Author: Tyler Poppenwimer Page 1 of 2

R/V Marcus G. Langseth,

19-June-13, The Study Site

R/V Marcus G. Langseth: A Daily Routine on the Boat

            Hello everyone!  I thought I would use this blog post to talk about what my daily routine on the boat is like.  Since I last posted there hasn’t been a lot going on besides the regular data collection, we did have to weather our way through a storm but other than that life has been proceeding as normal and hence why I am now writing about what life is like on the boat.

So, my work shift is from midnight to noon every day.  As such, my day begins about an hour before work.  I get up and get ready and then head down to the galley to get some food before my shift.  The first meal that is served by the crew isn’t until 7:20 am so I grab something small to eat and then go to the main lab.  Once there I talk to everyone to see what is going on and if everything looks like it is going well.  Oft times there is not much happening besides the routine monitoring, but sometimes there are problems that need to be attended to.  When there aren’t problems, I head over to an open seat and begin monitoring the data. 

            Monitoring the data isn’t all that exciting but it is a necessity.  If there is an open chair at the guns monitoring station then my job is to watch the gun data to ensure that if a problem with a gun occurs it is recorded and if for some reason a whole shot is missing that it is recorded as well.  If I am at the navigation station, my job is to make sure that our streamers are in the correct position.  If they aren’t then I have to steer the ship into the correct position using a plus and minus button to move the ship closer or farther away from the line.  This station involves the most work as the currents can more our streamers into very different positions from the ship and requires nearly constant monitoring.  The final monitoring position is the data position where I monitor the bathymetry data being collected and keep a log of data about our positions, speed, ocean conditions, and the weather, every 30 minutes.  Personally, I like the navigation position because it keeps my attention and I get to steer the ship.

            While monitoring equipment, I also help Carlos, one of the gun mechanics, every two hours.  Because there is such strain on the cables that hold the doors close to the boat, they need to be moved a little bit so that the same portion isn’t being strained.  As such, I go up to the vein deck and help Carlos move the cables in and out.  I also sometimes lend him a hand preparing the guns and also cleaning and repairing the trolleys that hold the guns up on deck.

            Other than my meals of which usually occur at 3:00 am, 7:20 am and 12:00 am not much else really occurs during my shift, unless of course there are problems.  My meal at 3:00 am is a dinner from the night before that the cooks have saved me while the 7:20 am meal is breakfast and the meal at 12:00 is lunch.  After lunch, I usually go back to my cabin to relax a bit, do laundry if needed, and then go to bed and get ready to start the next day.

            Well, that is pretty much my daily routine on the boat.  For my next post, if no major events occur, I plan on talking about what life is like on the boat.  I will also talk about the crew, grad students, and principal investigators that I work with during my shift and how all of us work together to make the data collection a reality.  Take care everyone.

 – This is Tyler Poppenwimer, signing off –

R/V Marcus G. Langseth,

08-June-13, The Study Site

R/V Marcus G. Langseth: Working out the Kinks

When I last left off, the Marcus G. Langseth had begun to collect data.  While we may have started to collect data, all was not completely perfect.  During the past few days there have been some unexpected kinks and faults that have had to be worked through and fixed.  Nevertheless, after the hard work of all those on the boat, we have managed to successfully work through the problems and find solutions.  The Marcus G. Langseth is now successfully collecting data again!!!!! Give me some data!

The first of the problems that arose stemmed from a fault in some of the data collection software.  During our shift, myself and the two grad students on my shift, Brian and Luke, noticed that our recording system wasn’t acting correctly.  We looked at what was going on and we noticed that our data wasn’t being collected.  We mentioned this to Bern, who is the observer supervisor, and immediately everyone began to run around trying to get it fixed.  Eventually though, after many hours of work we managed to get it fixed. 

With that problem solved, we thought the next day would be an easy day, however we were terribly mistaken.  Part way through my shift, our streamer monitoring system let out an alarm.  Everybody frantically went over to check the monitor.  On the monitor streamer 4 had lost contact with all of its acoustic recording devices and consequently, we were not gathering data on streamer 4.  We didn’t want to pull in the streamer since, the boat can’t slow down because all the streamers are out.  This makes us reel in a streamer at about 2 meters a minute since there is a huge amount of strain put on the streamers.  And with a 6km long cable brining it in this slowly would take hours.  Not only this, but we would have to bring in 2 of the gun streamers, and the door holding streamer 4.  We tried to work through the problem from the main lab for a few hours, but soon we realized that the only way to solve the problem was to bring in the streamer.

