Author: MacKenzie Smith

Science has come to an end. It’s cold outside and it’s hard not to get choked up over the departure of the scientist. But wait! What’s this? SUMO NIGHT!?

Being on a ship for so long, the coast guard put together some morale funds to support events such as Ice-cream socials, trivia night and of course sumo night. It was great fun watching the gang get together in large sumo suits and pummel each other (in a safe fun-loving way). I didn’t partake in the fighting because of course I ripped my THIRD PAIR OF PANTS; lessons learned: always bring a sewing kit on board and invest in a hardy pair of Carhartts. I really enjoyed watching the scientist and the coast guards battle it out in sumo style, it was pretty hilarious and a perfect end to a long day.

Photo creds: (Flying Tackle by Victoria Uva)

Everyone seemed to be in the fun-loving spirit. Even Kristin and Dr. Cross got in on the fun… however, in a different way and at my expense. 

Let me tell you what went down: Daniel and I were watching the sumo fight in the flight hanger when the chief scientist and Dr. Cross walked in. Dr. Cross came over to me in a very calm matter and said “operations have been canceled for the remainder of the night”. I dint think much of it at first because Daniel and I would have been paged if there was an emergency and Dr. Pickart (chief scientist) was straight chillin in the back laughing at all his comrades in sumo suits. I continued to watch the sumo fight between a scientist and a coast guard member when my mentor walks up behind me and says “Operations has been canceled because we lost the CTD”.  WHAT!? I’m sure I turned as white as this page. Later, as I was on my way to the staging bay, they reassured me it was all a joke but I still had to check on it. Luckily it was still in the staging bay, not a scratch on her. Operations was really canceled but for moral reasons (very long day of mooring recovery). I’m glad they got a laugh out of it… but it was still so cruel :'(. 

The last week wasn’t all fun and games. Actually, it was still a lot of fun but the work kind. The Geo Mapp App pooped out as we were trying to give JAMESTEC a better view of the IsoBathy where a mooring was located (they wanted to see if they could move the mooring to a better location). Geo Map App was lying to us about the distance between the two point of interest (we knew it was lying because good ol’ trusty OpenCPN was telling us it was a much closer distance). I played around with Geo Map App a bit to try and identify where the issue was coming from. Turns out the scaling was way off and the Lat and Long was way weird. I relayed this to a STARC member who notified the company that provided the software. Long story short, a new Geo Map App software is being sent out with the 1902 MarTech’s.

I wrapped up all of my projects (SSW trans protocol, CTD Trans&Fluor protocol, Cold CTD protocol, and DGH-RM Young configuration document), and had a last night of trivia with the scientist. 

(August 23rd) Science wrapped up everything and left Healy by noon. After science left we got a weird power outage. Crazy enough, the mysterious frequency on the Hydrophone caught this power outage before it happened. We notified engineering and documented (screen shots and videos) the strange occurrence. Engineering now thinks that the hydrophone is connected to a dirty power source… the same dirty power source that is causing the power outage. We may not get to the bottom of the mysterious frequency on this cruise but we are starting to close in on the source. 

The next day we got Nome liberty! Ami, Kristin and I got to adventure around Nome a bit where we acquired some fresh fruit and paid a visit to the Iditarod finish line. Back at the Healy there are talks about the line crossing ceremony! I wasn’t allowed to hear any of the preparations as its TOP SECRET. Some of the polar bears (people who have already gone through the ceremony) like to throw around the quote; “the first rule of fight club is you can’t talk about fight club”. Anyone who has seen the movie or read the book Fight Club can get an idea of what this was like as a measly iceworm. 

ICE WORM NO MORE

(August 25) I can’t talk about the ceremony (because of the whole fight club thing) but I can say it was a lot of fun and I’m NO LONGER AN ICEWORM. I am now an Honorable Polar Bear! I have crossed the Arctic Circle and the Date Line so I’m walking out of this internship with two very cool certifications. 

(August 26) A page went out saying “WHALE CARCUS PORT BEAM” I wanted to add this in here because it was pretty gnarly and deserves some recognition. Im going to share the picture at the very end so heads up if you’re squeamish.

To conclude. This internship was an amazing opportunity and I will always be grateful for the knowledge gained and the memories made. I hope to sail on the Healy again soon!

