April 10, 2023
Today was a windy and rainy day, but luckily most of our tasks were inside the ship, so wet gear was not required.
First I helped Oban install a new PC for an existing CCTV camera that points towards the CTD winch. It involved wiring, updates, program installation, and a little bit of hardware to mount the PC and keep it from moving during deployment.
Then I helped clean a net deployment latch that had gotten covered in glue and sponge for some reason, and thus didn’t function well.
Then Lydia had me go down to the lower deck to open up the Pinger to get diameters of the O-rings and check the battery sizes, so that the techs can order and replace them. It was heavy and hot down there, and I was down there for about an hour. It took much longer than anticipated because measuring the O-rings was not easy. Eventually I took a rough estimate, went back to the tech lab to look for the possible dimensions, and then went back down to see which ones matched closest.
April 11, 2023
This morning Rory (Mentor) showed me how to check and replace batteries for the UPS’s on board. UPS’s (Uninterrupted Power Supply) are essentially a temporary backup power supply for when the main generators malfunction and the backup generators need time to turn on. Machinery and sensors are plugged into these so that when there is a power failure, the UPS jumps to battery usage and keeps the device powered up long enough for the generators to kick in. There are many already installed aboard the R/V AE, however there are a few old unused ones that need testing and battery replacement. You can see an opened one below:
Rory gave me 3 of them to work on as a side project for when the main techs don’t need any additional help. Once I loaded them on board, I had a side project with Oban.
I helped him install a PA system from the tech lab to the lab on the bow. This required wire management with zip ties and terminators with crimps instead of soldering. We also used an interesting insulation material that is gooey and sticky for internal wire insulation that we then sheathed with stretch tape. We initially were going to use heat shrink but it didn’t fit after the insulation was added.
Once the PA system (a horn speaker) was attached to the bow lab, we had to feed the wire back to the tech lab. This required going from the outside to the inside which meant going through a watertight port. These ports need to basically have removable and accessible wire ports but also remain watertight when not in use. Unfortunately the removal and addition of the wires is not easy. It requires a lot of finagling. Plus, if the rubber material (seen in image) is at all decomposed or corroded, it makes it stickier and more difficult to remove. As can be seen are the little blue and black “rings” around each of the wires.
Each of the rings can be either added or removed to accommodate different wire sizes. These rings are composed of 2 varying sized “rectangles” that are wrapped around the wire to create hollow cylindrical hemispheres. Interestingly, though I’d expect to use small bits of thin glue to keep the rectangular rubber pieces surrounding the wire in place, instead you use lubricant! Also, instead of building the rings around the wire, there’s a hemispherical “pocket” that each of the rectangular ring inserts will sit, and then once enough rubber material is built up, the wire is sandwiched in between and then forced back into the main component. For reference, removing and re-inserting required the use of a punch and chisel, as well as a big rubber mallet, and lots of patience and force. By the end of the whole debacle Oban and I were both red in the face and sweaty, no thanks to the perfect yet warm and humid Bermuda weather.
Throughout the day I also got lots of practice with finding where everything is in toolboxes which I’m sure will be very helpful.
Towards the end of the day I took the 2 UPS with newly replaced batteries (the third is not turning on so requires further investigation) and set them on an overnight charge to test later.
April 12, 2023
Today we leave for a cruise! We will be departing at around 1300. Apparently we would have gone earlier but can only leave when the tides permit, so before then we started off with a safety briefing and fire drill. Apparently I have some responsibilities in regards to the fire- taking care of scientists and whatnot. I’m not sure who’s idea that was (just kidding.)
Oban and I then tested the audio system that we installed yesterday.
I put on seasickness patch just in case.
On cruises techs have 12 Hour shifts instead of 8 hour shifts. I’m a bit nervous, hopefully I’ll be able to sleep and rest up plenty to have enough energy to be helpful. The tech’s schedule is 3am – 3pm. My schedule is set to overlap each of theirs by a few hours and is tentatively 9am-9pm, unless there is a significantly interesting operation on deck that the techs want me to be a part of lying outside of the 9 to 9 window.
I need to get everyone’s WhattsApp so I can talk to them later. I hope they add me.
Set off on the cruise and so far so good! I was feeling a bit queasy during our initial transit but since I used the seasickness patch it wasn’t too bad. I was also feeling exhausted, so after I took a quick nap, everything was fine! I think I can officially say that I’ve got my sea legs.