Once the order was given to pull out streamer 4, I rushed up to the gun deck to assist with the reeling up of two of the gun strings.  I was given a harness, a hardhat, put my gloves and coveralls on, and hooked up to the fall safe line and edged towards the edge of the boat to bring the gun strings up.  As the guns were brought up, Carlos (one of the gun mechanics) and I unhooked chain hooks from trolleys on the ceiling to hook onto the guns.  In this way, we can haul the heavy guns up on deck without straining the thin air hose.  After about an hour we had managed to bring up the guns.  However, while this job was done, I was not done as there was more work to be done.

I headed up from the gun deck to the streamer deck to see what I could do there.  I saw that we were bringing up streamer 3 so that they could unchain it from streamer 4 and thus enable us to bring in streamer 4.  I helped with what I could and after we had successfully unchained streamer 4, I headed up yet one more deck to the vein deck and began to help bring in the door.

I mentioned in one of my previous posts, that the doors just folded down off the side of the boats.  I was mistaken in this.  In fact the doors, known as veins to the techs, are not connected to the sides of the boat, by pins, but are chained to the sides of the boat and are held up by large winches mounted on the vein deck.  The veins are disconnected from the boat and are lowered into the water where a float holds them aloft. They are designed in such a way so that they pull away from the boat, yet because they are attached by a strong steel cable are held to the ship.  Streamer 4 and streamer 1 are then attached to the veins and streamer 2 is attached to streamer 1 and streamer 3 is attached to streamer 4.  In this way streamer 1 and 2 are held away from the boat by one vein and 3 and 4 are held out by the other.  Thus it was necessary to detach streamer 3 from 4 before we could bring in streamer 4.

Now that that correction is out of the way, we can go back to the story.  Well, once we had brought in the door, we began to pull in the streamer, but after long hours of work our shift ended and the next shift took over.  I was exhausted and dirty.  I didn’t even bother to take a shower once I got back to my room.  I brushed my teeth, washed my face and fell into bed exhausted. 

I woke up feeling refreshed and was hopeful that the problem had been solved in the night while I slept.  I was happy to see once I had arrived in the main lab the problem had been solved.  But, my happiness was too eager, there was yet another problem that had begun almost immediately after the problem with streamer 4 had been fixed.  This problem was with the main computer that coordinates the navigation, gun strings, and the streamers.  This was a problem that I could barely help with so I watched and learned and tried to be as helpful as I could.  I brought the tools they needed grabbed the spare parts for the computers they needed, and brought them extra wires to help plug in the spare parts.  Eventually, after hours of work, we had finally fixed the main computer and everything was up and running.  A few hours more and another eventful shift was completed and I went to bed.

The same routine happened the next day, as I arrived at work, all looked well.  Of course sometimes, looks are deceiving.  About a quarter of the way through my shift the navigation system, SPECTRA shutdown.  As it shut down our guns stopped firing and we stopped collecting data.  This in itself is bad, but if it is dark and the guns stop firing for more than eight minutes, in order to protect any unforeseen mammals that might have swam near the guns, we have to stop firing until morning.  Luckily, while I was on gun monitoring I noticed that the guns had stopped firing and started them up again whilst everyone else was trying to get SPECTRA operational again.  Eventually, after an hour or so SPECTRA was brought back up and since I had restarted the guns we were able to begin collecting data as soon as SPECTRA was restored.  After this ordeal I was finished with my shift and was able to go to bed.

The next day, proved easier than all of the last.  As in fact, there was not a single problem, during my shift.  And since then there haven’t been any problems.  I am thus hopeful that there won’t be any more problems and we can collect data easily and that all will work out.

Well, that is all for this post, I will post again soon.  Until then, take care everyone.