**Que Donnie Warwick “That’s What Friends Are For”**

On the Left: Me chatting with the CTD about the good ol’ times. On the Right: Me giving the CTD a farewell hug. Photo Creds: (Kristin Beem)

The view from Healy right around the corner from Dutch Harbor. The tennis ball has been there THE WHOLE CRUISE

***The Whale Pictures start here***

I’m going to start with a personal note as I’m starting to see a trend. Today I ripped my other pair of pants. I went to the ship store to find a sewing kit but they didn’t have any. I then asked if they had pants… they didn’t. Luckily, one of the scientists over heard and let me borrow her pants for the rest of the trip. Thanks for listening… on to the cool stuff 🙂

At the start of the week, I helped one of the scientists get his instrument working by finding and assembling the right tubing needed to allow the correct pressurized flow though his instrument. 

Later on, was the first mooring retrieval with two mooring technicians from JAMSETEC (Japanese Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology). Mooring retrieval didn’t go as planned. To communicate with the mooring, we used an Edgetech. At first there were some communication issues but with some adjustments on the transmission value, we get a response. After communication was secured, we sent the release code and got conformation that the mooring had been released… but the mooring never surfaced! This is because the mooring had been sitting in this location for two years and most likely acquired biofouling around the release site preventing the physical release. Thankfully there was a secondary Japanese release which JAMESTEC used an over board transducer in hopes to communicate and activate the release. This process will be explained in more detail below.

It was a cold and cloudy day (we are nearing the Arctic Circle so cold and cloudy really means freezing and gloomy). The transducer was thrown over the port quarter and was being secured by a couple of deck personnel. STARC member, Kristin, facilitated communication between Deck Opps and JAMESTEC off to the side; as JAMESTEC spoke very little English and Kristin is so good at talking with her hands I’m sure she’s closing in on her very own version of sign language. After the first hour I bounced back up to the computer lab to warm up and talk to Daniel where I learned that during this debacle, Daniel noticed that there was an unidentified noise being detected by the Hydrophone. Weird, because we turned all of our instruments off; Also, during this mooring communication debacle, science found their 15^th dead sea bird today (It is an alarmingly high number of dead seabirds so they are thinking it could be due to an unidentified toxin). Daniel decided to notify JAMESTEC about the mysterious hydrophone noise (as it could be the reason they aren’t getting a response). It turns out the mysterious frequency wasn’t prohibiting the transducer to communicate with the mooring, however it is still an issue that needs to be looked at further. After several hours JAMESTEC finally got a release response but there was still no sign of the mooring surfacing. At the nightly meeting, the Chief scientist motioned that we move on to the next DBO site. The plan is to circle back around on the returning trip to check if the mooring surfaced. 

The conclusion to the day was beautiful. The pressure increased and the water got super glassy. The sun was low creating an “illusion” of a sunset (the never-ending sunset) and in the distance, several whales were surfacing around us. 

Throughout the rest of the week we still couldn’t find the source of the mysterious frequency. We notified engineering in hopes they could help us figure out the source.

We are reaching the end of science but we are still pretty busy. Luckily there were no other MAJOR issues with the instruments so we are able to work on other projects. I started writing up a protocol for cleaning and checking the voltages of the transmissometer on the port SSW. This is a weekly protocol that will eventually create a through log of the instrument’s performance.

in the afternoon we tested and set up the DAMP drifters with LT. Miller… we may have lost two Allen wrenches in the process but we got it all ready to be deployed :). One of the scientists, Dr. Cross, gave a presentation at the nightly meeting about NOAA’s super cool and awesome drones! We are to intercept one of the drones in the morning. 

In the morning, Leah gave a yoga class in the hanger. She did a very good job leading the class and we all left the hanger feeling grounded. Unfortunately, the yoga session was at the same time as Dr. Cross’ drone interception so I wasn’t able to attend. however, the drone communication was a success.

During Austin (MarTech) and Ami’s shift, Austin noticed that the serial numbers for the SSW instruments were different in the acq. file than on the instruments. I did a round and double checked (it’s best not to edit the acq file too much so we wanted to make sure we got everything down before we made edits). It turned out that the DO sensor in the BioLab was a different serial number than in the config files. Daniel will have to correct the acq file for us.  

THE DAY OF THE CUPS!

Cups Cups Cups! everyone got together and designed some Styrofoam cups to plunge into the deep (The cups with be put in a mesh bag and then attached to the rosette). After everyone had finished decorating their cups, Kristin and I attached the bags to the rosette. At the next station the rosette and the cups will be deployed 3000m deep. When the cups return they will be tiny versions of themselves. it’s a cool tradition the scientists have to commemorate their work on the research vessel. 

