Category: Vessel/Laboratory Page 84 of 89

The first 24 hours onboard R/V Oceanus where rough. The vessel’s normal ±30 degree rolls eliminated my interest in any kind of food and slowed down my thinking process. I spend extended time on deck staring at the horizon or in my bed trying to rest. Since then I have been feeling much better as the sea has calmed.

The day of our departure I helped load and secure 24 ocean bottom seismometers (OBS), as part of the Cascadia Initiative offshore component. Technicians from WHOI have been deploying them at specific locations in a counterclockwise pattern approximately 170 nautical miles offshore of the Oregon coast.

I have been on deck for all deployments so far, having the unofficial duty to take down and setup the section of rail the instrument has to clear to go overboard. It’s fascinating being involved in this process; always being aware of staying out of people’s way but still being around to learn and help. It’s also amazing to see all the specialized smaller teams coordinating with and among each other. The four WHOI marine technicians on deck that know all about the OBSs have to communicate with the scientists inside the lab that determine the deployment position, the Oceanus marine technician operating the crane, the crewmember overseeing the operation and of course the bridge where all actions are radioed in for approval.

In addition to that, I have taken up a small project to solder and pot cables that will connect the old Conductivity/ Temperature/ Density (CTD) instrument to the new type of cables. It takes extra patience with this precision work especially on a rolling vessel.

When I am not busy I read manuals on troubleshooting and operating the resident science equipment, how to use the various software, and learn how the satellite communication network works.

Ready to Go

By Alison Mitchell

On July 7, 2014

In MATE Blog Archive, R/V Hugh R. Sharp, University of Delaware, College of Earth, Ocean and Environment

Just finished preparing, ready to begin

By Nikiforos Delatolas

On July 7, 2014

In MATE Blog Archive, Oregon State University, CEOAS, R/V Oceanus

It’s almost midnight Monday the 7th, and I just finished packing my backpack, charging my electronics and gathering any important documents that I might need the next couple of months. I’ve been going through the checklist of things I need to complete before the internship starts and this blog post is the only one unchecked. In a few hours I’ll be waking up to catch my flight to Oregon to begin my internship onboard R/V Oceanus.

Just two days ago I arrived to the continental US from the island of Hawai’i where I was living in the small town of Hawi on the northern tip of island, a beautiful place with sporadic cell phone coverage and limited internet access. Every Monday the public library would be open after 1700, so after work I would go and check my email for any news from my MATE or OSU mentors, sing up for the COOP course, and start reading operations manuals, safety standards and guidelines for marine technicians.

I am so excited to start this internship tomorrow. I know there is going to be lots of hard work and plenty to learn these coming months but I really think it’s worth it-I feel very fortunate this opportunity was offered to me.

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end

By Sonia Brugger

On July 3, 2014

In MATE Blog Archive, R/V Savannah, Skidaway Institute of Oceanography, University of Georgia

RVHRS Scallop Survey – First Leg

By Matt Scheuer

On June 30, 2014

In MATE Blog Archive, R/V Hugh R. Sharp, University of Delaware, College of Earth, Ocean and Environment

June 30th. The motor is finally fixed and ready. We went out for a sea trial at 10pm and everything worked perfectly. We finally got underway soon shortly afterwords. Two things struck me as soon as we started the generators and disembarked. First, the Sharp is extremely quiet (for a big ship) even when she’s not in “quiet mode”. Second, she can maneuver in pretty extreme ways. Sharp can rotate around a point, drive sideways away from the dock, and do anything in between.

The first leg of our cruise was a short trip from Delaware up to Woods Hole with a bunch of data collection along the way. Adjusting to the 5am-5pm watch schedule took a day or two, but I like the 12-on 12-off watch system. I began the first week learning how to run CTD deployments by talking to the crane operator on the radio and processing station data. I also learned how to do my daily checks of the ship’s sensor readings and maintance of the flowthrough system.

In addition, I work on deck when we deploy/retrieve the habcam or scallop dredge. The habcam is an incredible piece of technology and does its job very well. It can stay in the water for days at a time and is towed at a relatively high speed; covering a lot of ground without doing any damage to the seafloor. We’ve already seen a ton of interesting benthic creatures on the camera and picked up a few shipwrecks on the sidescan sonar. The sidescan also allows us to see tracks on the bottom left by trawlers and dredges. In some places, especially off Long Island, the entire seafloor is crosshatched with dredge scars.

When towing fast, the the habcam’s tensioned cable starts to vibrate hard. In an effort to mitigate this, I helped the scientists attach zipties and rubber fringe to the cable.

