The stress of knowing that if you forget something you’ll have to do without or rely on the kindness of strangers and the thrill of knowing a new adventure is on the horizon. I am feeling all of this at the moment. Lucky dinosaurs have no idea … but they did miss out no?
Image courtesy of Dan Regan
The bags are packed, the flight is booked, and the goodbyes have been said. Its time to return to Seattle after being gone since July. I’m somewhat sad of my departure but I know that good things are going to come along.
My time on the R/V Savannah have been some of the best I’ve ever had. I met some great people and got to help support amazing scientific goals. It is an experience that I will never forget.
While I haven’t had much luck on the job search so far, I have found a few marine technician positions to apply to…So hopefully in the near future I will be able to call myself an actual marine technician. I am very glad I got to enjoy this awesome internship.
It is Thursday, Septemeber 25th. We are currently three days into a two week long cruise off of the coast of Georgia and inside the local estuaries. The mission of the current expidition is the same as the first cruise I went on as a marine technician intern. In some ways its sort of fitting…to start and end my time as an intern with the same group of scientists. Sadly this is the same group that I had to struggle to get to understand the basic concept of safe science.
Luckily it seems like they have finally began to pick up on the fact that I’m not joking when I say hard hats, life vests, and closed toed shoes must be worn at all times when doing over the side opperations. Or that when they are running the CTD that you must subtract at least 1.5m from the actually depth to ensure the package does not slam into the seafloor.
While both of those are very concerning matters, I am currently focused on a much more stressful problem…why our SCSserver has decided to continously crash and bluescreen. I have noticed that the SCSserver has been sopratically shutting itself down for the past week+. Originally I thought it was John who shut it down while we were at dock (still sort of strange seeing we generally keep it running 24/7), however when it crashed on the first day of the cruise I realized that we have a much bigger problem on our hands.
John’s inital fix was to change out the server power supply, thinking that a dying power supply was causing the problems…however the server crashed again that night. After I did some researching on the blue screen codes, and asked some friends for help, we managed to narrow it down to a few possible issues. While troubleshooting I attempted to do a restart where I pulled out the power cord and held the power button for 30 seconds. By leaving the power unplugged for 5-10 minutes this would drain any remaining power from the motherboard and clear the NVRAM. When this solution didn’t work John took the server case off and reseated the ram sticks and cleaned out the fans to insure proper ventilation…however this also failed. The next solution I tried was to do a system restore…this is done by holding F8 while powering it up…this would supposedly give me access to a menu where I could select “Repair Computer”….the problem is whoever originally set up the server did not enable the access of this command…Finally I went back to researching the error codes in hopes of getting more insight. What I found was that one of the errors displayed had to do with a program called Sonic Solutions, which is pretty much a driver controling the DVD drive. Supposedly the sonic solutions driver is known to cause blue screen errors when used on a Windows 2003 server (mini rant= Windows 2003 is no longer supported by Microsoft…so why in the world are we using such out dated software…all the important scientific software should be able to run on a newer server setup by now= rant over). So after removing the Sonic solutions software I am currently waiting to see if the server crashes again. Honestly I have a feeling it will…I have a feeling that the server is crashing for a mix of reasons not limited to the Sonic solution program and probably a corrupted hard drive….
Anyways….computers can be evil sometimes, but if my solution works and stops the crashing it’s going to be the best feeling in the world.
One week later and I still find remnants of my internship in my pockets. A shackle pin, zip ties, soldering wire and lots of used electrical tape. Looking back it all happened so fast but it was an amazing experience.
On September 5th at 0400 the silence was broken by the sound of the main engine that was just ignited. Half an hour later I get up excited about the work we had to do but sad since it was my last day on the Oceanus. I have been fortunate to squeeze in one last day cruise before the end of my internship, the objective being to retrieve two science buoys and two gliders.
Mooring work, I believe, is one of the most exciting things the marine tech gets to do. It takes focus, vigilance and excellent communication skills. You have to be aware of your surroundings at all times, ready to foresee what might go wrong.
About half an hour before the retrieval we had a meeting on the bridge with the captain and all the people involved. The head marine tech, Dave, went through each step of the operation making sure that the captain, whose primary concern is safety, agrees all the way through. If not, adjustments are made in the sequence of events or methods used.
After that, we went down to the aft deck where Dave assigned us specific tasks; who is going to be tagging which of the three lines, who is going to be tending each one, who is going to operate the crane, the A-frame, winch, and capstan, and who is going to strap down the buoy on deck.
