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Hello all,
Well we are still here in Honolulu waiting for repairs to be completed. We had to cut short our last cruise because the ship was having rudder issues so we turned around and came home. It was an especially big bummer for the scientists because they had a crazy schedule filled with all sorts of things they were still hoping to get done and they had to abandon the plans:/ It sounds like everyone was able to get some amount of their own samples so no one walked away without SOMETHING but no one got everything they were hoping for either. Like I said…bummer. Unfortunately these sorts of things happen on ships. You plan and plan and plan and everything is scheduled so carefully and then some random factor rears its ugly head and spoils the whole thing. But alas…things are being worked on now.
There was some major nail biting for a few days over whether or not we would be able to have everything fixed in time for our next big cruise but things seem to be going well. To repair the rudder they needed to take the top off which would allow the bottom to move around and potentially get out of alignment (this is a relatively large oversimplification of the situation but I’m just trying to give you some context here). One option for preventing that would be to dry dock. That would get the vessel out of the water so that everything could be stabilized completely before any work was done. Since we were looking for a much faster turnaround time the next option was to send down divers. They went down and secured the rudder from the outside by doing some pretty cool underwater welding. They were out here for a couple of days so I can’t imagine it was an easy fix but it seemed to do the trick. Once everything was stabilized they were able to take apart the rudder and make the repairs it needed. All said it seems like it has been a really big job and I SOOO wanted to watch the action but the guys have been working deep down in the ship and I know there is very little room so I would have been in the way but that would have been really fun to see!
We were originally scheduled to leave on Tuesday for this long cruise and obviously missed that but the hope is Friday (tomorrow). Still no final word yet but that seems to be the most recent gossip. I really hope things pan out that way because this is supposed to be a 44 day long cruise and all of the scientists are here and the ship is loaded and everything. Fingers crossed!
I will have more updates later today or tomorrow and expect a few more posts over the next day or two as I fully commit to trying to upload pictures. Honest they are coming:)
Until next time,
Elizabeth
Ok ok ok…I know I am already behind with my blog posts and I apologize for that but holy cow have things been busy!! I have to back track a little bit to fill you all in so here goes:
Last week we went out on a 2 day cruise that seemed pretty straight forward. There was a crazy contraption that needed to go into the water, sink down, receive a signal from the surface, rise up, and get back on the ship. Not too bad right? Well considering this thing was a relatively large, 5500 lbs, and awkwardly shaped it didn’t take long for things to get a little twisted.
The deployment of the contraption into the water wasn’t really all that bad. It swung harder than we would have liked when it was lifted into the air and maybe made its way into the water in a moderately uncontrolled fashion but hey…it made it into the water. Then there were a series of communication errors between the ship and the contraption but I’m going to gloss over most of that because it really didn’t affect me and the crew much…just freaked out the science guys. Eventually the contraption accepted the signal to rise up from the depths and then we had to find it. Easier said than done. With the communication available to the team we were able to get in the right area and even pointed in the right direction but it still took quite a while until it was actually spotted. It sat quite low in the water and there was no buoy or neon flag for us to see so I’m actually impressed that it didn’t take longer but maybe that’s just me:)
Anyways…the fun really started when we were trying to get it back onto the ship. This contraption (well…a similar one anyways) had been deployed before but never recovered so this was the first attempt to get it back on the ship EVER. The captain was able to steer the ship from the back deck and reverse his way right on top of the contraption which was AMAZING in itself. A tech was able to get a hook on the one available attachment site but unfortunately the second hook that needed to be attached to secure it to the ship wasn’t able to hook in time. The result was watching the contraption slowly float away…
The captain decided not to try that method again and sent out a small boat to meet up with the contraption, tie it up, and drag it back to the ship. Thank goodness it was a calm day at sea or that wouldn’t have been an option at all. Regardless, the small boat went out with 2 crew members and they were able to snatch the contraption and haul it back over to us. Then the party really got going. Trying to figure out how to get this thing back onto the ship and into its cradle without damaging anything was tricky. It ended up taking the giant A-frame and winch, a secondary winch, the crane, ratchet-straps, tag-lines, and basically every able-bodied person that was near the area. We eventually got it onto the ship and even in its cradle but it wasn’t positioned well so we had to try to get it seated properly which involved lifting the thing again. It lifted, switched position, a strap broke, the thing fell a very short distance back into the cradle, BOUNCED…well and truly testing the integrity of the cradle and frame builders’ work, and landed more or less just where it needed to be. Holy cow.