-One of the cups I created was a Peacock Mantis Shrimp. This is what it looks like after it has been plunged into the deep.

After cups day we did some more work. There were issues with the LCI90 and the 3/8th wire; LCI90 stopped talking to the MET. This was a full day of tracing wires, locating the point where the UDP packets were being held up as well as changing out some mini switches. None of this worked. Several hours later we realized that there was a very simple solution: power surge the main LCI90’s in the wench room. Basically, turning it off and then turning it right back on, SMH. The rest of the week I worked with Daniel to write up a How-to document for the DGH and the RM Young Temperature sensor AND got to pretend I was a Ghost Buster during sweepers with a BACKPACK VACUUM CLEANER! Maybe it sounds silly but I really enjoyed cleaning that day. 

My phone is filling up with picture of codes, wiring set ups in J-Boxes, transmissometer voltages, MET data and of course beauty shots of the mock DGH setup for the configuration document. 

Que in Stevie Wonder “Isn’t She Lovely”- (Music is a big part of the work day)

This is one of the pictures I used in my documentation of the DGH set-up and configuration for the RM Young Temperature sensor.

This week the day shift went through A LOT of trouble shooting. It’s not a good thing but I was super excited because I got to learn a lot.

There are two shifts for the STARC people. Both shifts are 12 hours long. Amitav and Austin are on the night shift (midnight to noon), Kristin and I are on the day shift (noon to midnight) Daniel and Danyelle are the floaters, however Daniel was mainly the day shift with Kristin and I. The scientists were also on around the clock and had a split between day shifters and night shifters. The coast guard is ALSO on around the clock shifts. Because of this we are doing CTD’s all day every day.

First hour into the first shift: test run of the CTD and the Bongo nets. I helped one of the fish people (zooplankton scientists) put together the bongo nets and the fastcat on deck. The scientists are super excited like young children on Christmas eve.

One of the STARC members (Kristin) and I watched the CTD for its first decent into the deep (just a test). Noticed that the pump on the CTD was offset by -5.227 (out of water should read 0?). Kristin is emailing seabird to get the OK to recalibrate the offset before the first cast at 8pm. In addition to this incident, early this morning we noticed that the temperature sensor on the bow was WAY off. We got a spare ready and sent one of the STARC people, Daniel (Dan the Man) to climb up and switch it out. We watched the MET display while he climbed, everything seemed fine until the MET display started to show all the instruments on the bow INOP! somehow the rabbit fried and all the instruments hooked into the rabbit were no longer sending data. Poor Dan has to climb back up tomorrow in the freezing cold winds to figure out what the heck happened.

Second day into this and the pressure sensor is a no go. We removed the little spigot to check the oil and there was no oil… ooops. We changed out the fish with the back-up fish (the one I set up!). Got SUPER muddy. It was a race against the clock because we were closing in on the first station. We got it done in the nick of time and looked like super heroes.  

The pressure on the replacement fish is showing an inappropriate value as well. But it’s not as bad as the first fish. This issue was new to the STARC people as Seabird is usually perfect so it was a learn as you go type of operation. We got a few CTD casts in because, “(Ship) Time is money; money is power; power is pizza; pizza is knowledge”, then the gas group (Dr. Jess and her cool crew) had issues with water from one of the niskin bottles. They weren’t getting the same flow as they usually do. The first running theory was a jelly got stuck in one of the bottles and in the process let out some of the water. The working theory was someone accidently sampled twice or mis sampled (or was it sabotage? Dun dun dun!!!). Any who, we took a good looking at the niskin bottles in question and then ran two tests on the next two dry CTD cast (dry CTD cast means no water samples but we took 4 samples at the bottom of each cast to test the bottles). Everything checked out, no cracks or leaks and the flow rate was a flawless symphony. I have a video of the flow rate of the water coming out of the niskin nipples; Jess, may or may not have, held a photoshoot for Captain Aurora (Lego man she brings on all of her science cruises).