What I find most amazing is that eleven people managed to work in unison on our small aft deck through a web of lines and trip hazards, and safely secured a 700 lb buoy that was hanging from the crane, 12 feet in the air and swinging with the swell.
Which brings me to the most important aspect of my internship; the people I had the opportunity to meet and work with. From our stewards Joy and Sean that always prepared fabulous food, the Able Bodies: Doug, Mark, and Patrick who taught me how to work safely on deck, the engineers: Chip, Jay Bart and Dave, who kept me alive in the transducer well and provided all their technical knowledge, the mates: Tony and Todd and captain Jeff Crews who welcomed me onboard and let me hang out on the bridge.
Of course I cannot thank enough my mentors and marine techs Johna, Dave and Toby who were always there to answer my questions and provide all the insights of their profession. I also feel fortunate to have met the science groups from WHOI, Scripps, Oregon State University, the University of South Florida and the University of Washington, who gave me the unique opportunity to learn about ocean bottom seismometers, moorings, oceanographic buoys and internal waves.
Lastly I would like to thank Tami Lunsford and Nandita Sarkar from the MATE program that made this experience happen and arranging for me to work with the R/V Oceanus group.
*I appologize for any spelling errors. The keyboard seems to be acting up (lagging response time/seems to hate certian keys)…
As of right now I am in the middle of another NOAA National Marine Fisheries cruise. So far this cruisehas bee rather uneventful, with 0 Red Snapper presently caught. However it is real exciting to see the scientists from the last cruise as well as some new faces. Whilethis may be the current voyage I’m on I would like to focus on the unexpected events that unfolded before this cruise began.
As I metioned earlier,life always has a way of testing you. In this case my test came from a last minute cruise put together during the two weeks of dock duty that I had. Since it was the first time the crew has had so much dock time a few of them (including my Marine Technicin mentor) took some out of state vacations. The problem with this is that when a las minute cruise cam around I became the fill in Marine Technician on th R/V Savanah.
I must say that it was both a nerve wracking and thrilling experienceall at the same time. On the day of the cruise I fired up our flow through system, prepped the CTD, and turned on the ADCP and echosounder. I then spent time filling out the pre cruise log, noting which configuration files I was using, what our fleet broadband usage was, and what the goal of the cruise was.
Luckily this cruise was rather simple. We were heading out off the coast to collect water from the niskan bottles, do some zooplankton net tows, and deploy an ADCP mooring package (all stuff that I have done before). Yet of course things weren’t as simple as thy sounded. When we reached the first station everything decided to go wrong at once…
When turned on and put over the side we discovered that the CTD was unresponsive…luckily I had seen this happen before on a previous cruise but it was still a total adrenalin rush/deer in the headlights situation. The fix for this problem was to bring the CTD back on board and shut it off for about 30s before turning it back on again. Essentially the handlers putting the CTD over the side accidentally turned the switch on- off- and back on again which seems to confuse the software.
The next problem we discovered was that readings of the CTD water temp and salinity was different then the flow through SBE 21’s readings…and the chief scientist was using the flow through readings to choose his sample sites. Since the water temp/salinity was too high we needed to find another site. To fix this issue I had to turn off the flow through, put in the back up SBE 21 and then restart the system….luckily it worked great. (During this proccss I managed to crash the SCS system…)
The final problem I encountered was never solved…for some reason the echosounder readings in the bridge begin freaking out when ever the gyrocompass GPS starts acting up…I have to wait for the new GPS to be ordered before I can try and fix that issue…
Overall the trip went amazingly well after those first few hiccups. I can say for sure that I love being a MarineTech and want to continue in this field.
My current work list consists of:
Of course the work on a ship is never ending. It seems as if every item on my list that I complete spawns two more things to do. One of the most frustrating things currently is the fact my mentor is on vacation for the week…so while I am more the confident at my ability to complete all my tasks (and the new ones that pop up) I am also finiding myself stuck on some tasks because I would like to get his approval first. Ohh well, in the meantime I will continue to finish my work list and help out the rest of the crew on their projects.
So for this post I have decided to change up my writing style. Since I really enjoy photography I figured it might be best to provide photos in order to give you an idea of what I get to see everyday versus writing a wall of text.
Overall my duty as a marine technician has remained the same for the current NOAA fisheries cruise I am deployed on. The main differences between this cruise and the previous cruises is that I get to run the pot hauler to retrieve the fish traps that we set at each station. Anyways…
As a marine technician you need to be prepared for a variety of weather conditions. For the most part our cruise has been uneventful (with the exception of the first 3 days) and we’ve been able to enjoy the 1-2 ft sea state and the beautiful sunsets that come after an 80-degree day on deck.