– This is Tyler Poppenwimer, signing off –

R/V Marcus G. Langseth,

08-June-13, The Study Site

R/V Marcus G. Langseth: Collecting the Data

            Hello everybody!! I am sorry that it has been a bit longer than the 3-4 days I promised but with the amount of work time my schedule involves, it is hard to blog as often, I am going to have to revise this to about every 5-6 days.  I work 12 hour shifts now, starting at midnight and ending at noon, but of course that is just a rough estimate.  Usually I stay a bit later and get there a bit earlier to help with the shift changes.  As such, I work a bit longer than the 12 hours and plus I also have to have lunch after my shift ends and do regular things like laundry and other necessities.  After this I am usually off to bed to get ready for the next day of work and so my blog writing time is getting rather small.

Anyways, since I last posted, the Langseth finished deploying all of the equipment and has begun recording data.  It was a pretty exciting moment when all of the equipment was deployed in the water and the first shots from the gun fired!  It was at this moment that our hopes were realized and everything was working properly.  Then, when the first data from the gun shots appeared on one of the monitors in the main lab everyone cheered and was really excited.  The moment of research had begun!

Now that we had begun to collect data, my work schedule, while not being reduced in the amount of time, was reduced in the physical aspect of work.  With the streamers and guns out, we are hopeful that we will have little to do with these.  We will have to bring the guns in every once in a while to check them but this is minor compared to the work needed for the streamers.  Instead my role now consists of monitoring the various equipment using the monitors and recording data into our numerous logs.

The main lab is set up so that from any one position surrounding the main terminal you can see any of the 36 monitors that display information about the ship, the streamers, the guns, our course, and our intended lines that we need to follow to gather data.  From this information, the students and I must log information every 30 minutes, when we start and end a line, and when we start and end a turn.  Some of the information we log are our latitude and longitude, depth, salinity, magnetics, temperature of the ocean, speed, boat heading, wind speed, wind heading, and the current shot number (the shots are from the guns). Some of the data that we have to monitor include information regarding the depth of the streamers, the timing between gun shots, our navigation and speed, and the data to make sure nothing looks erroneous. 

To help explain what I have just written, the lines are the longitudinal lines that the ship and the streamers trailing behind it are to follow so that we can make sure we cover the entire study area.  They set up like the lines of the paper and once we have completed all of the lines, the streamers will have gathered data across the total area of the paper.  However, as our streamers are 6km long, we can’t make a tight turn and so rather than doing the line underneath, we have to skip about 7-10 lines.  This results in really long turns, of which we log the start and end, which can last about 3 hours! During these lines, which can take about 9 hours to cover, we shoot approximately 1900-2000 shots.  Each shot then gives us data about the bottom of the ocean. 

Other than that, life has become pretty mellow around here, if we don’t have any problems then my time should be filled with monitoring equipment and getting to talk to some of the grad students and principal investigators.  Let’s hope no problems arise!!  Well, that is what is going on during my time on the Langseth.  Take care everyone.

– This is Tyler Poppenwimer, signing off –

R/V Marcus G. Langseth,

04-June-13, The Study Site

R/V Marcus G. Langseth: Letting out the Streamers

Hello everyone!  As promised, here is another blog post about what I have been up to whilst on the Langseth.

Just as a quick recap, since I lasted posted, the Langseth picked up the rest of the crew who are all part of the science team.  These are the people who are actually using the gathered data to examine the ocean floor to see if their hypotheses are correct and or learn new information about the continental crust and plain.  Their team is led by Dr. Sawyer from Rice University.  I will take part is some of the data analysis, but for the most part the geophysical aspects of what they are doing and the examinations of the data are beyond my scope.  Nevertheless, it was interesting to hear Dr. Sawyer talk about the mission goals and talk about how much work has went into this mission.  It turns out that he proposed this mission over 10 years, got funding for it 3 years ago, and then had to wait until the Langseth was in the proper ocean so they didn’t have to pay to move it across the world.