On the Daniel front (remember the wonky temperature gauge and the fried rabbit?). Daniel got to climbing but due to conditions did a quick secure of the instruments before he tackled the rabbit (circuit board) down under (bow of boat, main deck). I’m not completely sure on all the detail of his fine tuning but as far as I could tell and understand he disconnected the rabbit, tossed it aside and individually connected the wires to serial; basically, doing the same thing the rabbit was doing but with less collateral. In the morning he will be climbing again. In the midst all of this debauchery, Bob the God (Chief Scientist, Robert Pickart) was a little less than satisfied about the pressure data from the CTD. Since the pressure offset wasn’t linear, fixing the data after a cast to reflect proper pressure (also there isn’t anything else giving us a reference pressure) is very difficult if even possible (maybe it is but it seems crazy to me).

We need a working CTD asap! Luckily, we weren’t too far from Nome and had consistent communication with STARC personal on land so we were able to get a CTD flown out to Nome (Side note: the plane was delayed about 5 hours so the cruise is standing by to stand by). On the other hand, the coast guards had to get a part dropped because there was a leak in one of the engines (one of the casualties from the first transit). What I mean by “dropped”: a helicopter flies out to the middle of the ocean where the Big Healy is hanging out, then they throw the part out of the copter and into the big ocean. Healy has a small boat drive out to where they dropped the package and scoop it up. Then the small boat returns to the Healy and hoists the part up on deck.  

On a personal note: I was doing a deep squat to get some sensors out of a box in the main lab and ripped my pants like SpongeBob did in season 1. I only have two pairs of jeans with me so I had to patch the hole in my pants with duct tape. 

Every Tuesday and Thursday there is a science presentation in the conference lounge. Today I attended a presentation By Dr. Jess Cross from NOAA called “Mooring to Money”. She discussed her work with Ocean Acidification, Climate change and the effects of these on Alaskan communities. Jess did a brilliant job on this presentation and concluded with a quote that really stuck with me: “Climate Change not Climate Doom”.  The science presentations are really grate as they bring you back to the big picture and remind everyone why we are doing what we do. It’s easy to get lost in the details when immersed in work on the ship.

The rest of the day was a pretty low-key compared to the previous half of the week. I adjusted the Science Sea Water (SSW) and read up on the fluorometer and transmissometer.

The food is starting to get weird? We have moved from name brand chocolate chewy bars to generic brand oatmeal raisin chewy bars. Also, the movie channel stop working but at last we still have ice cream!

I took a selfie with the CTD after I gave it a bath (to prevent biofouling). The CTD is still my favorite instrument!

Today I assembled the back-up CTD fish! I was super pumped to assemble all of the sensors on that thing. We probably won’t have to use it but it still made me happy.

The following day, I was still working on the CTD but just the wiring portion. After I finished with the wiring I used a software called seasave to create a new configuration file for the fish. Within the new file I had to import the configuration files for each of the instruments attached to the fish brain. Because we don’t have enough DO’s or another transmissometer, we use the configuration files from the instruments on the primary fish that is already attached to the rosette. After the config file was created and completed Marine Technician, Austin, assisted in helping check the voltage on the back up fish and made sure that the fish was talking to the deck box.

HA! The fish was talking to the deck box and everything seemed to exhibit the values we expected…. except there were no voltage values. So, we had to go through a long process to figure out what was going on and why it was happening by gutting all the nicely wrapped cables, swapping them around, testing resistance with the multimeter and more… it kind of hurt seeing the fish being disassembled. It hurt more when we finally found that the problem had a simple solution (reorienting one single cable). In hindsight it was pretty comical… my first taste of what it’s like being a marine tech I guess?

The arrival of the science party has been delayed two days due to weather. Our echo sounders are turned off and the only thing we are monitoring is the SSW. Long day due to the lack of projects so I read up on some of the science party’s SOPs. Movie night in the science lounge (all of the Matrix) accompanied by some ship rolls.

Next morning in the lab, it’s starting to get pretty cold. My fellow intern is starting to disappear in his hoodie. Right now, all you can see is his nose. We are still waiting out the weather and many people are still trying to get over their sea sickness. There was a page sent out to everyone directing them to the doc for some medications as a result, mess deck was pretty quiet during lunch. Can’t wait for science!! 

August 4th is the day the scientist make way for the ship! The Healy is too fat to pull into a Nome pier so the personnel exchange is primarily done through small boat opps. There was a slight delay because one of the boats stopped working… I think they are still trying to get small boat opps back to the ship, they’re kind of just spinning in circles. The first arrival of scientist was on a water taxi, which Roy (the last of our original tech group) used to depart to the island. Everything is busy and exciting. So many new faces and land energy! 