While a lot of crazy things went on trying to figure out how to maneuver this contraption, at the very end of the day it did all of the things it needed to do, ended up back on the ship, nothing was damaged, and no one got hurt. Not bad for a 2 day cruise:)
Right after we got back in from that cruise we turned around and went out again on the 10 day trip I am currently writing you from. Originally I wasn’t supposed to come out on this one because they were absolutely full and didn’t have any space for me but one of the scientists wasn’t able to make it very very last minute so I got to tag along. Yay!
I am super happy I got to come out on this trip…not just because that’s the whole purpose of the internship, but also because it is just packed with science things. They are collecting almost every kind of sample that you could think of at all hours of the day. I mentioned right at the beginning of this post that I have been busy and I meant it. It seems like we deploy some piece of equipment, wait briefly for it to come back up, get it back on the ship and put away, and already the next piece of equipment is moving in. It is really interesting watching all of these different things go out and chatting with all of the scientists to see what they are collecting and how they will use it and I am learning a TON but wow 12-hour non-stop shifts are exhausting.
With that note it really is time for bed for me. I have been working for the past hour trying to figure out how to add my photos (I had a really nice set of photos that helped tell the 2 day cruise story laid out for this post…honest I did) but it seems like I will have to figure out a different way because nothing I seem to do allows me to get an image displayed. Sigh. I will get Sonia to help me with it tomorrow since she is familiar with the drill. Won’t she be excited:)
I know I owe a better description of the current cruise and I will get one out soon but I figured I would at least get a little bit of the story posted for now. More to come as always!
Elizabeth
Hello everyone,
It has been a very busy few days here so I will do my best to recap some of the highlights. It all started on Thursday when I flew into beautiful Hawaii. I was picked up from the airport and shuttled out to the RV Kilo Moana where I got enough of a tour to find my room, the food, and the emergency exit and then I was off to bed. Friday I started that gloriously awkward stage (which I am absolutely still in) where I don’t know what is going on so I mostly just follow other people around and introduce myself all day. Poor Sonia! She was the tech that led me around and babysat me all day. We ended up replacing the central piston and several sensors from the CTD device which took us the entire day. It was hot and sweaty and required a lot of climbing in, up, and under the CTD carriage. It was actually pretty fun:)
The the weekend happened…and really no one else was here. So I managed to use that time to sit out in the sun and climatize (AKA sunburn) and explore some more of the vessel in hopes that I could get down some of the bizarre layout. I’m honestly still working on that one though.
So Monday we finally left the harbor with a group of scientists ready to take some samples and the whole week of working with them was mostly a blur. I learned the procedure for deploying the CTD (and a few other items) over the side of the vessel using the giant winch and A-frame set-up. It is a lot of fun to get the CTD into the water and recover it again. It involves hooks on poles and everything:) I have also been trying to learn how to tie some real sea-worthy knots and apparently I am terrible at it. At this very moment I have a string in my pocket to keep practicing. I do really well with the string when I start with it in the same orientation but on deck I am often forced to tie that same type of knot backwards or left-landed or in some other weird way. And yes…I’m terrible at it…to the amusement of my mentor…but hopefully getting better:)
By Friday morning we had made it back into Honolulu and I was able to get through some of the end-of-cruise procedures. Mostly just shutting down different systems and compiling all of the data collected over the course of the trip. Nothing too crazy so far.
With the end of the cruise AND a Friday to boot it didn’t take long for people to scatter. Another quiet weekend here. Because I spent so much of this first trip out just trying to learn every little thing that I could I didn’t spend a whole lot of time taking pictures…or writing a blog:/ I am hoping to do much better on both counts as I get better at this and more used to the schedule. Seriously…I will work on it.
