Category: MATE Blog Archive Page 87 of 89

R/V Marcus G. Langseth,

27-May-13, Near the Study Site off the Coast of Portugal

Hard Days of Work

Hello everyone, I am sorry that took me a bit longer than expected to post but in the last four days, we have worked a total of 55 hours!!  Yes, we have been doing a lot of work, but it needed to be done and now that the really long days are out of the way, it should be a little easier. 

So, what have I been up to?  Well to put it simply, we have been working on the streamers to make sure the streamer 1 and streamer 2 (which haven’t been used for months and months) were up and running smoothly.  We worked on streamer 2 on Friday, Saturday, and Monday, worked on streamer 1 on Sunday

On Friday, and Saturday, we had to let the whole of streamer 2 out into the water trailing behind the boat.  Whilst doing so, we had to check the serial numbers on the sections and the modules, as well as test the coils.  Each section is approximately 150 meters long and at the end of each is a connector where a module is placed to connect two sections.  In each section, there are two coils where a bird or acoustic device is attached.  As such, we had to stop twice during each section, lift a bird up and radio down to the main lab to have them check if they could see the bird.  Then, we would stop in between each section to check the modules.

Not only did we have to stop at each section to check the modules, we had to switch out some of the modules.  In order to do this, we would secure the tail end of the streamer and disconnect the modules.  Once this was done, we would connect the tail end of the streamer to the deck power to see if the streamers still worked properly.  Once this was done, we would connect the module and run the deck power through that to make sure that this was working properly as well.  Finally, we would then reconnect the boat-end section to the module and the rest of the tail-end sections and make sure everything was working.  We checked /replaced about 12 of the modules (there are about 39 modules per 6km streamer).

Finally, once we had made it through the entire streamer, we had to remove the old lead end and replace it with a new one.  The lead end is the part at the boat-end of the streamer that is wrapped around the reel.  It provides a connection and allows us to attach the streamers to the wings (wings will unfold from each side of the boat to increase the length of the stern so as to spread out the streamers) once deployed.  The lead-end for streamer 2 was old and so to replace it, we had to wind it off of the reel holding streamer 2 and onto a spare reel.  Once this long process was done, we had to use the hydraulic wheel to wind on the new lead end.  Whilst winding it on, myself and another crew member, Josh, had to hammer the lead end so that it was wound tightly.  This took a long time, but finally, we had completed the task.

After the lead end was reattached to the streamer, we wound some of the streamer in and had to then stop and remove two sections.  Again, we had to unwind the three sections whilst winding them onto a spare reel.  This took some time, but was completed and then the rest of streamer 2 was reeled in.  We had to take the birds off while streamer 2 was coming in and so we had to stop about every 300-350 meters to pull off the birds.

On Sunday, we worked on streamer 1.  It was supposed to be a routine, check similar to what we did on streamer 2, without removing the lead end, removing the sections, and checking/replacing the modules, but part way through we noticed that the lead end wasn’t situated on the reel correctly.  As such, we had to let the entire streamer out, then let all of the lead end out so that we could fix the way the lead end was on the reel.  Once this was done, we could then re-spool the lead end and bring in the rest of the streamer.

On Monday, more problems with streamer 2 arose.  To fix these problems, we had to let part of streamer 2 out again and work on the modules once more.  This time, the problem was that part of the streamer was not getting enough power and we couldn’t figure out why.  The power would end in section 28 which means that 12 weren’t getting power.  To check which section wasn’t getting power, we removed the modules and plugged in the deck power cord directly into each section and tested it.  Then, we put the module back on and plugged the deck power into the module and the section and tested those.  If all worked then we reconnected the sections and let out the next section and repeated the process.

This should, in theory, have worked and the problem resolved quickly.  However the problem was more complicated than originally thought.  As such, we did a lot of checking and re-checking of sections we had already checked before we realized we had a bad section that acted good and messed up what was beyond it.  To solve this problem we unwound the bad section, removed it, added three good sections (to replace the two we had already taken off), and reconnected those sections to the remainder of the streamer.  Then, all that was left to do was to pull in the rest of the streamer stopping along the way to remove the birds. 

Even though this was a lot of work, it was all worthwhile because now, our trip out to the study site after going to Port in Vigo to pick up supplies should be easy as pie.  Not only that, but since all of the streamers are now in good working condition, we should be able to put them in the water without a hitch and then the mapping of the ocean floor can begin.

