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.
Category: R/V Hugh R. Sharp Page 8 of 9
We made it back to Lewis and off loaded the science crew from the second cruise and loaded the scientist for my final trip. The scientists on this final trip were pretty self sufficient and got most of their gear on themselves. We left Lewis early in the morning on the 18th and spent all day transiting to a site just bellow the Bay Bridge. We stopped every two salinity points as we made our way up the bay and did a CTD cast to get a profile and fire a couple of bottles. Once we got to the site we dropped anchor and did another CTD and did the first of many pump casts. This is a metal frame with different equipment attached to it and a pump to collect water samples. It needed to be lowered over the side of the boat a meter or so at a time, but the winch had no metering device and the metering block was broken. One turn of the winch drum was about 2.5m so I would watch a piece of tape on the drum go around and guess when the appropriate amount of wire had been paid out, which is apparently a hidden talent I have because I got fairly good at it by the end of the trip. The next two days were a repeat of the pump profiler and CTD casts on repeat. The CTD profiles we got while at anchor were some of the coolest I saw while on the boat. We were anchored in an anoxic hole and when the CTD when down to a point the oxygen readings would drop to zero. Today we did some multi coring which was a very cool, very messy process. We sent the multi coreer over twice and completely messed up the cores on the first one and then got some good ones on the second try. The hole apparatus is a metal frame with a top and a bottom part that are locked open when it is not in use. There are 4 plexi glass tubes around the frame that when they dig into the mud and the bottom part gets pushed up into the top it triggers the tubes to close and collect the mud. The tricky part is getting the samples out once back on deck. It was a messy process and after some trial and error we finally figured it out and all went well. The rest of the day consisted of more CTD’s and pump casts and lots of popsicles. I got to make a trip in on the small boat today and on the way back I got some good pictures of the boat!
The rest of the storm chasing trips had been a bit tough. We had some really rough weather and had almost three days when we couldn’t work. We weren’t able to do any science, which was hard on the science crew; they got a bit restless, which is completely understandable. We did finally get to do a couple CTD yesterday in the morning before we had to head for Lewis tToday. Other than that we had a couple of days of good science before the sea state got too bad. We got back out to the drifters and did about a days worth of sampling and then we steamed southwest in hunt of rain. We got to the spot where the rain was supposed to be and sure enough it poured for about 4 hours and then it stopped and we headed back to the drifters and continued where we had left off. We had a few more days of following the drifters around with the same daily routine on CTD, clean CTD, light meters and tow fishing with aerosol sampling at night. On the night of the 11th and we spent most of the 12th and 13th rolling around. There were a few big rollers where I felt like I was on a rollercoaster and my stomach got that sudden dropping feeling, but mostly it just feels like you are on a terrible never ending carnival ride, just enough movement that you can feel it and it effects you but not enough to be fun! Once we were finally able to do science again we did a deep cast that everyone had been prepping for for days with styrofoam cups. When you send a cup down to 2000m it get awfully small!