After we picked up the crew and had our discussion about our mission, we then departed from Vigo, Spain and headed out towards the study site.  Once we arrived at the study site, we began shift work.  I am working the shift of midnight to noon, which is a difficult schedule to get used to it, and I am still not completely shifted over to that sleeping schedule.  Well, with shift work starting, we began to deploy the streamers.  It was similar to what we had done before, but this time the streamers, rather than being out for a few hours, will be out for about 35 days.  Thus, we had to make sure that everything was in complete working order.  Of course, there were some issues with some of the streamers that had to be sorted out.  We had to take some sections off, add some new ones, but today, after my shift ended, we had streamers 1, 2 and 4 deployed. 

During my shift, we have graduate students who are there to assist us during their four hour shift.  What is interesting about working with the graduate students is that they like to ask me a lot of the questions regarding how the equipment works, what the plan is for their shift, and how the seismic data is captured.  Since, I have been on here, I can tell that I have learned a great deal since I can readily and easily answer most of their questions.  Not only this, but the graduate students are now being given the hard labor tasks while I am given charge of operating the hydraulic reel for the streamers.  My job now is to let the streamer out and then stop it occasionally, when Bern, my main mentor, tells me that he needs to check serial numbers, add a bird, add/remove weights (to help control buoyancy), and add/remove collars (for the birds).  I use a remote control and when I stop the streamer, I let the grad student know what it is they are doing, are they adding a weight, removing a collar or adding a bird.  They then set to work, while I wait for them to finish and once complete, I use the remote control to let the reel out.  I never thought that while I was on this internship I would be having grad students do the work while I got the easy jobs.

Well, that is what has been going on here.  I am sorry that this post is a bit short, but with 12 hour shifts and trying to get onto the right sleeping pattern I am pretty beat after work.  I will post again soon.  Take care everyone.

– This is Tyler Poppenwimer, signing off –

R/V Marcus G. Langseth,

31-May-13, Vigo, Spain

R/V Marcus G. Langseth: An Explanation of How Stuff Works

            Hello again everyone.  So, I was originally planning on talking about what life is like on the boat since we are docked here in Vigo, Spain and not much is going on.  However, since life on the boat is about to change due to the actual research cruise starting and shifts beginning, I will hold off on that for a few more posts.  Instead, this post, will better explain the streamers, modules, sections, birds, acoustic devices, and all of the other stuff that is used on the boat to conduct research.  I will try to explain what all of these things do and how they work to map the bottom of the ocean floor.  Also, I will be trying to upload pictures about some of the devices and equipment so that you can see what it is I am talking about. 

            The two main components that are used to map the bottom of the ocean floor are the guns, and the streamers (streamers have a diameter of approximately 4-5 inches).  This boat has 4 sets of streamers and 4 sets of guns.  The guns are basically air guns that when fired shoot a wave of sound towards the bottom of the ocean.  This sound reaches the bottom and bounces back.  Depending on the medium, the amount of sound energy that bounces back will change.  The streamers have sensors that then detect the sound energy and pipes this information back to the main lab on the boat.  This information is then used to figure out the depth and the material on the ocean floor.

            In order to maximize the accuracy and amount of data the streamers collect, there are a number of different elements that are used in conjunction with the streamer.  First is the tail buoy.  The tail buoy is connected at the very end of the streamer and lies about 150-300 meters from the end of the streamer.  Its job is to relay GPS information back from the end of the streamer to the boat so that the main lab can identify where the end of the streamer lies in relation to the boat.  Next, on the streamers themselves, are the birds.  The birds have three major functions; 1) they give a compass reading to the main lab, 2) they give a depth reading to the main lab 3) they control the depth of the streamer using rotating wings (here is where the name bird comes from).  A bird is attached about every 300 meters and there are a total of 22 birds per streamer.  Finally, comes the acoustic devices.  There are five acoustic devices per streamer, two are near the tail-end, one is in the middle, and two are near the boat-end.  The acoustic devices talk to each other between all the streamers so that the main lab can tell where the streamers are in relation to each other.

            As the streamers are 6km long, they are built in sections.  Each section is about 150 meters in length, and contains numerous sensors as well as two coils.  The coils are used to attach birds and acoustic devices to the streamers.  Each coil is not used and so there are extras in case a coil fails (coils cannot be replaced, only whole sections can).  At the end of the sections are connectors.  These connectors can connect from streamer to streamer, but it is necessary for power and for data transfer that a module is placed in between the connectors on the ends of sections.  A module pretty much just connects the section, but I have no idea what is inside them.  At the boat-end of the streamer comes the lead end.  The lead end is basically a long cable that gives extra length to the streamer so that the streamer can be attached to the wings of the boat.  The lead end also connects directly to the boat to relay power and information.