That’s all for now.  If you have any questions, post them in the comments and I will try to get to them in my next post.  By the time I post again, I will be in Spain and hopefully enjoying some nice weather.  Take care everyone!

– This is Tyler Poppenwimer, singing off –

Well, it’s been a week of much of the same as it has been for the past month for the most part. Getting the R/V Thompson ready for months of cruises, but for me its the last one. This trip is going down to “The Bar” at the mouth of the Columbia River in Oregon. For those of you who don’t know about The Bar, it’s where the Coast Guard does their big wave rescue training. What are we doing there you may ask? Well, I will tell you. Originally, this was suppose to be a Scripps trip, but was past on to us. A laser has been mounted on the bow of the boat and it collects wave height, period data etc. at a very fast pace. More about that next week, as we are not even out of the Puget Sound yet.

As far as the past week, I started out by climbing the mast to take down a meteorological sensor. This system consisted of 3 parts, two remote sensors and a control box plus the wire that was used to control the sensors. The following day was spent calibrating more oxygen bottles, fun fun! Next was running more cat-5 cable to the new radar computer rack, which had to be snaked throughout the ship to get to its final destination. Also, I took down a rain catcher from the front of the boat.

Yesterday was spent cleaning the ship up from the last month and preparing for the next trip. Mostly storing old wire that we had pulled from within the ceiling tiles and putting all the tools we had used in their proper place. This morning we pulled away from the dock at around 0900 and made our way through the lock and dam and into the Puget Sound. Soon we will be in The Straight of Juan de Fuca, followed by the North Pacific. This has been a great experience, one of a lifetime, but I’m worn out and looking forward to seeing my girl and my dog! That being said   this should be a great cruise spending the next two weeks going in and out of “The Bar”. Until next time-Brophy Out.

Here I sit comfortably in Boston Massachusetts basically half way through this six month internship. It has been one of the single most difficult, yet rewarding things I have ever undertaken. I have been fortunate enough to quite literally have gone half way around the world. I started in Cape Town South Africa, and then headed east to Uruguay before flying up to Miami Florida. I can say quite confidently that living out of a suitcase is definitely not a lot of fun. The constant going 7 days a week has definitely taken a toll on me mentally. This career path is difficult, yet highly rewarding in that you get to assist with some extremely ground breaking science, and you get to travel A LOT.

Sitting at the precipice of this internship I am getting ready to board the R/V Atlantis. This ship is the home of the deep sea submersibles ALVIN and JASON. Ever since I was a child and ALVIN sent back the first videos of hydrothermal vents and the life they found there I have wanted to see this amazing creation of human ingenuity and science. I am an avid diver, so I do know quite a bit about the difficulties of diving just shallow depths, I cannot say I have much knowledge about the physical demands on instrumentation that can go to the depths ALVIN and JASON both can go. I look forward very much to working with the crew and pilots of these ROVs and learning anything they are willing to teach me. This is definitely a once in a life time chance.

Leaving the WALTON SMITH for the unknown again has been a bit of a challenge. I tend to be the type of person that likes having a rhythm to my life. A certain order of every day and every week occurrences. This has completely been blown out of the water up to this point. Nothing is the same day in and day out. Nothing is constant other than the horizon and being surrounded by water. Half the time the horizon isn’t even constant when you take into account some of the horrible weather I have encountered. Not every day do you get to be on a ship as it is torn away from a dock and hearing the dock lines creak and moan under extreme stress. The ship broke free and we were sitting ducks in the middle of the harbor hoping the two barges that also broke free didn’t collide with our small ship. I also got to see a storm in the Agulhas Current that had waves higher than anything I have ever seen. There were cresting waves higher than the A-Frame on the KNORR. Needless to say the horizon those days looked very different than it normally does.

So yes I am nervous to get onto another ship full of no one I really know. But I am getting much more comfortable with constant change. I have grown so much as a person that it is almost frightening. I have never travelled much, let alone going somewhere by myself, yeah that never happened. EVER. Now I can honestly say I am much more comfortable spending time alone, of being the only person I know in a city, of figuring out how to best pack 6 month’s worth of clothes and sundries in to two suitcases, well one suitcase and one old sea bag that is usually just a laundry bag. My advice is don’t pack anything that can’t do double duty. Make sure you have enough of the important things like hair conditioner, because the salt air will take a toll on your hair, have PLENTY of sunscreen, you will get sun burnt at some point make sure it isn’t as bad as it could have been by re-applying the sunscreen every couple hours if you work on a deck with no shade. Be prepared for some boring times. Though the boring times, usually only last maybe a day or two at the most, those days drag on like nothing you have probably ever experienced. You have been on a small ship for two months working day in and day out, and then suddenly nothing is going on. Relish that day. Embrace the down time, because it really is rather rare.