Later that night The Healy ran an abandon ship drill. Everyone has a job and a designated raft, my job was to gather blankets, Ami’s was to gather the food (since it’s a drill we didn’t actually have to haul a bunch of food and blankets out to the flight deck). After everyone huddled up with their raft family, they announced that the new Healy personnel had to try on the float suits, which are big and orange and swallow you whole. Feels like being hugged by a balloon.

Weekly Up-date July 29^th

On this day the Healy is in Kodiak. Several of the technicians that were on the transit have packed up and gone home leaving behind two technicians and two MATE interns to oversee the transit to Nome Alaska where the Healy will welcome the science party and two additional technicians.

First day on board- July 21^st

We got a brief tour of the ship and some of the STARC instruments on board and then got settled into our rooms. After that, we hung out in Seattle for a bit.

Second day on board- July 22^nd

Mary gave everyone a start-up cruise intro where we learned about the MET (MET is a Scripps application) and how to start it up at the beginning of the cruise (setting cruise name, linking to .acq file, etc). The start-up cruise crash course also entailed an overview of the networking used on the ship and the communication of data between instruments and the network.

We learned about the interworking parts of communication of data as well as the importance of monitoring the flow of this information. The crash course provided a solid foundation for the continued education to come in the next couple of days.

Still getting lost on the magnificent Healy. Healy finally starts heading out of the pier.

Third-fifth day on board- July 23^rd -July 26^th  

As the week progressed at sea the days seemed to blur together, but in the best way. We were constantly busy learning everything we could. So many new things to learn that extended beyond the daily operations of a Marine Tech. The Coast guard is doing their training which occasionally involved our participation (filing in to the science conference room for checks). There were a couple of times where the training got a little wild and an actual casualty occurred; before I would have been kind of worried about this but the coast guard does a really good job at keeping things under control.  On the other hand…In the computer lab we have monitors that tune into the flight deck so we got to take a little break and watch the coast guard do flight crash training on the flight deck.

*Side note—I got sick during this time with a cold and the classic sea sickness. The best way I can describe it is by comparing it to the way you might feel after getting off a roller coaster that you’ve road 43 times straight while simultaneously trying to read Moby Dick.

Now back to the important stuff: The information download consisted of many more parts than the ones I will discuss below.

Two of the things that really grabbed my attention were the CTD and the Science Seawater Flow Through. I enjoyed learning about the set-up of the different instruments in the science seawater flow through, why the instruments are positioned the way they are (“real estate” as Mary likes to say) and what each instrument measured and how this contributed to different scientific research. The Healy has two science sea water flow throughs (SSW). The SSW on the port side is the only one of the two that has a pCO2 (one of the reasons why it’s the primary SSW flow through). The water that flows through the PortSSW will flow through the secondary SSW flow through located in the Biolab.  Both of the SSW flow throughs have to be monitored and tinkered as the flow through from the main pipes can change. this is important becase of the mechnics in the TSG (conductivity and temperature). The MET helps us check the values when we are in the computer lab.

The CTD is probably my favorite instrument. There are several names to refer to the CTD (i.e. Fish, Rosette, CTD). I will probably be talking more about the CTD when we start casting! But for now: we learned how to open and close the pumps attached to the rosette as well as the different instruments connected to the fish and rosette. I like to creep on the CTD from my computer using the IP address of the camera placed in the Starboard Staging Bay. Its doesnt do much but sit there while we are in transit but there is a sense of satisfaction when I can sit in my bunk before bed and tap into the nanny cam.

July 27^th– 28^th

We ported in Kodiak and went through the end cruise protocol for the instruments. Made sure the pumps were turned off for the SSW (dont want to suck up all the gunk and filter it through the system). The EM 122 and the Knudsen were also turned off. 

We got to explore Kodiak a bit. The second day we went to the south side of the island and hung out a bit. I saw a baby sea otter and got pretty close to it (Houston doesn’t have a lot of these hanging around downtown). There is a photo floating around somewhere and I will try to get that up later.

Hello my name is MacKenzie and I am one of the MATE interns aboard the Healy 1901 cruise. My major is in Environmental Geoscience at Texas A&M University. My background, as it relates to this internship, is in microbial and biological oceanography with a touch of GIS. I worked for the International Ocean Discover Program for a couple of years on the shoreside end of core sampling and XRF imaging. I’m excited to learn about the Tech side of science and work hands on with the various instruments. I have never been on a ship like this before and don’t really know much about the coast guard so all of this is completely new and exciting!