Until next post (with pictures…sigh)
Elizabeth
We’re approaching the final day of our trip. I’ve spent countless hours in the Main Lab proctoring communications with the Bridge and our Science team, logging events, and keeping our monitoring systems somewhat in check. We’ve deployed and recovered OBEM’s almost 25 times over the past two weeks, along with having taken our antenna’s in and out several times due to some hazardous water encounters. We actually lost all activity from our porpoise array on their final tow due to fishing gear and long lines in the water. 3 out of the 4 had their electrodes destroyed. You can see where each one was lost when you go back through their incomplete data sets.
Today specifically, we will haul in our remaining Scripps OBEM’s from south of Martha’s Vineyard. As each is brought aboard, it gets somewhat disassembled, removing electrodes and data loggers and then the data is collected from the compact flash cards that the data loggers recorded to. We have left 5 OBEM’s at the bottom of the ocean that will remain for the next year. They were created by WHOI, they sit off the edge of the continental slope in deep water. They will monitor electromagnetic activity they encounter for use upon their collection in the following year.
I’ve learned about launching XBT’s and how the WinMK21 software works. I have played with the different phases, gain, and shadow reduction to get accurate depths on the Knudsen 3.5 Hz Sub-bottom Profiler. I also got some time into the Spectra Robtrack Interface, getting time estimates and seeing our plotted course. Furthermore, I’ve met a great group of people who will continue to contribute knowledge and ability in the future of the marine science industry.
Tomorrow, we will wait for our Pilot boat to bring us to our dock in the morning, probably right before breakfast time. We will begin our demobilization of the ship, collecting our equipment and things all together, and transport them off boat via cranes.
All I can say is.. what a great experience I’ve had the pleasure of partaking in. I can’t wait to pursue my future opportunities!
~Kate
It has been such an incredible opportunity to work with scientists from Woods Hole and Scripps Institute in sending down instruments which have never been used for our purpose in mapping freshwater deposits under the seafloor. Working in 12 hour shifts from midnight to noon I have helped to assemble the Ocean Bottom Electromagnetic instruments and outfit them with batteries, hydrophones, and fluxgate magnetometers along with other instruments that will be recording the changes in frequency of electromagnetic waves as they travel through the ocean floor. We deployed those at specific intervals on the ocean bottom off the coast of NJ and then towed a dipole behind the boat that sent current through the water and generated a complex wave form which was then recorded by the OBEMs and also recievers also towed behind the boat. I have also participated in logging every deployment and recovery including Latitude and Longitude, boat and wind speed, course, depth, and have taken readings from echosounders, GPS recievers, Direct Positioning systems, and other complex multibeam sonar. The geophysics is a little over my head, but I get mini lectures from the enthusiastic scientists on board while we sit and tow our array for days, monitoring all systems on computer screens. I’ve also had tours of the bridge and engine room by the excellent crew. I’m loving it so far. We have now picked up the OBEMs after towing for a few days and are now en route to the continental shelf below Martha’s Vineyard, where we will deploy another kind of Ocean Bottom System which will sit below for 8 weeks and again deploy the OBEMs and tow our array before picking them up and heading back to Woods Hole on the 14th.
This post is certainly later than intended, but we’ve been in open-ocean since Thursday morning. Our first two days on shore were spend drilling new holes in the mounting plates for our winch. We used two methods, one of which was a magnetic drill, the other was using a drill press. We were tossed around quite a bit Friday night due to an on shore storm sending some wind our way. At first you don’t think you’ll do so well with the waves and boat motion but your body adapts and you get there.
The goal of our trip is to use electromagnetic waves to detect freshwater reserves that may be under the oceans crust. We will cover two main plots, one of which has been drilled and fresh water already found. The other is thought likely to have fresh water present. The main steps for detection are to launch Ocean Bottom ElectroMagnetometer (OBEM) stations that will receive data from a long and short towed antenna (called a source) rigged to the aft of the vessel. We will also tow an array of 4 receivers off the aft as well. This way we can identify the most efficient way to detect fresh water reserves under the ocean crust. We are currently off the coast of New Jersey where we have already deployed the OBEM’s and are towing antenna’s above them
The main steps:
1.) Deploy OBEM’s
2.) Deploy towed array
3.)Deploy the long antenna
4.)Deploy the short antenna
5.)Drive back over the OBEM’s with the vessel at a slow rate to send out signals that can be captured by data loggers.