So here I go again off into the wild blue; me and my two bags and a backpack for my laptop on more adventures and learning in the most unique learning environment ever. I am tired, by body aches, and I am slightly nervous about meeting a whole new crew, but would not trade this experience. It is truly unique.

R/V Marcus G. Langseth

23-May-13, Somewhere Between the Azores and Vigo, Spain

The Beginning and the Transit Cruise         

I boarded the ship two days ago, but for the first day we didn’t do much since we were still in port.  I just unpacked, tidied me cabin, explored the ship, and relaxed.  The ship is a lot bigger than I thought it was going to be, and a lot more confusing.  There are so many different ways to get from A to be B that it just makes it plain old confusing.  I found all of the labs, the wet lab, main lab, dry lab, bird lab (not actual birds) lab, and the gun lab (not actual guns).  Chris, the intern whose place I was taking, showed me around, but I knew I wasn’t going to remember any of the ways he showed me. 

The next day, yesterday, at about 8:00 in the morning Azorean time (EST+4) we left Porta Delgada and headed out towards Vigo, Spain where we are going to pick up the research team and the switch out some of the crew members that have been on the boat for a while.  There wasn’t much happening yesterday since we can’t put anything into the water whilst around major shipping routes and so we sat in the lab and made sure the electronic systems were up and running smoothly.  Clayton, one of the members of the crew, showed me around the boat a bit and showed me how to work the CO2 measuring system so that I could work it later during the actual research cruise.

We did have a fire drill and an evacuation drill so that we would know what to do in case of an emergency.  Basically, for a fire drill, we just run upstairs to the mustering point behind the bridge and sit there.  For an evacuation drill, we do the same thing except we put on life vests.  Then, once the life vests are on, we wait until we absolutely have to and then release the life boats into the water, throw a ladder down the side and climb off.  Basically, I hope I don’t have to do any of these things for real!

In contrast to yesterday, today there was work to be done.  We had to look at the four streamers and make sure everything was working.  The streamers are long lines that have sensors on them and they measure the data from the air guns which fire towards the bottom of the ocean.  When I say long lines, I mean long lines; 6km long!  They can’t be made that long so they are made in smaller pieces and connected together and we had to make sure that the connectors were working fine.  It is generally easy to do this, but there some problems and so some of the crew and myself had to go and take a look at the last few connectors.  It wasn’t particularly taxing work, but it was time consuming.  We had to unspool the lines, disconnect the connectors check the power each time we disconnected one and work the whole way down the line.  Luckily, only streamer 1 and streamer 4 had problems.

My life on the boat so far has been pretty good.  The food is awesome!  The chefs prepare excellent food and none of it has let me down.  I have had roasted rosemary chicken, turkey with stuffing (and the turkey wasn’t pre-cooked they basted it and cooked it all day), fajitas, pancakes, mashed potatoes, and soup at nearly every meal.  What more could I ask for?  The guys on the boat are nice too, and a lot of them have taken to showing me how to do things so that when the research portion starts, I can start to do things on my own.  I am having fun and learning a lot too.  

~ This is Tyler Poppenwimer, signing off ~

It’s been a mix of rain and sunshine here in Seattle for the week of 5/13-5/17. To start out the week, I was tasked with taking apart and cleaning a titrater which is a liquid dispenser that lets out very small controlled amounts. After that, we had to make a new wet end for our CTD on the R/V Barnes with included soldering wire and making a waterproof mold to encase the soldered connection.

Next was cutting old CTD wire cable into 4ft lengths for disposal. Following this task, I finished cleaning the titrater and replaced some parts for good ones. It worked just as well as if it was new after the Broph got done with it.

Then it was time to clean and calibrate oxygen bottles and there was a stack of them to be done. Calibrating bottles is a fancy way of weighing them with and without liquid. A process that I still have to finish. Yesterday the guys from Scripps showed up to start installing a laser on the bow of the Thompson for our next trip to the Columbia River. This laser will collect wave height data for the duration of the trip. So to prep for their arrival, we had to pull out abunch of old Co-ax and Cat-5 wire from the bridge to make room for a new radar and its wire that will accompany the laser. I also had to build and install a computer rack to hold all the CPU’s for this equipment. Time to get back to work!!!