We did 2 CTD casts during my shift today. I got to watch both of the deployments, Lydia is an old hat at this. The first cast was a shallow water cast at 500m. For the second cast at around 3500 m, we removed the PAR (Photosynthetically Active Radiation) sensor because it is “only” pressure rated to 2000m. This sensor is used to record the light penetration at depth, and of course is only really useful for the first hundred meters or so. We then replaced it with a sensor that can determine how many rotations the CTD experiences on the way down and back. Lydia invented this device, and mentioned that it uses an internal compass. I think that it operates assuming that it is always positioned upright? The MT’s are unsure if the rotation of the CTD affects the data, but Lydia mentioned that this sensor is just to begin observing to see if it does affect it at all. I assume that the rotation of the CTD does not affect the integrity of the data too much, but likely does affect the load bearing that the wire holding the CTD can handle.
We can still see the shore of Bermuda which is nice because it gives orientation. I was kind of hoping to go out so far as to not see it anymore, so as to feel entirely isolated and get the full “at sea” experience.
April 13, 2023
First night wasn’t entirely restful, but I did get some sleep. I kept falling asleep and then waking up again. I think both rocking and the goings on in the ship kept me awake with the occasional door slams and “bumps” in the night. Tonight I’ll try ear plugs.
The first thing I did was observe the PITTS deployment which was quite fascinating to see. There are a bunch of tubes oriented vertically with the tops open all held in a rack, 5 tubes per rack. All along a line these racks are placed in with a weight at the bottom of the line. There are many lines severed and strung together with proper connections, each break in the line is where the basket of tubes is placed. At the top there are large buoy’s that keep the line oriented vertically within the water column. The goal for each of the tubes is to remain suspended at different depths of the water column, and collect “marine snow” during the entirety of the deployment. At the surface of the water there is a floating buoy with a large pole extending up as pictured. This is satellite communication so that we can go and find it again.
After that we did another CTD cast to 1200m, and upon retrieval we could see that the containers 16 and 24 did not fire again. Apparently Lydia had isolated the problem last night and it was determined that the mechanism that triggers the magnet that closes the cylinder is no longer water tight. There are ways that this can be temporarily fixed, but it seems that that method had already been used, therefore Oban decided that we should replace the mechanism altogether. There is a website that is used to keep track of all the tools and equipment on board, and in what state they are in. Checking this we could see that there is another mechanism available for use in the lower deck MT storage compartment. Oban and I went and grabbed it and began working on replacing the one on the CTD with the one that was in storage. This required moving some of the cylinders and wrenching bolts in awkward positions, you can see the removed cylinders in the picture below.
There was a little confusion on how to remove the current mechanism but luckily we were able to remove and replace it without difficulty. All this occurred while they were also doing plankton tows, and so had to stop what we were doing every 20 minutes or so.
Now all that is left is to see if we replaced it correctly, and the only way to do that is to wait for the recovery and look at it in person.
At around 900 ascending CTD, the scientist on duty Alfonso and I noticed that the secondary salinity sensor appeared to be misreporting data. The difference between the primary and secondary was huge. After that the oxygen sensor began to malfunction as well. Oban mentioned that likely the cap came off while ascending, and since the salinity and oxygen sensors are on the same casing, it makes sense that they are both misreporting data. Interestingly though, the secondary temperature sensor seems to still be functioning fine, which is strange because it is also with the oxygen and salinity sensors. Here you can see how different the sensors were reading data. On the left is the good sensors, and in the middle is the haywire sensors and the innacuracies represented by all the horizontal yello lines.
I suppose it’s things like this that are why we have backups of everything. Apparently the fix for this is a simple one, but unfortunately it seems we’ll have to wait until the CTD is recovered to fix it, then plug in the cover again.
CTD successfully recovered! Unfortunately they don’t know what the problem is with the sensor, so Lydia and I replaced it with one of the backups. This required crawling underneath the CTD and loosening some screws. Here’s a cool image from below.
It appears that all the bottles successfully fired which means Oban and I installed the center mechanism properly. One bottle didn’t close correctly, but that was due to the lid being askew rather than the latches misfiring.
We then did a C-OPS with Matt, which I still don’t fully understand, but I believe it’s a callibration test for the sattelites, which involves letting a line trail behind the boat until the sensor reads 85m and then pulling it back up and doing it another two times. It’s quite rudamentary in that you just drop the wire in and then all hands on deck grab and hoist the wire back up. Deck hands are basically running back and forth in order to retrieve this wire. I think next time they’re debating trying this with a block on the big A-frame in order to make it easier to pull.
I plan on working on the UPS later this evening, because we have a deep core with the CTD and that takes a long time, so there should be time in between to work on the UPS.
We sent the deep core CTD down and I got to deploy it myself instead of just watching this time!!!! It was super cool.
I started working on the UPS after the CTD deep cast deployment. However I stopped a minute and a half in because the noise was unbearable and people are sleeping downstairs. I even had first mate Emmy come check to see what the noise is. I tested the grey 290W-360W with two box fans which will take up approximately 200W-210W. A good test will run for about 20 minutes, but having the alarm blast for 20 minutes straight didn’t seem like a good thing at the moment with people sleeping. I may try this again if I can find a plug outside.