I learned to launch and retrieve the scallop dredge on deck with Ted. It’s fun physical work but getting the dredge safely retrieved, emptied, and ready for its next deployment takes a lot of coordinated steps. Two experienced people can get it done quickly and fluidly, but I’m still slowly getting the process down. Once the dredge is emptied onto the sorting table and secured I help the scientists sort out scallops, fish, crabs, and everything else we catch.

The food has been great, our first dinner at sea was steak with vegetables.

Everything on the ship is working flawlessly. But Apparently we can’t catch a break- as soon as we we put to sea a hurricane started building up off of Florida. It’s forecast to track up the Atlantic coast just like us. The captain decided to do as much science as we could then run up to Woods Hole a day early and wait out the storm at the WHOI dock. We had a nice little break at Woods Hole, watched the storm, changed out some of the science crew, and got underway again once the coast was clear.

Third week on the Sharp

By Matt Scheuer

On June 30, 2014

In MATE Blog Archive, R/V Hugh R. Sharp, University of Delaware, College of Earth, Ocean and Environment

June 23/24
Lots of boat cleaning. Vacuumed, scrubbed, and organized. Max and I worked on making cardboard mockups of equipment that will go in one of the lab vans for another trip. Packing tape is the worst I rescued a terrapin that somehow got itself over the seawall was stranded in the hot parking lot.

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-rU32dKLAh8U/U7G6eleNyXI/AAAAAAAAJeg/Xet_6Tv5s94/s1200/_MG_0126.jpg A terrapin.

June 25
Still waiting for the replacement control board, it should be on it’s way from Italy. Since we know the motor itself works and we won’t have to re-open the deck, we finally mounted the ramp and sorting table for the scallop dredge.

June 26/27/28/29
We found out that the part actually never shipped from Italy and it would be another few days. There was even a rumor that the part made it to America but was accidentally shipped back. It finally got here but it was stuck at the shipping place in PA over the weekend. So close but so far. Thats a few more lost days.

A new plan has finally come together to get the trip going on this boat. Sounds like it’s not getting canceled. The scallop trip is critically important because NOAA can’t set regulations without good population data. Fishermen are very opposed to regulation based on old or extrapolated data, and rightfully so. Somehow NOAA and/or NSF made a deal with the next cruise (or just bumped them) and added about 11 days to this trip. Hopefully I’ll be able to stay on for those. If we ever get off this dock.

Max and I got to go for a short ride on UDEL’s brand new R/V Joanne Daiber, a 46’ boat built for coastal research and ROV work. It’s very nice and had a bunch of ROV’s onboard. It was great to actually get on the water for a little while.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-btTUVuhdQEo/U7G6kNFZU8I/AAAAAAAAJe8/baFG5r2mtiI/s800/_MG_1392.jpg Finally offshore, temporarily.

I organized some shelves of wires and wrote up instructions for the next person who has to clean out the followthrough system.

June 29
Woke up to lots of alarms going of on the bridge. Turns out we temporarily lost shore power and the equipment freaked out. The chief mate got everything back in order. Later we had a little problem with the air conditioning but got it fixed pretty fast.

The motor part should get here today and hopefully we’ll be out to sea tonight or tomorrow.

June 30

The part got here! The engineers installed it but had some problems with the software. If everything works out we’ll be able to do our sea trial tonight. The situation seems to be getting better. The scientists are on their way back from woods hole. I really hope they don’t get turned around again- for their sake and everyone else’s. The engineers are working hard and things are looking good for a sea trial tonight.

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-Ky14OyRPBwM/U7G6k5GkgVI/AAAAAAAAJfU/X3L2JGuD_lE/s1200/_MG_3870.jpg Better than Christmas.

Something went wrong on the CTD crane and the cable got kinked. Ted, Max, and I had to re-terminate it. I cut apart the old seals and made a diagram of the wire connections. Re-terminating involves cutting the end off the cable, resplicing the wires, reattaching the cable to the connector, and resetting the connections in a waterproof potting compound. To mechanically attach the cable, the end is bunched into a “birdsnest” which is placed in side the metal connection fitting. A chunk of soft metal with a very low melting point is heated and poured in around the cable. When it cools it creates an extremely strong connection. I took some pictures of the process for the procedure manual.