            That is pretty much how the data collection is performed.  After that, numerous computer programs as well as the researchers sift through the data and decipher its meaning.  After all of this work, the output is a beautiful 3D map of the ocean floor in that region. 

            Well, I hope this helps explain everything a bit better.  I know that what I have been saying gets quite technical.  I hope you are all doing well and I will post again soon.  Take care everyone.

– This is Tyler Poppenwimer, singing off –

P.S. If you want to track the Marcus G. Langseth, you can use one of these websites:

http://www.sailwx.info/shiptrack/shipposition.phtml?call=WDC6698

http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/ (to track from this website, search for Marcus G. Langseth)

R/V Marcus G. Langseth,

27-May-13, Near the Study Site off the Coast of Portugal

Hard Days of Work

Hello everyone, I am sorry that took me a bit longer than expected to post but in the last four days, we have worked a total of 55 hours!!  Yes, we have been doing a lot of work, but it needed to be done and now that the really long days are out of the way, it should be a little easier. 

So, what have I been up to?  Well to put it simply, we have been working on the streamers to make sure the streamer 1 and streamer 2 (which haven’t been used for months and months) were up and running smoothly.  We worked on streamer 2 on Friday, Saturday, and Monday, worked on streamer 1 on Sunday

On Friday, and Saturday, we had to let the whole of streamer 2 out into the water trailing behind the boat.  Whilst doing so, we had to check the serial numbers on the sections and the modules, as well as test the coils.  Each section is approximately 150 meters long and at the end of each is a connector where a module is placed to connect two sections.  In each section, there are two coils where a bird or acoustic device is attached.  As such, we had to stop twice during each section, lift a bird up and radio down to the main lab to have them check if they could see the bird.  Then, we would stop in between each section to check the modules.

Not only did we have to stop at each section to check the modules, we had to switch out some of the modules.  In order to do this, we would secure the tail end of the streamer and disconnect the modules.  Once this was done, we would connect the tail end of the streamer to the deck power to see if the streamers still worked properly.  Once this was done, we would connect the module and run the deck power through that to make sure that this was working properly as well.  Finally, we would then reconnect the boat-end section to the module and the rest of the tail-end sections and make sure everything was working.  We checked /replaced about 12 of the modules (there are about 39 modules per 6km streamer).

Finally, once we had made it through the entire streamer, we had to remove the old lead end and replace it with a new one.  The lead end is the part at the boat-end of the streamer that is wrapped around the reel.  It provides a connection and allows us to attach the streamers to the wings (wings will unfold from each side of the boat to increase the length of the stern so as to spread out the streamers) once deployed.  The lead-end for streamer 2 was old and so to replace it, we had to wind it off of the reel holding streamer 2 and onto a spare reel.  Once this long process was done, we had to use the hydraulic wheel to wind on the new lead end.  Whilst winding it on, myself and another crew member, Josh, had to hammer the lead end so that it was wound tightly.  This took a long time, but finally, we had completed the task.

After the lead end was reattached to the streamer, we wound some of the streamer in and had to then stop and remove two sections.  Again, we had to unwind the three sections whilst winding them onto a spare reel.  This took some time, but was completed and then the rest of streamer 2 was reeled in.  We had to take the birds off while streamer 2 was coming in and so we had to stop about every 300-350 meters to pull off the birds.

On Sunday, we worked on streamer 1.  It was supposed to be a routine, check similar to what we did on streamer 2, without removing the lead end, removing the sections, and checking/replacing the modules, but part way through we noticed that the lead end wasn’t situated on the reel correctly.  As such, we had to let the entire streamer out, then let all of the lead end out so that we could fix the way the lead end was on the reel.  Once this was done, we could then re-spool the lead end and bring in the rest of the streamer.