Towards the end of the day I had an hour left and decided to open up the “junk” UPS again to see if I could further isolate the problem. This UPS is from 2011, and something in it doesn’t work. The past few days I’ve been taking it apart and testing it with a multimeter and batteries but it’s quite difficult to reach into, and we’re dealing with 120V AC power which can be quite dangerous. When plugging the UPS in, it doesn’t even turn on and there is no DC voltage coming out of the battery leads. Today I was able to determine that the UPS is indeed getting 120V AC power initially, but somewhere between the AC input to DC converter there seems to be a problem. An hour had passed by and so it’s time to clean up and try again another day.
April 14, 2023
Today started out with an already deployed deep cast where all there is to do is wait for the recovery so for the first part of the day was relatively uneventful. In order to pass the time I decided to test the UPS again. This is the smaller grey one that has a max wattage output of 300W. In order to get an approximate test I used 2 box fans of 100W each to make it a 200W test. Once unplugged the UPS lasted for 15 minutes and 53 seconds. This is decent, but not great. One would hope for at least 20 minutes but then again since this is such a low wattage it likely doesn’t need to keep things on for that long.
We then did another C-Ops with Matt using a block this time instead of purely by hand. Interestingly I don’t think it helped much more and was quite a bit more of a hassle, but that’s why we tried it is to see if it was worth it.
Today was my first exposure to a pumps deployment. It’s relatively similar to the PITS sediment trap but this time with pumps. We attached 4 pumps at varying depth to a vertically suspended wire and let them sit for 5 hours.
Afterwards we did another CTD deployment and while we were waiting I worked on the UPS again. I did a quick test with the black UPS and a 1200W heat gun. This was a mistake however because although the black UPS is much more sophisticated and has a screen with settings, it doesn’t have the wattage output labeled and I had only assumed that it was over 1200W. This was not the case. A quick internet research showed that it’s maximum output was 700W. This proved to be a problem because that meant I had to go looking for different appliances that would ultimately add up to nearly 700W. Phone chargers only use about 20W, iPad chargers use 61W, laptop chargers can use around 1400W. All the things I found used either too little or too much power. Eventually I stumbled upon a “dusting fan” that uses 480W. Pairing this with the two fans would give me a perfect 680W. I also brought out a glue gun to test if the appliances I plug in do indeed use up 680W and if the UPS is rated to 700W output. I did this simply by plugging all the appliances in so the output power needed was 780W, and waited for it to give me an “overload” error, which it did. I then plugged in the duster and fans, unplugged the UPS, and immediately started the timer. Interestingly it only lasted 6 minutes and 41 second, which given the output might be good enough, but I was expecting at least 20 minutes. Because I don’t fully understand the parameters for power and time, I’ll be asking Rory additional questions to see if the UPS works or if it is faulty.
Lydia is letting me off 3 hours early today so that I can catch an early morning production deployment, I’m not entirely sure what that means.
April 15, 2023
Woke up at 5 in the morning to do a production deployment. Production is basically the measure of how much C-14 is consumed by the organisms in each of the flasks. These flasks were filled with sea water from the CTD at varying depths, and then injected with a concentration of C-14 and suspended back at those depths.
Quick shallow cast CTD deployment to 1200. Oban let me do it myself today and said I also might be able to do the recovery. Everything went smoothly.
While we were waiting I went downstairs to help one of the scientists Rebecca with preparing the testing samples by putting filters on nozzles.
Interestingly, earlier I had assumed that the CTD’s sensor data are what the scientists use for the individual sensor values. However, this is not the case. The scientists will measure the exact data from the water extracted at this depth and then calibrate the generated sensor data to what they measured.
April 16, 2023
Got up early to observe the PITTS recovery. There were a lot of things going on at once, and everyone had to remain vigilant to make sure they didn’t get caught up in a line.
It seems that the recovery might have taken a bit longer than expected, because with the following CTD cast, we seem to be behind schedule by at least 15 minutes. I think we have like 6 CTD casts today all back to back to back. A CTD deployment has a series of events that need to happen in concession with the other. First the deployment, you have to be on deck to deploy the CTD. Then you have to run all the way up to the bridge (3 flights of stairs) to begin communication with the CTD. After the scientist has finished the Niskin sampling and the CTD is brought to the surface, you then have to shut down the machine and download the data, then run all the way down to the deck to recover it. This is usually not tiring at all. However, usually there is time between the deployment and recovery, but today they are incredibly short casts. Instead of having one tech run up and down the stairs for deployment and recovery, we will be using walkie talkies to coordinate.
Today is the last day of this BATS cruise. I still need to get everyone’s information.