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-v3nnp2ON_74/U7HWI0aUbMI/AAAAAAAAJhs/ECSsgA41svM/s800/_MG_3930.jpg Casting the cable end

Preparation for the Journey through Ice and Snow

By Erik Nilsson

On June 29, 2014

In MATE Blog Archive, US Coast Guard, USCGC Healy

Call me Erik _{(Ishmael is also fine…)}

This journey to Alaska will be the farthest north I have ever been, I have some idea of what will happen, it has been years since I have experienced the dancing sun but this will be a great time. In fact I have not seen much cold weather in a long time so it is a refresher. I am an intern aboard the USCGC Healy http://www.uscg.mil/pacarea/cgcHealy/ working with a CTD measurer. Anyway, on with the list of packings

Warm socks, Under stuffs, shirts, intuitive garments sutable for ship work
Jackets x3
Jeans x 4
gloves (cold weather and workout gloves _{(seirously, one of the best things ever created, the ATV of quadraped movement…. like hand shoes(are those a thing?))})
~~Tom and Findus~~
books, NOOK, Laptop, external hard drive filled with media to last a month at sea, sketch book
toiletries
dossier
backpack

Looks like everything is almost in order, I hope to be posting pictures of polar bears and other cool critters as I cross them in Alaska (hopefully not being eatten by them).

More to come!

/EN

IT WORKS!!

By Nathan Burnham

On June 27, 2014

In MATE Blog Archive, Oregon State University, CEOAS, R/V Oceanus

My time on the Oceanus came to an end. It was a fascinating cruise, I was sorry to see it end. The load out and interim between cruises for these vessels is very hectic and there is a lot of work to be done. Repairs have to be made, the lab areas need to be emptied of the science party’s equipment and prepared for the next group. Then the next group arrives and several days are required to load and secure their equipment. During this time I was able to wire and plumb my automated CTD Cable Sprayer System. I installed a junction box with the Arduino and relay in it, with access to the Power over Ethernet connection. I plumbed the sprayer into the ships fresh water system and, after a little tweaking of the software…BOOM! It worked like a champ. We were able to turn the spray washer on and off via its purpose built website on the Local Area Net. The next phase of the project is to get the sprayer to turn on and off based on an interface with the ship’s winch data system. I will work on that coding while on the Healy, but the system is wired and plumbed and the only changes need to be made to the software.

My time ashore has been informative. I have done some welding, some machining, some forklift training, and have continued to work on my programing. The latter I have done with a Raspberry Pi that Dave and Eric lent me to work with. My plan is to program the Raspberry Pi to act as a dummy winch DESH-5 system then program the Arduino to listen to the appropriate serial data and click on when the data indicates that the winch is spooling in and off when it is paying out.

I have definitely done some grunt work too, which is fine with me. I have cleaned and organized the main bay area, fabricated an antenna bracket for a cell phone booster in the shop, and put up a shelving unit in one of the Marine Technician offices. I am happy to do what I can to be useful to these folks. They have shown me a lot of attention and I am pleased to do whatever work needs to be done.

On a personal note, it has been nice to be able to FaceTime with my wife and daughter regularly, since returning from the cruise. My wife and I have noted that if I was doing a normal hitch as an ROV Technician, I would be home by now, and we are doing fine. She has had her hands full with Lilly, but they keep busy. I have missed them terribly, but its bearable. So this has been educational from the stand point to preparing us both for the rigors of extended separation, and showing us that four weeks is not so bad…..However 🙂 Poor Alice has 38 more days before I will be home and I think she will be climbing the walls by then. And I will be sooooo ready to see my wife and baby girl again.

Second week on the Sharp

By Matt Scheuer

On June 16, 2014

In MATE Blog Archive, R/V Hugh R. Sharp, University of Delaware, College of Earth, Ocean and Environment

June 16th
I spent the whole day rust busting and sanding the box corer. One part had an extremely rusty weld, I kept chipping and chipping without finding the bottom of the rust. Tim came over, jammed a chisel in there, and snapped the part right off. I didn’t think the weld was THAT weak! The whole device will be sent in to get assessed and re-welded once I get the rust taken care of.

The motor arrived back from the company- all fixed! It was lowered through the big deck plate and the engineers set about reinstalling it and reconnecting everything. The guys from the motor repair company were here too and I talked to them about the problem. They suspected the same thing as the engineers- that one of the rectifiers went bad and fried the DC drive motor by sending AC power into it. But nobody knew for sure.

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-Ey9FRFbkXd0/U7G6qYG5-_I/AAAAAAAAJgw/PUrJ-mDo6Dk/s800/_MG_8488.jpg Motor is back!

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-JRiQdEXFhHY/U7G6q-LPUfI/AAAAAAAAJg8/aoyioZgKcac/s800/_MG_8585.jpg Engineers reinstalling it.

We temporarily test-mounted a big new sideframe that can deploy equipment over the port side. It’s not for this trip, but is another cool piece of equipment and we know it will work next time.

June 17th.
The scientists came back since the motor was fixed.

I finished cleaning and applying corrosion-inhibitor to the box corer.

The engineers worked on fixing the bow thruster, which wasn’t working because a cooling fan went bad.

