until next week!

Polar bear count: 0.5*

^{*A Coast Guard public affairs specialist (PA) showed me a picture he took of one from far, far away during the first night onboard, but none have been seen since then. I did, however, spot some walruses swimming in the distance!}

Belated post (ironically) due to technical difficulties! Originally written July 16, 2025.

It’s been a busy few days! This week, I traveled to join the Healy, but evidently, I didn’t even need to hop on a plane to meet my MATE mentor, Tyler! As I lined up to board my flight from Portland, Oregon, to Anchorage, Alaska, Tyler found me and introduced himself. He’s a marine technician at Oregon State University, coincidentally my alma mater! He was a MATE intern a few years ago who was mentored by other previous MATE interns, so I’m stoked to be reaping the benefits of a long line of program successes. I’m in good hands!

Tyler works on the Ship-based Technical Support in the Arctic (STARC) contract, which essentially provides marine techs for the USCGC Healy’s science missions. Although the Healy is first and foremost a Coast Guard vessel, it’s also a research vessel. The cruise I’m on now is in support of the Arctic Mobile Observing System (AMOS), a network of autonomous oceanographic instruments making long-scale autonomous observations of ocean and sea ice physics. 

In Anchorage, we met up with Micah, the long-term MATE intern joining for the same leg of this expedition. Soon, we were all on the short flight to Nome, a small town known for being the last stop in the famous Iditarod dogsled race. There, we met a member of the Coast Guard and spent roughly the next couple of blustery days banding together to explore Nome’s historical landmarks, gift shops, and eclectically remote dining options while waiting for the Healy’s arrival. Highlights included seeing wild musk oxen, finding the finish line of the Iditarod, and ordering sushi at a pizza restaurant. 

Once the Healy was in position off the coast of Nome, we coordinated with more newly arrived Coast Guard officers for our onboarding. Suddenly a bright and sunny day after a perpetual rainy gray, we made our way to Nome’s port. There, one of the Healy’s small boats (just 26 feet long!) picked us up in small groups while a water taxi transferred our luggage. As an understatement, the small boat ride was awesome. Wearing a Mustang suit, speeding along up and down through waves on an endless sunny sea as the grand profile of the Healy grew closer and closer was definitely a cinematic experience. 

When we reached the Healy (a whopping 420 feet in length), we were faced with our next new and novel experience: climbing a Jacob’s ladder dangling off the Healy’s deck while our small boat bumped through the waves next to it. Once I started climbing the swinging rope, I understood why its name carried the carnival connotation. Despite some nerves, I made it smoothly to the top and was officially on the Healy! 

After climbing up, Micah and I were given a tour (lots of muscling through watertight doors) from the STARC lead onboard, Christina, then hauled our bags up and got settled in the computer lab. Then, once Tyler was onboard, the real work began! As we started north, Tyler showed me the “water wall,” the system of seawater that flows through a set of sensors for continuous data collection while underway. It gives us information about the current seawater temperature, salinity, oxygen, and chlorophyll levels. Configuring the water wall involves a “seesaw” of opening and closing valves to allow flow through the full arrangement of all the instruments with the right water pressure. Here, our main goal is to keep it flowing, accurate, and not explode it!

Tyler also gave me a crash course in some key sonar instruments the STARC team monitors on the ship: the multibeam echosounder, singlebeam echosounder, and acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP). The multi-beam echosounder is an instrument that emits lots and lots of sound pulses to map out the seafloor like a 3D model by detecting how the frequencies change as they bounce back to it. The single-beam works similarly, but with just one pulse point, which provides us with a cross-sectional line of the seafloor topography. The ADCP uses sound to measure water current speed and direction by emitting sound pulses that bounce off particles suspended in the water. It then calculates the speed and direction of the current by measuring the Doppler shift, which is the change in frequency of the returning sounds.

Finishing up the first of my noon to midnight working days, we ended with a walk on the weather decks, admiring the almost-sunset off the land of the midnight sun. I’m so stoked to finally be onboard and excited for the steep learning curves ahead. Until next week!

Polar bear count: 0*

*Polar bears are not native to the Portland International Airport.