This trip is off to a good start, we left Lewes on the 30th and headed east to an eddy just west of the Gulf Stream where we hoped to find rain. We spent our first full day out there going through the motions of everything that would happen over the cruise. We practice with our CTD, a clean CTD, the tow fish and drifters. The scientists on this trip are looking at all different things so we are using lots of different sampling methods. We have been doing 2-4 casts per day with the boat CTD fireing all the bottles on most of them. Science is filtering and sampling this water looking at primary productivity. There is another group of scientists looking at trace metal in the water; which is why we have the clean CTD on board. This is a CTD that they brought with them and is put over using a clean winch that has been repainted and coated so there is no metal being introduced. It uses a plastic covered metal wire to lower the CTD. Unlike our CTD the wire is not connected back to the computers so it must be pre programed for when the bottles will fire and you cannot look at the data as it goes down or comes up. We are using a side frame on the back deck to lower the CTD over the side of the boat. Also on the side frame is the tow fish, another sampling method. It looks like a silver torpedo dragging behind a set of wings. In the center of the wings there is a plastic tube that runs up the towline and on deck. Once on deck the plastic tubing runs through a pump and into the lab vans where they can take samples from it periodically. The final piece of equipment we are using are three drifters. They are about three foot long PVC pipes with flashing lights and floats on the top and weights on the bottom connected to a 30ft long tube of black netting. The drifter sits on the surface and the black netting sinks down bellow it in the water column. This causes the drifters to follow the water just bellow the surface instead on the surface water. After this first practice day we got into a daily routine and waited for the rain, which was going well up until the 2nd, when the winch for the clean CTD shorted out, spitting sparks out of the power supply. The winch was no longer in operation. We continued with our routine, minus the clean CTD for a few more days and made our way back into Lewes on the 5th. Unfortunately it only rained once while we were out on the first part of the trip and we have not collected as much rain as science had hoped to. We got in around two and spent the afternoon getting a new winch set up and ready to go, the new winch dose does not have any metering devise on it so Ted and I had to mark the 300 meters of line for the CTD with spray paint every 10m. Then we refueled, had a crew change and had some pizza for dinner and waited for the next high tide, we left Lewis around 4 am, today we are steaming back to where we left one of the drifters in the water to pick up where we left off, hoping for some rain
I have now been onboard the Sharp for just over two weeks, and I am having so much fun and learning much more than I though I would! The second half of last week was a lot of the same, dredging and sorting on repeat! We said good bye to the scallop crew on Friday in Woods Hole and we made it down to Lewis, DE Saturday night, but because of an issue with the engine we spent the night anchored right around the corner from the dock. We got to the dock first thing Sunday and spent all day unloading the boat. Most of the computers and gear got unloaded in Woods Hole with the science crew but there was still a lot to come off once we got into Lewis. We spent all day Monday loading science onto the boat with the plan being that we would leave on Tuesday. When Tuesday came around we still weren’t ready to go so our departure was pushed back to Wednesday, so now all the people are ready to go and the ship has changed its mind! As we got ready to leave the dock early afternoon to ride the tail end of the high tide out the drivers in the engine decided to stop working. The engineers are down in the engine room as I type this working away to get us off the dock but no one seems to know when we will be leaving! This next cruise is a group of scientists looking at the effects of thunderstorms. I am not quite sure of the specifics of what they are looking at but I hope to learn more about it as the cruise gets going. The sciences crew comes from Old Dominion and Penn State. I am very impressed with the amount of gear and equipment they have managed to get into this boat!
The photo I included is of one of the science watches at their last dredge station of the trip, we all climbed up on the table for a photo op!
I have been on board the R/V Hugh R. Sharp for a full week now and am having a really great time. I meet the boat last Monday in Woods HWhole. The plan was to leave on Tuesday evening, but due to a new part for the radar not being delivered we ended up not leaving until Wednesday evening. I got to the boat late on Monday and went to a restaurant near the boat and got dinner. First thing Tuesday Mat, another MATE intern on board, and I accompanied the cook Lee to the supper market to stock the boat for the coming trip. We spent nearly 4 ½ hours at the store and filled numerous carts. We bought so many groceries we had to tie some of them to the roof of ourt rental mini van. When we got back to the boat we spent a long time unloading groceries and putting everything away. By the time everything was put away it was time for dinner and then bed. On Tuesday, I accompanied Max, the technician on board, and TR, a deckhand, to the UNOLS Northeast Winch Pool we were shown how to operate a new winch that we will be bringing with us on our next trip. Most of it went straight over my head but I understood parts of it. In the afternoon my parents came and took me out to lunch and dropped off some last minute things, and at 6 we left the dock. I helped Max with the pre departure check list for all the tech. equipment. Once underway we turned on the flow through system that takes constant seawater measurements. We also dropped the keel so it is flush with the hull of the boat. There is equipment in the keel so itwhich gets pulled up inside the hull when the boat is in port. Depending on the equipment the keel can be dropped down further if necessary. I am standing a 12 hour watch from 5:30 am to 5:30 pm with Max, so after the flow through and dropping the keel I had dinner and went to bed. The first night underway I woke up to the rocking of the boat several times. On Wednesday morning we started dredging at the beginning of our watch. We have a group of scientists on board from NOAA, who are doing scallop surveying. We dredged all day Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. There is a lot of work and steps involved in pulling the dredge up and emptying it onto a table to be sorted. Sometime on Friday night we finished the first group of dredges and switched over to Hap Cam, which is a sort of sled that hovers over the bottom of the ocean and takes video, which is then reviewed by the scientists. The Hap Cam can stay in for days at a time so there is very little to do during this leg of the trip so I have been hanging out on the bridge doing a lot of reading and getting to know the crew better. This cruise goes to the end of the week and then we will bring the boat back down to Lewes, DE where we will have about a day until the next group of scientist joins us.
