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The week began with CTD casts along the shelf and slopes north of Alaska, along a line designated NNE. Although we were in deeper waters, the scientists cut the casts off at 300m in order to save time. In another move to save time, every other cast was CTD only, meaning that they did not take water samples using the Niskin bottles on the way up. This definitely saved time, cutting the CTDs from roughly one hour from deployment to recovery to only 30 minutes. One really interesting observation during the CTDs was the presence of Atlantic water on the bottom of the ocean. The CTD graph would show a drop in temperature down the water column until the CTD reached the bottom. At the sea floor, the temperature would rise along with the salinity. This warmer water, kept at the bottom by it’s higher density, turns out to be water from the Atlantic, transported over Russia according to the scientists.

Because we’re working on a Coast Guard ship, the marine technicians here don’t get to do any of the deck work. The CTD deployment and recovery, along with the A-frame and winch handling, is all performed by the Healy’s deck and engine crew. Although I haven’t been able to take part in any of the deck work, I’ve watched how the Coast Guard operates their machinery and I’ve been impressed with their communication skills. The deck crew uses clear hand signals to inform the winch operator, and the bridge, deck crew, and winch operator all utilize radio to ensure that the operation goes smoothly. 

During my shifts this week I’ve only seen a few issues. One of the bottles on the deep 3000m cast failed to fire. The CTD rosette uses an electromagnet to release tension on the lanyards holding the bottle open, allowing the bottle to close on command and capture water. After the deep cast, we cleaned the firing ring and troubleshot the bottle, and this time it fired properly. Another issue we encountered was when the CTD pump didn’t turn on at first. The pumps can be selected to turn on manually, or automatically when they detect a certain salinity level when they enter the water. We believe that the intake hose had some air trapped in it, which stopped the pump from starting. Moving the CTD through the water column cleared the issue. 

One project I’ve taken on for the Healy’s deck department has been writing a program to analyze the winch data. The program works to read the raw binary data transmitted daily by the winch sensors and return the day’s highest tension and the times that the winch reached a certain tension level or above. The difficulty is making the program efficient, since the data files are so huge. The sensors record data 20 times per second, and the files consist of one day’s worth of data. The program has to read 1.7 million lines of data, so it can take some time to load the results. 

Yesterday (Aug 18) we recovered 3 Japanese moorings. They were in fairly shallow water, so the process didn’t take too long. The ship navigates to the mooring location and then one of the Japanese scientists will transmit a wakeup code to the mooring release via a transducer that they lower over the side of the ship. After locating and communicating with the releases, they will transmit the release code while the Healy and it’s small boat look for the floats to surface. The Coast Guard then hauls the mooring on board, removing sensors along its lines piece by piece. 

Today is the 19th, so the scientists will only be on board for five more days. It’s been a great experience to see them all working so hard around the clock. It’s also really encouraging to see so many people passionate about their work and the marine environment. Since I’m not getting off with them in Nome, I’ll miss having them on board for the post-cruise transit back to Dutch Harbor.

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.

The week began back off the coast of Nome where we got to watch the C-130 cargo plane drop spare parts for the engineers. It was amazing watching the operation – the plane dropped a flare then circled around to drop a box right by the flare. The Healy’s small boat then deployed and retrieved the package. Unfortunately, the spare CTD unit that was shipped from San Diego was delayed, so we stayed several extra hours offshore for it to arrive. Then we left Nome and the science mission was underway again.

I’ve been on the 0000-1200 shift along with Austin, a UNOLS tech pool technician. He’s been great to work with and I’ve learned a lot from him. I appreciate his background in electronics and data acquisiton, and he’s taught me all about each of the instruments and their software. He’s also shown me pictures from his various trips across the world as a technician, and through them I’ve developed a greater respect for the job. 