6.) Retract the antennas, and the array
7.) Retrieve the OBEM’s from the ocean bottom.
After all this is done, we will then travel back north to south of Martha’s Vineyard and repeat.
The crew (Science and Technical) works in rotating shifts, 12 hours each, to make sure data is being sent and any significant occurrences are logged in a daily agenda. They have been a pleasure and quite kind and certainly make such a new experience easier for a new comer such as myself. There’s certainly more to come, and pictures as well when we get closer to shore with a good data connection.
Signing out,
Kate
Well, it is all coming to an end now. We have started the thirty-hour hike back to the port. We have successfully mapped everything the chief scientist wanted and that has been a lot of ground. So far so good on the travel back as the waves are finally somewhat calm versus how they were yesterday.
Everything that we mapped has been processed and stored away but it does not just end there. This data will be used as evidence to help persuade a point. That point being that we should be allowed to extend our shelf out to the 350 nautical mile mark. Although it may sound unlikely, it is possible through intense and strategic negotiation. The data we collected will also be used for geologists who will have a field day with it due to the significant patterns on the ocean floor.
Of course we are still going to be mapping all the way till were back, or to about 500 meters deep (1,640ft). It makes sense to just leave the multibeam running because you may be collecting data that hasn’t been collected before. You would much rather collect the data and have to throw it away because it has already been recorded than not collect it at all and miss out. We started mapping from the very second we left the dock and we will continue to do so until we reach the port.
This journey has been a long one but I can say that it has definitely been worth it. I’ve never had the chance to experience anything like this before and I am very thankful as well as grateful for the MATE program to provide me with this amazing opportunity!
Hello Internet, Kate here! I’m about to embark on my first internship at sea in the coming week, joining the crew of the R/V Langseth. I’ll depart on September 1st from Woods Hole, a town near and dear to me. I’m so stoked! Growing up I would look over to the WHOI dock from one of the many Steamship Authority ferries as I headed to Martha’s Vineyard each year, thinking I want to be on one of those vessels one day. That day is here, well, almost!
R/V Langseth is part of the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory, I first encountered the ship this past winter during an MTS meeting where we explored one of the WHOI facilities and the Langseth was parked on the dock, featured in the image I posted.
I’ve been prepping for my internship by reading about various equipment on board, getting things all set for the start of my school semester, and communicating with some of Langseth’s technical staff. Oh! and you can’t forget fighting off the minor bits of anxiety that come with an adventure such as this!
In the meantime, I’m enjoying my last week of summer vacation visiting Martha’s Vineyard. Stay tuned for my coming adventure!
It is the third week into the cruise! So far it has been twenty-one days out at sea, we have traveled a combined distance of 4,941 nautical miles, and are sitting in roughly 3 miles deep of water (16,404 ft.). It has been a smooth journey thus far with the exception of a detour, which I will talk about later in this blog.
We have been making a lot of progress towards our goal of redefining the continental shelf. The south side had been finished in a good amount of time. We even saved a couple of days worth of work by cutting the last two lines off because we predicted that there wasn’t going to be any data worth our time in those areas. Then, we did our cross line to move over to the north side. When I say “cross line” you may be thinking of the boat traversing perpendicular to its original lines, which is right. What is the purpose of that? Well, by preforming a cross line we are not only moving perpendicular across our planned route but we are also using that line to continue collecting data that we need to help refine the data we have already collected. In other words, when we do a cross line we are crossing over the lines we have already done. This allows us to confirm those lines because the parallel lines have a slight overlay with each line. The cross line eliminates those overlay lines and clears up the data.
As soon as we finished the first two lines of the north side, a crewmember claimed that they were having chest pains. So, without any hesitation, the captain turned the boat around and we headed to shore. Once we were about a mile off shore, we deployed our rescue boat off the side of the ship and put the crewmember on it. They drove out to meet up with another small boat that was going to bring him to shore and then to a hospital. Our rescue boat came back to the ship and was hoisted back on. This whole transfer took a matter of twenty minutes. I was shocked at how fast it was over.
This journey has been very interesting thus far! I can’t wait till the last week when we complete out mission!