Category: MATE Blog Archive Page 44 of 89

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.

First blog post to introduce myself and test the Site Gen blog.

My first week on board Healy went by quickly. After an early morning flight to Seattle from New York, I spent the first day taking a tour of the ship and getting familairized with the layout of the ship. Luckily, I have had experience working on ships before which made navigating the ship much easier. After a few confusing hours getting lost in the various passageways I developed a pretty good sense of how to get around. 

The first leg of my journey was from Seattle to Kodiak, Alaska. This leg is just a transit, and apart from the other technicians none of the other science party members were on board. My daily routine during this transit cruise has been fairly constant. I get up around 0630 to eat breakfast with the other technicians, then work with and learn from them throughout the day. 

Since the Healy is a Coast Guard vessel, things run differently than on other civilian UNOLS research vessels. Whereas on civilian ships the marine techs will do most of the deck work involved with science operations, on the Healy it’s all performed by crew. From what I’ve learned from the marine technicians who have spent time on the Healy, this means that the focus of their work is centered more around the instruments and ensuring they are properly displaying, storing, and backing up data to the lab computers. 

One of the main components of science instrumentation I learned about in my first few days was the Science Seawater System (SSW). The ship’s engineering control center operates pumps which take in seawater to pass through the SSW system. The system is comprised of two stations, one located on the port side by the engineering spaces, and the other in the bio laboratory in the main science lab area. From the intake pipe the water gets diverted into a manifold which runs pipes to various instruments. One instrument is the fluorometer, which detects fluorescence in the water and can help determine the biological activity in the water. Other instruments measure temperature, salinity through conductivity, the flow rate of the water through the system, and CO2 levels in the water. All this information is then displayed on the lab computers, and it is the marine technicians’ job to ensure that the data is being properly logged and displayed and that the instruments are calibrated. 

One of the most interesting tasks I’ve worked on so far has been learning how to provide the multibeam and echosounder instruments with proper sound speed data. The multibeam and echosounder use sound to map out the seafloor, with the multibeam operating in a wide swath on either side of the ship and the echosounder mapping directly underneath the ship. Because they use sound, the instruments need to know the speed of sound in the water they’re in, since sound speed differs based on the medium in which it’s traveling. The speed of sound through the water depends on the temperature and conductivity, which is what the marine technicians work to find and provide to the instruments. When there is no current temperature and salinity profile, you use an archived version. Otherwise, you would deploy a CTD (conductivity, temperature, depth) instrument or an XBT (expendable temperature instrument) and measure the salinity and temperature as a function of depth. After you’ve collected the data, a sound speed program calculates the speed of sound in the water you’re in and the seafloor mapping instruments can function properly. 

I also spent a lot of time working with Mary, a Scripps Institute technician who taught me a lot about the ship’s network and data acquisition software. Through her, I learned a lot about the IT side of a marine technician’s work. One project we worked on, along with another technician Austin, was to install and wire a new serial splitter in one of the server racks in the computer lab. This splitter took data in from a hull temperature sensor and diverted it out to two computers in the lab. It took some trial and error, because it turned out that one of the computers required bi-directional control in order to communicate with the sensor itself and request temperature readings. After getting all the fiber optics and serial connections properly managed, we labeled the cables and created diagrams for future use. 

Since we are still in transit to the science mission, we have only been maintaining the instruments and troubleshooting. We just left Kodiak to head for Nome, where we will pick up the science party and transition into the standard 12 hour shifts alongside the actual marine technicians. It will be a lot of work, as the scientists will be running more or less continuous experiments, but I’m excited to see the real work that technicians perform when supporting science. 

Weekly Up-date July 29^th

On this day the Healy is in Kodiak. Several of the technicians that were on the transit have packed up and gone home leaving behind two technicians and two MATE interns to oversee the transit to Nome Alaska where the Healy will welcome the science party and two additional technicians.

First day on board- July 21^st

We got a brief tour of the ship and some of the STARC instruments on board and then got settled into our rooms. After that, we hung out in Seattle for a bit.

Second day on board- July 22^nd

Mary gave everyone a start-up cruise intro where we learned about the MET (MET is a Scripps application) and how to start it up at the beginning of the cruise (setting cruise name, linking to .acq file, etc). The start-up cruise crash course also entailed an overview of the networking used on the ship and the communication of data between instruments and the network.

We learned about the interworking parts of communication of data as well as the importance of monitoring the flow of this information. The crash course provided a solid foundation for the continued education to come in the next couple of days.

Still getting lost on the magnificent Healy. Healy finally starts heading out of the pier.

Third-fifth day on board- July 23^rd -July 26^th  

As the week progressed at sea the days seemed to blur together, but in the best way. We were constantly busy learning everything we could. So many new things to learn that extended beyond the daily operations of a Marine Tech. The Coast guard is doing their training which occasionally involved our participation (filing in to the science conference room for checks). There were a couple of times where the training got a little wild and an actual casualty occurred; before I would have been kind of worried about this but the coast guard does a really good job at keeping things under control.  On the other hand…In the computer lab we have monitors that tune into the flight deck so we got to take a little break and watch the coast guard do flight crash training on the flight deck.

*Side note—I got sick during this time with a cold and the classic sea sickness. The best way I can describe it is by comparing it to the way you might feel after getting off a roller coaster that you’ve road 43 times straight while simultaneously trying to read Moby Dick.

Now back to the important stuff: The information download consisted of many more parts than the ones I will discuss below.

Two of the things that really grabbed my attention were the CTD and the Science Seawater Flow Through. I enjoyed learning about the set-up of the different instruments in the science seawater flow through, why the instruments are positioned the way they are (“real estate” as Mary likes to say) and what each instrument measured and how this contributed to different scientific research. The Healy has two science sea water flow throughs (SSW). The SSW on the port side is the only one of the two that has a pCO2 (one of the reasons why it’s the primary SSW flow through). The water that flows through the PortSSW will flow through the secondary SSW flow through located in the Biolab.  Both of the SSW flow throughs have to be monitored and tinkered as the flow through from the main pipes can change. this is important becase of the mechnics in the TSG (conductivity and temperature). The MET helps us check the values when we are in the computer lab.

The CTD is probably my favorite instrument. There are several names to refer to the CTD (i.e. Fish, Rosette, CTD). I will probably be talking more about the CTD when we start casting! But for now: we learned how to open and close the pumps attached to the rosette as well as the different instruments connected to the fish and rosette. I like to creep on the CTD from my computer using the IP address of the camera placed in the Starboard Staging Bay. Its doesnt do much but sit there while we are in transit but there is a sense of satisfaction when I can sit in my bunk before bed and tap into the nanny cam.

July 27^th– 28^th

We ported in Kodiak and went through the end cruise protocol for the instruments. Made sure the pumps were turned off for the SSW (dont want to suck up all the gunk and filter it through the system). The EM 122 and the Knudsen were also turned off. 

We got to explore Kodiak a bit. The second day we went to the south side of the island and hung out a bit. I saw a baby sea otter and got pretty close to it (Houston doesn’t have a lot of these hanging around downtown). There is a photo floating around somewhere and I will try to get that up later.