However some days we have to suffer through pouring rain, thunderstorms, and high seas. Yet even those days (where you are spending most of the time hoping you don’t vomit up your lunch while helping out the scientists) you can find those beautiful moments that make all the suffering worth it.
For this particular cruise we spent the majority of our time off of the shelf of Georgia and near Daytona Beach, Florida. The objective of this cruise was to collect data using fishery-independent sampling techniques, specifically by using chevron fish traps and underwater high-definition video. The main fish that we were aiming to catch was the Northern Red Snapper, which is a prized food fish, caught commercially, as well as recreationally. Red Snapper is the most commonly caught snapper in the continental USA making up almost 50% of total catch. Overall we sampled a total of 142 stations with traps and underwater video (112 random, 11 opportunistic, and 19 recon) in Georgia and Florida over 10 days at-sea. The weather was a little bumpy to begin our cruise, forcing us to forgo some sampling on the second day. Highlights of the cruise were 172 red snapper trapped, including a bunch of small red snapper around 200-300 mm total length. A couple of videos likely had 30-40 red snapper visible. We also caught a small (3-kg) goliath grouper off Daytona Beach. Catches of other species were light to moderate. Video quality was very good, and the MARMAP group was able to record 80-90 GoPro Hero 3+ calibration videos for a hopeful switch to GoPro cameras next year. I believe we will be donating around 300 lbs of fillets to the Salvation Army in Savannah.
For the most part I spent the cruise running the pot hauler to retrieve the traps, as well as standing watch, and working on instrument malfunctions. Retrieving the traps was a three-step process. First you had to grapple for the buoy lines. Once you pulled the buoys in and created enough slack you could attach the line to the pot hauler. Lastly you had to pull the trap on board and dump the contents into a bucket.
Step 1: Grapple buoy line
Step 2: Reel up trap using pot hauler (and make bets on trap contents)
Step 3a: Stop the pot hauler with enough rope to allow scientists to pull trap onto deck. Avoid reeling in too much or else you will screw up the block.
Step 3a: Stop the pot hauler with enough rope to allow scientists to pull trap onto deck. Avoid reeling in too much or else you will screw up the block.
Once all of the traps are collected the science party will begin processing their catch. Overall there were pretty much three different species that were consistently caught: Red snapper, Black sea bass, and Tomtate.
Since this cruise was focusing on red snapper all the specimens caught were processed. The scientists took weight and length measurements, as well as otolithes (fish ear bones), DNA samples, Reproductive Organs, and Stomach content of the red snapper. The other trapped fish were measure for weight and length, however depending on the species (I don’t remember the exact list) they may have gotten worked up more.
Beginning the data collection process
Fish are sorted by species
Bucket full of Vermillion Snapper
Once all species are sorted the scientists take a species bucket and dump it into the laundry bucket to determine total mass
After being weighed the fish is measured. The species shown here is a Red Snapper.
Depending on the species the fish may or may not get an extended work up. In this picture the otolith (fish ear bone) is being removed.
Usually the catches were generally similar (assuming there was actually something in the trap) however the best part of the cruise was when we found an unexpected species in our traps.
Remora aka Shark Sucker. This species is generally found attached to sharks, turtles, large fish, or even the hulls of ships.
Short Bigeye- Generally not found in trap due to their habit of feeding at night and hiding during the day.
Reticulate Moray
Red Octopus
Salps- A planktonic tunicate that was wraped up in our trap
Unknown (to me) Eel
Golith Grouper
Since this was a fisheries cruise one could probably assuming that most of the science party members like to fish….that was garanteed this trip. Every chance they got, either while steaming towards the next trap site or while anchored during the night, they would put their lines out. I’m not going to lie….it was sort of contagious. I’ve never been fishing before this cruise but with enough prodding I finally decided to cast out a line…and was instantly catching fish left and right. It was awesome. What made it even better (in my mind since I don’t eat seafood) was the fact anything we caught was being added to our dataset. Overall we caught a lot of different fish. While trawling we caught Dolphins, Barricuda, Little Tunny, a sailfish, and some sharks. Bottom fishing had its own unique catches, mostly Snapper, Squirrelfish, Tomtate, Black Sea Bass, Sharks, and a Sea Robin. Below are some of the pictures of everyone enjoying their free time fishing.