After having to stay in Woods Hole one extra day for radar repairs, we left with a mostly-different group of crew and scientists. I was now on night watch instead of day. Transitioning between opposite sleep schedules was tough for the first couple days, but turned out alright. I was happy to get on night watch just to see how it is. Turns out it’s pretty much the same, but darker. I prefer day. Night watch doesn’t have a “lunch” and you eat breakfast for dinner and dinner for breakfast. But a lot of people like the night shift better because it’s slightly more relaxed and you don’t get sunburned. It also goes by quickly. Photographing is harder, but some night shots came out very cool looking.
As we left Nantucket sound we were met with relatively rough seas. The plan was to do over 70 dredge tows and very little habcamming. I’ve gotten better at all the steps in the dredge process on deck. I’m always amazed by what we pull up and wish I had more time to study each sculpin and identify each strange item. I really don’t like how much bycatch we kill and waste. Most things come up dead or dying in the net, and there is very little effort to save things or at least eat whatever we can. We usually keep the best flounder or haddock, but a lot gets thrown back dead. The scientists count the fish but don’t measure most, so we get some data on some things but not as much as we could. Certain critters tend to survive, like skates (no swim bladders to expand) and most crustaceans but we could definitely do better with the bycatch. Of course our fine-meshed research dredge is tiny in the vast ocean, we do short tows, and the whole purpose of this research is to help protect marine environments. But it’s still tough to watch things suffer and die on deck. That’s one awesome advantage of the habcam- it doesn’t harm the benthic habitat or organisms at all. New marine technology can do some wonderful things.
Eventually the seas subsided. The weather was remarkably good the entire time, only a few rainy watches. There was a lot of fog out on Georges Bank though. The bottom was rockier on this leg of the cruise so we sometimes used the crane to switch in our rock chain dredge for certain areas. Rock chains are simply chains across the mouth of the dredge that exclude huge boulders. Some tows come up full of rocks. Several areas were very dense in big, old scallops. Going home with a big bag of sea scallops is one of the best perks on this cruise.
Another great thing about being in my specific position on this trip is that I’m in the middle of everything. Surrounded by a perfect combination of often-separate marine fields, I can get experience in all of them. I’m working with both the scientists and crew (groups that generally end up divided). The purpose of this scallop survey is to assess stocks for regulation, so my interest in marine policy ties right in. I’m learning hands-on about research, biology, fisheries, technology, computers, engineering, and seamanship all at once. Gaining experience as a technician and an understanding of how data is really collected will be valuable in any field. Being a technician is a nice balance of everything; I never felt confined to one role. Being able to interact with everyone on board was great. There’s a rich mix of very interesting people on this trip. Several of the crew came from commercial fishing backgrounds, and the scientists work for the government. The scientists, engineers, mates, captains and technicians all have a wealth of expertise in their fields. I tried to learn as much as I could from everyone.