On Monday, more problems with streamer 2 arose.  To fix these problems, we had to let part of streamer 2 out again and work on the modules once more.  This time, the problem was that part of the streamer was not getting enough power and we couldn’t figure out why.  The power would end in section 28 which means that 12 weren’t getting power.  To check which section wasn’t getting power, we removed the modules and plugged in the deck power cord directly into each section and tested it.  Then, we put the module back on and plugged the deck power into the module and the section and tested those.  If all worked then we reconnected the sections and let out the next section and repeated the process.

This should, in theory, have worked and the problem resolved quickly.  However the problem was more complicated than originally thought.  As such, we did a lot of checking and re-checking of sections we had already checked before we realized we had a bad section that acted good and messed up what was beyond it.  To solve this problem we unwound the bad section, removed it, added three good sections (to replace the two we had already taken off), and reconnected those sections to the remainder of the streamer.  Then, all that was left to do was to pull in the rest of the streamer stopping along the way to remove the birds. 

Even though this was a lot of work, it was all worthwhile because now, our trip out to the study site after going to Port in Vigo to pick up supplies should be easy as pie.  Not only that, but since all of the streamers are now in good working condition, we should be able to put them in the water without a hitch and then the mapping of the ocean floor can begin.

That’s all for now.  If you have any questions, post them in the comments and I will try to get to them in my next post.  By the time I post again, I will be in Spain and hopefully enjoying some nice weather.  Take care everyone!

– This is Tyler Poppenwimer, singing off –

R/V Marcus G. Langseth

23-May-13, Somewhere Between the Azores and Vigo, Spain

The Beginning and the Transit Cruise         

I boarded the ship two days ago, but for the first day we didn’t do much since we were still in port.  I just unpacked, tidied me cabin, explored the ship, and relaxed.  The ship is a lot bigger than I thought it was going to be, and a lot more confusing.  There are so many different ways to get from A to be B that it just makes it plain old confusing.  I found all of the labs, the wet lab, main lab, dry lab, bird lab (not actual birds) lab, and the gun lab (not actual guns).  Chris, the intern whose place I was taking, showed me around, but I knew I wasn’t going to remember any of the ways he showed me. 

The next day, yesterday, at about 8:00 in the morning Azorean time (EST+4) we left Porta Delgada and headed out towards Vigo, Spain where we are going to pick up the research team and the switch out some of the crew members that have been on the boat for a while.  There wasn’t much happening yesterday since we can’t put anything into the water whilst around major shipping routes and so we sat in the lab and made sure the electronic systems were up and running smoothly.  Clayton, one of the members of the crew, showed me around the boat a bit and showed me how to work the CO2 measuring system so that I could work it later during the actual research cruise.

We did have a fire drill and an evacuation drill so that we would know what to do in case of an emergency.  Basically, for a fire drill, we just run upstairs to the mustering point behind the bridge and sit there.  For an evacuation drill, we do the same thing except we put on life vests.  Then, once the life vests are on, we wait until we absolutely have to and then release the life boats into the water, throw a ladder down the side and climb off.  Basically, I hope I don’t have to do any of these things for real!

In contrast to yesterday, today there was work to be done.  We had to look at the four streamers and make sure everything was working.  The streamers are long lines that have sensors on them and they measure the data from the air guns which fire towards the bottom of the ocean.  When I say long lines, I mean long lines; 6km long!  They can’t be made that long so they are made in smaller pieces and connected together and we had to make sure that the connectors were working fine.  It is generally easy to do this, but there some problems and so some of the crew and myself had to go and take a look at the last few connectors.  It wasn’t particularly taxing work, but it was time consuming.  We had to unspool the lines, disconnect the connectors check the power each time we disconnected one and work the whole way down the line.  Luckily, only streamer 1 and streamer 4 had problems.

My life on the boat so far has been pretty good.  The food is awesome!  The chefs prepare excellent food and none of it has let me down.  I have had roasted rosemary chicken, turkey with stuffing (and the turkey wasn’t pre-cooked they basted it and cooked it all day), fajitas, pancakes, mashed potatoes, and soup at nearly every meal.  What more could I ask for?  The guys on the boat are nice too, and a lot of them have taken to showing me how to do things so that when the research portion starts, I can start to do things on my own.  I am having fun and learning a lot too.  

~ This is Tyler Poppenwimer, signing off ~