After leaving Nome, Austin and I performed a deck test of the new CTD. Our main concern was ensuring that the pressure reading in air was not way off, like the previous fish. First, Austin showed me how to create a new configuration file for the CTD software. This file includes the sensors that are included on the CTD, along with the values of each of their various constants and offsets. With the new config file created, we conducted the deck test by plugging the new CTD into the deck box, from which it receives power and to which it transmits data. The new CTD had an in-air pressure reading of 0.6db, which was encouraging. With the new CTD working, we repackaged it to be used as the spare. 

The remainder of the week was very standard, without any major issues besides a mooring recovery failure. One of the JAMSTEC (Japanese Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology) moorings was unable to be recovered due to biofouling on the releases. Despite this, we managed to finish the 3rd DBO (distributed biological observation) line this week, and pushed north towards our goals in deeper water north of Alaska. On the transit to our northern stations, we rendezvoused with a saildrone in order to recalibrate it remotely. These large autonomous drones are 24 feet long, with an 8 foot draft and 16 foot sail.

I’m excited to begin the northern portion of the mission, because we will start to enter deeper water and recover more moorings. As we go farther north, the weather has been getting colder and the days longer. In a few days we will do our one deep CTD of the cruise (due to the lost days we won’t have time for more than one deep cast), and the scientists plan on shrinking styrofoam cups. 

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!

After a couple days exploring the beautiful island of Kodiak and transferring crew members and technicians, the Healy set off for Nome on Monday, July 29th. Our goal was to reach Kodiak on August 2nd, that Friday. For the most part, luckily, our transit cruise was uneventful. Apart from a few strange data acquisition readings which we cleared up, nothing major broke down or caused us trouble. Along the way, Roy, a former intern now working as a technician, taught us how to perform CTD wire terminations. I found the terminations to be tricky, and I spent a lot of time working on redoing mine. 

The termination is performed on the .322 EM (electro-mechanical) wire. There are two outer layers of wire which have to be un-layed to reveal three conducting wires inside insulation. You have to be careful when un-laying the wire and cutting away the insulation, because the wire must be re-layed and you can’t cut or damage the conducting wires. 

During the transit, I familiarized myself with the navigation displays. I uploaded all of the science party’s waypoints to each of the various navigational displays in the computer lab and the scientists’ work stations, then practiced uploading ice imagery. The Coast Guard purchases the imagery from a third party, which we then reproject and upload into the navigation systems. The reprojection step ensures that the imagery is properly overlayed onto whichever chart your software is using. Once overlayed onto our chart in the computer lab, we send the chart to the bridge’s computers using a remote terminal. 

As we approached Nome, we received weather reports of a major low pressure system moving in. On the morning of the 2nd, the anticipated science onload date, the Healy held position outside of Nome to assess the conditions. Because the crew transfer would be conducted with the Healy’s small boats, the weather made it too challenging and we were forced to turn back to ride out the storm. We traveled south again and crossed northwest over the top of St. Lawrence Island, then headed back for Nome two days later to try again on Sunday, August 4th. 

After finally loading the scientists on Sunday, we cruised towards the first of the DBO (distributed biological observation) lines planned for this cruise. Despite their extended stay in Nome and the lost time, the scientists were all happy to be underway and moved quickly to set up their labs. Unfortunately, however, one of the technicians noticed that both the original and the spare CTD were giving erroneous pressure readings above water. After some inspection it was determined that the units had come back from calibration with the manufacturer with large pressure value offsets, and so the data we had collected was possibly compromised, at least in terms of the pressure readings. 

Now, instead of moving to the second DBO line, we are moving back to Nome where the technicians have arranged another spare to be sent. We will load the spare via small boat and then continue the DBO line afterwards. Again, the scientists have taken the setbacks with good spirits, and even made the most of it. The chief scientist added some more stations to the second DBO line in order to map the currents in the region better. The goal with these new CTD stations is to get more data on the Alaska Coastal Current and the Bering Sea. In addition, the Coast Guard will be sending a C-130 cargo plane to airdrop some spare parts for the engineers. It will be pretty exciting to see a huge military cargo plane fly overhead and parachute some supplies into the water. 

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.