We finished our marathon of dredging and spent the last couple watches habcamming. I piloted and copiloted a bunch. The display computer for our flowthrough system suddenly broke on one of the last watches and we spent a while trying to diagnose and fix the problem. Eventually we switched everything over to the data computer and got the (problematic) network of monitors back and displaying water information around the ship.
We had a few more dredge tows to finish up the survey, then pulled in to Woods Hole once again. The 2014 sea scallop survey was successfully completed! The ship unloaded equipment and I disembarked, concluding a truly awesome voyage.
The storm passed without much intensity. Just some wind and rain. We left Woods Hole to cooler, clearer, beautiful weather and headed out to Georges Bank through Vineyard Sound and Nantucket Sound. On the way we had an abandon ship drill, passed one of the cape wind test towers, and saw a big colony of seals on Monomoy Point. We deployed the habcam and zigzagged with it for a couple of days. There has been a lot of wildlife already- both on the bottom and at the surface. The habcam was recording lots of scallops, sand dollars, sea stars, and hake with occasional skates, lobsters, and goosefish. On the surface we saw schools of small fish being chased by tuna, pods of dolphins riding our bow wave, and several whales. There were numerous petrels and shearwaters gliding over the surface and picking plankton out of our wake.
Within the first couple of days, seas began building and were forecast to continue increasing. Soon we had 10-15 foot swells, made more dramatic by intermittent failures of our hydraulic stabilization fins. The boat was rolling pretty hard at times. To be honest I kind of enjoyed the waves. In addition to the stabilizer problems we had a few strange, sporadic, hard-to-diagnose communications issues with our winch data network and our CTD. Troubleshooting these systems kept us techs and the engineers well occupied. As a whole, the important stuff has been working fairly well.
I learned to pilot the habcam, which is a little tricky but overwhelmingly cool. The pilot carefully watches incoming images, a sidescan display, and the depth/altimeter readings while using a winch control joystick to pay out or reel in cable. Ideally the camera sled flies two meters over the bottom. Keeping it there is easy when seas are calm and the seafloor is flat, but underwater dunes and a pitching boat complicate things.
Dredging takes a lot of hard work out on deck. Working the dredge and sorting the catch is fun and good exercise, but tiring when we have a lot of back-to-back tows. The habcam is less work-intensive- for better or worse. Once in the water, the scientists control it from the dry lab and there isn’t much to do other than help fly it and annotate images. I do my daily sensor logs and maintenance, work on small projects or problems, clean the ship, help with whatever I can, and talk to the scientists in the lab and crew on the bridge. Until something goes wrong.
At one point we were on the bridge when a radio call came through from the lab saying that they lost all control to the habcam winch. The captain already had the ship at at full thrust so there was nothing the scientists could do but watch their picture feed and cringe as their million-dollar instrument plowed along the bottom. Ted, Casey (an engineer) and I ran down from the bridge, through the engine room, and to the winch room where we reset the winch controls and hydraulic power unit. Science raised the habcam to inspect it- luckily there was no serious damage.
We had a few more days of heavy seas and a whole lot of dredging. The variation in our dredge contents are amazing. It’s almost always a different mix, even between nearby stations. Sometimes it’s all scallops and fish, sometimes the dredge is filled entirely with sand dollars. It was cool to see all the life down there and I wished I had more time to study everything we caught.
Eventually the waves calmed down to the point that the sea became glassy. I don’t know if it was the calm water making things easy to see or some situation with currents, upwelling, nutrients and temperature- but one day we saw dozens of blue sharks, breaching and feeding whales, jumping tuna, schools of smaller fish, and enormous basking sharks leaping fully out of the water.
After a week and a half we began to work our way back towards Woods Hole to restock and change out scientists again. Ted, Max, and I disassembled part of the CTD carrousel and swapped out the sensors. This is done periodically so they can be sent in for maintenance and calibration. We had a day in woods hole, loaded fuel, did the crew change, and bought so much food at the supermarket that their checkout computer crashed. Another MATE intern, Ali, is now on board as we set sail again.
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.