One weird thing I’ve noticed is that most of the electronics on the ship are always left on. I’ve asked about it, and the answer is “so that we know if it stops working”. It doesn’t really make sense to me. But Sharp is usually at sea running everything, not sitting at the dock waiting. At least we’re on shore power which probably comes in large part from the wind turbine nearby.

The ship is rigged with cameras all over the place so that people can remotely monitor other spaces/equipment if necessary. The scientists fly the HABCAM from their control center in the dry lab, and wanted a camera view of the winch like the doghouse has. Ted and Max had been trying to get this set up for the last couple days, but none of the splitters or signal amplifiers they got seemed to work. I thought about it suggested we check the doghouse monitor for a video-out port that we could plug directly into. We found it, and it worked! Solving real problems on the ship is a great feeling.

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-n9Y1ppHf7dU/U7HTUXBljTI/AAAAAAAAJhc/pBpSVC8FgHk/s800/Screen+Shot+2014-06-30+at+5.11.36+PM.png The computer setup in the dry lab where science crew will “fly” the habcam.

I organized some of our drawers and installed a smoke detector in the lab van.

Rumor has it that the motor will be all ready for a sea trial tomorrow. Great news!

June 18th
Motor didn’t work. Turns out it probably is something wrong with the rectifiers. A specialist is coming in from PA to figure out our rectifier problems. Like a lot of stuff on this boat, It’s a highly complicated and unusual system made by a company that doesn’t exist anymore. Parts and expertise are hard to come by. Apparently the New York ferries have a similar setup and this motor guy works on those. Hopefully he will solve our problems.

I went for a nice bike ride into town. It’s a beautiful little beach community with historic sites and nice little shops that are too expensive to buy anything from. I checked out some of the parks and museums, including a lightship and a house with a cannonball stuck in it.

I did a little fishing and taught Earnest, a student with the scientists, how to fish. We saw lots of baitfish and a saw a blacktip shark feeding on the surface but didn’t catch anything.

June 19, 2014

The motor problem was in the rectifier and we’re still stuck here for a while.

I spent most of the day hanging out with the scientists. We had breakfast at Surf Bagel, everybody’s favorite bagel shop. In the afternoon we rented kayaks and went for a paddle in the mash. It was gorgeous. I had wanted to kayak in there since I arrived but figured I’d never get the chance. It was good to get a long workout and have some fun away from the boat. We saw a lot of cool wildlife. I brought my camera gear with me and got a few nice pictures. Some people are horrified to watch me change lenses in a kayak- but bringing it into risky places is the only way to get good pictures. Ultimately, it’s what the camera is for. I really enjoy shooting from a kayak because animals don’t see you as a threat for some reason. It was interesting to note the differences in wildlife (and people) between Delaware and New York. These places are not that far apart, but things are distinctly more “southern” here.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-YsrPakLwLOs/U7G6gyoqBzI/AAAAAAAAJeE/L2_DYhx3hok/s1200/_MG_0460.jpg Kayaking

Earnest and I fished more in the evening and saw a cownose ray. All we caught was a someone’s old lost lure- but catching a fake fish is still catching a fish in my book!

All in all a fun day.

20/21/22
Not much going on these days; still standing by to stand by. The boat is still not working but we are progressing toward a solution. The engineers swapped parts between motors until they found the problem- one of the rectifier control boards. They have to locate and order a replacement part, but once we swap it in everything should work. That’s great news. But a new circuit board is hard to find and may take a while to get here. Every single part of this boat comes a different foreign company and everything is extremely complex.

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-HJevXeyvmu8/U7G6emCVIEI/AAAAAAAAJeQ/apztvPMHGV8/s640/IMG_0313.jpg The root of all evil.

I biked to town a few times to get stuff and go to the beach. I also went for a bike ride into what I thought was going to be part of the nature preserve, but I ended up finding cleared woods and a new housing development. Saw a fox and got some cool pictures though. Also biked into town more.

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-peMSeJ2u1Eg/U7G6jrgsaBI/AAAAAAAAJg0/jWI100w80qw/s800/_MG_0923.jpg

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-Tv5FYxKuHFA/U7G6hvV8jMI/AAAAAAAAJec/__5jXA_PVBE/s1200/_MG_0767.jpg

I went out to dinner with the scientists again. Lots of talk about canceling the trip and other options. Sharp is by far the best boat for the job and there aren’t a whole lot of other ways to do it. They left again the next morning. Everyone is very worried about the trip getting canceled. We’ve sat at the dock too long. It’s costing a lot of money.

Preparations

By Harvey Tan

On June 11, 2014

In MATE Blog Archive, R/V Thomas G. Thompson, University of Washington, School of Oceanography