After running acoustic experiments for the past two weeks with nearly constant noise echoes bouncing off the hull of the ship, the ROV crew that has boarded is eerily quiet in comparison. This is a small Seaeye ROV that weighs little over 160lbs. After a few days of trouble shooting and getting buoyancy issues squared away they are now sitting quietly in front of a monitor doing a small transect with lasers. This whole TREX project has been rather interesting in so many respects, I have seen six, maybe more different science crews over the past month, come, run experiments and leave generally in under a week. There have been so many awesome scientists that I have met, it has made this cruise a real pleasure to work.

I have been spending the better part of most days reading and learning about the fundamentals of data transfer. After all the whole reason these ships exist is to gather data, and the transferring of that data from instruments to computers to scientists needs to be nearly seamless. There are many different options and choices when it comes to which cable needs to be run to where. On this ship there are a plethora of fiber optic outlets. I have two in my berth. Unfortunately most computers don’t have fiber optic inputs built into them so there need to be conversion devices. This is when understanding how the simple RJ-45(Ethernet) plug works, or how an RS232 plug works and how you can wire them for different purposes and what each pin does. Rather than bore you with the detail of a pin-out diagram in word form I will just say that it can be a fundamentally fascinating thing to realize that all data is functionally electricity. From the instruments generally measuring changes in voltage and sending that down the line, to the very transmission of ideas from neuron to neuron, it all takes electricity. So in essence and to not go overboard on philosophical musings as I am known to do, obtaining data and processing data is nothing but a giant physical, electrical circuit.

Once the data reaches the end user, it is up to them and their software how best to interpret it all. We all work with and around computers now. They are so ubiquitous in our everyday world that being without the internet is now a massive inconvenience and even a hindrance of productivity. Now realize that all this data transferring back and forth is primarily across wire. Granted we as a society are advancing our wireless data transfer at an exponential rate and this trend will likely continue long into the future. But fundamentally the data will begin and end at some type of terminal be it the instrument collecting the data or the computer processing it, and wires will at some point be connecting these things together. So a vital part of keeping science going on a ship is understanding the most basic unit and how it works across these wire. The electron will be doing the brunt of the work, and it travels across these wires at the speed of light. Every pin on a connector has a purpose, and if it is not connected with where it needs to be information transfer ceases, science grinds to a halt, and many people will not be very happy. 

Hey Guys,

Brophy’s back with another report from The U-Dub in sunny Seattle! Since my last blog, I’ve been doing a verity of tasks. To start out with, I was assigned to outfitting the CTD on the Thompson with new lanyards. The lanyards on the CTD are the links that connect the closable ends of the Niskin water collection bottles to the electromagnetic triggering mechanism on the Rosette which the bottles are mounted on. So in short, when the CTD is at a desired depth within the water column, the operater can hit a “fire” button on a computer and a signal is sent to the triggering mechanism via an armored conducting wire cable. The signal releases the trigger which inturn releases the lanyard and the bottle closes, and vuala, the water in trapped in the bottle at that depth.

The following day was spent reterminating the electromagnetc wire cable on the R/V Barnes, UW’s smaller research boat,that is awesome!! This was quite a task that has to be done slowly and carefully for a beginner like me. The cable has two wraps of steel wire strands, one with a right hand lay and the other a left hand lay. These two wraps must be peeled back to where the termination will take place on the wire. From their a kind of “squirrels nest” is created with the peeled back strands small enough to fit the inside diameter of the stainless steel connecter. Once the squirrels nest of wire is fitted inside the connector, we poured a type of meltable metal alloy called Serro-bend inside the connector the secure everything in place. The following day was spent running SVGA cable through the Thompson and mounting flatscreen computer moniters in various labs. This happened without a hitch, with my years in the electrical field serving me well.

The next three days where spend on the R/V Barnes out in the Puget Sound. Doing two trips a day, taking students of UW out for exposure to science operations on the water. I had a blast for these three days on that little ole tug!!! The weather was warm and clear for the most part, with mount Rainier on one side behind Seattle and the Olympic mountains on the other. Jim my mentor, Bob the Captain and Greg the mate are great guys and I truly enjoyed my time on that boat!!! During these trips I handled lines along side Greg as we went through the locks and while docking and undocking, with Greg on the bow and myself on the stern. During science operations I assisted Jim in showing the students how the operate the equipment before, during and after their deployments. While on the topic of scientific equipment, lets talk about what we did. To start out, we would to a CTD cast, usaully in about 180m of water. After that, we switched the wire on the winch from the EM cable used for the CTD to normal wire cable. This cable was then attached to a plankton net which the students used to collect phytoplankton. After the net tow, we switched to the Van Veen grab. This is a bottom grab device used to collect sediment from the bottom in an 8in x 14in area. Once collected, the sediment is sifted through using a water hose to see what was caught. Then, it was off the change the group of students for a new group. The same eqiupment was used again, but in opposite order. Overall it has been a great week here at The University of Washington, well until next time, Chow!