One of the scientists hooking a barracuda
Close up of barracuda
First fish I every caught – Snapper
Second catch – Snubnose shark
Squirrelfish
Red Snapper caught by one of the science party
Lizardfish caught by one of the science party
Tom Tate
Dolphin
Sea Robin
We spent a few more days at anchor in the Chesapeake Bay and then we packed up and headed for Lewes. It took a little less than a day to get back; we steamed through the night and got to the dock early morning. We had a quick turn around off loading some of the science equipment and personnel that would not b joining us on the second leg of my final trip on the Sharp. Around 9 am we left the dock with a few extra people, the University of Delaware’s Provo’s and his family along with some other officials joined us for a little cruise around the bay to see some of the work that the boat can do. We went out past the breakwater and did a CTD cast and our guests were given a complete tour of the boat. After the cast we headed back in behind the breakwater to get some respite from the sea state. There we had a wonderful lunch and the visitors were faired back to the dock with the small boat. Once they had been off loaded and everything secured we headed out. Our goal was to get out to where the water would be deep enough to do a 2,000m cast to look at the water profile and take some samples. The weather was a bit rough and some of the scientist got seasick. I went to bed after dinner in anticipation of our early morning CTD cast that was scheduled for 4 am. I got up bright and early and we ended up having to wait for the sun to come up so that the mate on watch could see the sea state and keep us all comfortable for the nearly 3 hour cast. Right after sunrise we put the CTD over and all when well until about 1200m when the computer lost the connection to the instruments on the CTD, we were able to restart the program and get things running again with out having to restart the cast. After that everything went fine and we finished the cast and then did 2 more, not quite so deep but still pretty deep. After the casts were done, much to the delight of the scientists, we headed back early to make it back to Lewes for the early tide. We got in around 8 am the next day and off loaded the science gear. I spent the day helping get the boat ready for the next trip, doing laundry and making up beds. I also helped clean the CTD and get the computers ready for the next trip. Late in the afternoon, Max one of the techs. brought me to Salisbury, MD where I would fly out of the next day. We went to a cute little city run zoo with free admissions and then Max dropped me off at my hotel in anticipation of my flight the next day. I am now currently sitting in the airport in Philly waiting for my connecting flight home to Providence. I should be getting home right now but my first flight was late taking off so we got to Philly with only 20min till my next flight left. I knew my chances of making it were slim but I ran across the airport like a crazy person with my backpack and carry on in tow but missed my flight. As I sit here in the airport, it has given me a chance to reflect on the past six weeks that have flown by and were such a whirlwind of activity. I learned a lot and had a ton of fun this summer on the Sharp and I cant wait to get back out to sea again.
This past week we have been tied to the dock doing various repairs and getting ready for the next cruise. The crew sanding and painting in the wet lab, the mechanics welding in the galley, the marine techs opening and cleaning all hardware in electronic racks, and the engineers installing a flow through system pump in the engine room.
But last Tuesday was not an ordinary workday. After lunch Jonha, the marine technician, and I climbed through a hatch below the main deck and down a 16 foot narrow tube into a chamber the size of a Volkswagen Beetle.
After making sure we had all the tools we needed, we established radio contact with Chip, the engineer, and told him to close the door and start pressurizing. Air started coming through the vents and our ears started popping as if we were scuba diving. After 30 minutes of swallowing to equalize we reached seven psi. Only then we began to remove the bolts from a thick steel plate located at the bottom of the ship. Sixteen bolts later, I lift up the plate to see the ocean beneath me as still as if it was a bowl of water.
The objective of all this was to replace the two plates with Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP) transducers that emit high frequency pulses of sound that scatter off moving particles in the ocean. From the change in transmitted and received frequency we can determine current velocity.
These transducers look like one-inch thick steel 19th century top hats with sensitive instruments inside. Securing them into their exact position in this small space was a challenge to say the least. It took us three hours to install them both, check for leaks, repeat, add more washers and check again.
The simple physics behind the reason why we didn’t sink the ship by opening a hole in the hull is that the pressure of the water at that depth is less or equivalent to the pressure of air in our chamber, so ideally there is not fluid movement either way.
On one occasion the waterline started rising so we radioed the engineer above to increase the pressure and the water started going down. What we found out later is that every time we made a seal between the hull and the transducer the air pressure jumped up to 9 psi, so the engineers had to immediately turn off the intake and open the valves to release air. Big thanks to Chip and Don for standing by for three hours monitoring the gauges. Overall, it was an amazing experience.
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