Argg Matey’s,

Thanks for tuning back into the adventures aboard the R/V Marcus Langseth. This week has been full of surprises. From blue whales to hydraulic malfunctions; join me as I retell last week’s adventure.

First our OBS (Pictured) recovery hit a few snags. We had one that was unable to communicate with the ship and couldn’t be recovered (we will try again next week). Another OBS had an O-ring fail which caused the logger compartment to flood and react with the lithium battery. This caused an explosion/melting of the logger and part of the containment structure. The data for this OBS was lost. After the recoveries we deployed the streamer which is a 8km array of hydrophones spaced 25 meters apart. We control the depth of this streamer (between 11-13 meters) with 29 “birds” or radio operated diving modules. They are equipped with “wings” or flukes which can be changed for the desired depth. Each “bird” has a pressure transducer used to measure its depth below the sea surface. We simply tell the birds to dive to 12 meters and they adjust their flukes till they are there and then level out. We also mounted acoustics on the streamer one at the beginning and one at the end to give us range and bearing of the streamer.

After we finished with the streamer I hoped down to the gun deck put on my harness and we deployed the guns (which requires hanging over the back of the ship getting soaked by waves running up the slip way and it always seems to be raining when we put the guns out).

The idea behind the streamer and gun array is to measure the two way travel time (streamer) of the reflected/refracted sound waves (guns).

But nothing ever goes as planned. While deploying the streamer we blew a hydraulic line. After quickly dealing with the leak and isolating the line, we came up with some clever ways of using winches on other hydraulic systems to finish deploying the streamer. Seeing and being part of a crew who can work together so quickly and efficiently to overcome un-foreseen problems was inspiring.

One thing about science/ship life is it gets very hectic and busy then….nothing. You just sit around for 12 hours doing your logs and monitoring instruments. Maybe some ship maintance like cutting angle iron for building shelving or re-greasing machinery. This is how it’s been the past three days. Except for a few blue whale sightings that we are required to shut down the guns for, it has been quiet. This is good for science but boring for us lol.

I am sure things will get more interesting soon they always do!

Till next time

–          C

Sometimes science is best not learned in a laboratory or in a class room. Not everyone can memorize and regurgitate information, and a lot of times let’s face it that information for information’s sake seems mostly useless in the scope of thing. Out in the middle of the ocean I have started learning thing about salinity gradients and how fish migrate diurnally to avoid predation. These are thing I learned before in oceanography courses. Out here though I get to see how the salinity gradient changes over the course of a day, where the oxygen minimum zone shifts as night fall progresses. Through doing countless CTD casts I have seen these plots, time and time again, and now I have begun to grasp the relevance of fresh water input through rain events in a saline environment.

On this portion of the long term experiment in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Panama City Beach we have scientist looking at several types of acoustic data. Most have been interested in the data in horizontal planes in relation to the sea floor, and looking at reverberation effects due to various environmental factors. However we now have a group that are looking perpendicularly through the water column and seeing the type of life using acoustic technology. This has allowed me to see first-hand a phase shift in ambient noise, and what they believe to be caused by vertical migration of various animals. This is not the first time it has been noticed evidently, but it is still really cool none the less.

Since this experiment is being done in relatively shallow water, 20m being about the maximum depth at times all the engines need to be shut off for different reasons, and we are set adrift at the mercy of the current and waves. While being adrift for a short period of time is not too bad, once it has gone on for hours and you are caught in a trough of 7 to 10 foot waves, things start to get a little uncomfortable. Swivel chairs turn into fun time rides for about 30 seconds, until you are forced to lock your legs under a desk just so you can conduct some form of normal business. The AC units have to be turned off at some points because their cooling outlet drains right on top of the down facing sonar and causes data to be lost, so it often can get a little warm inside the ship. This unfortunately means a lot of down time for the crew, which can be a good thing and bad. About half way through the first week everyone starts getting kind of bored and cranky.