I spent some time before on the R/V Roger Revelle and it was an amazing experience. I recall thinking that the Marine Techs have a “pretty sweet gig”. I am thrilled to dust off my prior SONAR equioment knowledge from having been a SONAR Technician in the Navy and apply it to this sweet gig. Also, highly excited for 5 weeks of delicious cuisine on one of the newest research vessels. I feel like I have all of the luck right now and I’m grateful.
Category: R/V Neil Armstrong Page 5 of 6
0800 Local Time
Goðan dag!
Today is our last day at sea on the Iceland transit, hence my Icelandic greeting. We were originally meant to be in Reykjavik yesterday afternoon, but two days of really rough seas set us back.
Despite the weather and sea conditions, we did still manage to deploy 3 wave buoys as well as a glider over the side. Tina was our lone scientist on board and was fun to work with to get these things deployed. The round, orange, surface float is designed so that the drifting buoy will move on the surface with the currents, helped along by an attached, underwater drogue. A variety of sensors are also enclosed in the float, and an onboard antenna transmits the sensor data and buoy position. I have no doubt that those little surface buoys picked up some interesting climate and weather data.
The glider was the last to get deployed this week and was a challenging operation as the weather had once again turned against us. The Bosun thought it would be safest to attach a tag line to one of the starboard side winches and jib the glider out as far away from the ship as possible. Even then, it still drifted dangerously close to the hull and the Chief Mate had to engage the bow thruster to move us away from it. The danger was that the sensors on the nose of the glider are incredibly sensitive and could not come in contact with the vessel at all. Even rubbing against a shirt sleeve could destroy them.
This past week also provided a lot of opportunities for troubleshooting instrumentation and working on new projects. I think Amy and I totaled a solid work day worth of time trying to troubleshoot connectivity issues with the EM710 multibeam (offshore, shallow water unit). We inspected the transceiver unit and ethernet connections, swapped TX boards, bypassed the remote switch (which also seemed to have issues), and even pulled out the remote switch to inspect the connections inside. We got some good transmissions for a time, but it is not consistent, which remains a real head scratcher! Once we were in deep enough waters, we tried booting up the EM122 multibeam, and then found out that the database for it was missing. So that was another day of problem solving and configuration on that particular unit that, thankfully, ended in success. Go, Amy!
One project that I was excited to undertake was editing and reprinting a cylindrical coupler for the electrical slip ring on the CTD winch. The first print, unfortunately, did not quite fit the bolt pattern required and so I took some additional measurements and created a new, printable file in Autodesk Inventor. Thankfully, I worked with that program at Cal Maritime, but had yet to facilitate an actual print job. The ship has a LulzBot 3D printer, and I downloaded the printer software and slicing program for it. We did a test run of 3mm each of the top and bottom of the piece to check alignment and then, just 12 hours later, the part was successfully printed and is a good fit!
Now, just 4 hours out from Reykjavik, I am a bit amazed at just how quickly this month has passed by. I am so grateful to Amy, Joe, and Cris for their guidance and the multitude of learning opportunities and hands-on projects these past few weeks on the R/V Armstrong. They work really hard and need to be savvy with so many different systems and skillsets. Their services are vital, and I hope they know that they are appreciated!
Due to our delayed schedule, I will be staying in Reykjavik tonight and flying to San Diego tomorrow to board the R/V Roger Revelle at Scripps. Stay tuned for more as I head back to the West Coast!
– Emily
May 6, 2018
1730 local time
Greetings!
I am writing from our current position off the coast of Nova Scotia on our way to Iceland. We have a few stops planned during the 9-day transit in order to deploy a couple of gliders and a massive buoy, which is currently taking up quite a bit of prime real estate out on the fantail.
Getting ready for this cruise certainly made for a very busy week for everyone! The science teams from the previous cruise were all packed up and off the ship by Monday morning after a fun sendoff party at the local eatery in Woods Hole. We then spent a solid day cleaning up the lab and berthing spaces to make way for the new cruise, and the rest of the week was dedicated to maintenance projects and new installations.
One of the new additions is the work boat, which was left behind on the dock during the last cruise. Since it was laid up for a few weeks, the 3rd Mate was tasked with refueling and running the engines. I was invited along for the journey and even trusted to drive for a while around the harbor. As you can see by the lack of wake, I took it easy out there, unlike the 3rd Mate who really gunned it and managed to get us impressively wet out there. All around, quite a fun experience.
I thought the ship was impressively kitted out when I arrived, but there is new, shiny tech installed all over the place for this cruise. Earlier in the week, I tested my hardware skills by mounting and connecting 4 new monitors around the lab space as well as a new deck box for the expendable bathythermograph (XBT) probe. After being elbow deep in data cables in the main lab rack for over an hour, I actually got a chance to go out to the transom and use the XBT hand launcher. Though the look and feel of it suggests that the launcher could pack a punch, it is really just a means of keeping the probe cannister steady. Once the pin is released on the underside, the probe just sort of plops out undramatically and makes its long journey down as the conductor cables pay out smoothly to 1800 meters.
The start of a new cruise has also meant that I am finally able to work with Amy, the marine technician, on creating a new cruise data log and initializing the underway instrumentation, flow-thru systems, and echo sounders. I am finding it really beneficial to be able to get my hands on the control units, pumps, valves, and various software systems for the instruments. However, now that we are in Canadian waters, we are actually not allowed to record any data so I now have some experience in how to stop recording as well.
Another week at sea also means another safety drill. Instead of fire & emergency, the Chief Mate chose to have an informational session on hypothermia and on rescue procedures for pulling someone out of the water. Both the ship and work boat now have these scramble-nets to create a cradle and either roll someone up out of the water or have them scramble up to the deck. We watched a few videos and also demonstrated deploying the net on deck.
This week really flew by, and I am glad I got to spend a few days of it in Woods Hole. It is a really nice town, and I felt so at home there so quickly. It was great meeting people at WHOI, and I am excited to come back in October for the INMARTECH conference. My next update will be coming from Reykjavik!
– Emily
2330 local time
Hiya!
Another Sunday has arrived, bringing with it the end of this first cruise. Over the last two weeks I have lead over 85 CTD deployment and recoveries and the nutrient sample vials total out at 997! Some days it has been difficult to adjust to the 0000-1200 work schedule, but I was put on a great team and we powered through the early morning shifts and crazy water sampling transects together.
As far as science operations go, this one seemed incredibly busy and ambitious. We had 175 CTD casts and water sampling for gases, DIC, chlorophyll, nutrients, as well as grazing experiments, two incubation chambers, VPR and MOCNESS tows, and lots of at-sea analysis going 24/7. The lab spaces are always hotbeds of activity and it is strange now to see instruments and sampling stations being broken down. It is going to feel really empty in here tonight once everything is gone.
This past week has gone by pretty quickly, likely owed to it being rather eventful. In addition to normal science operations, there was a rupture in the FW cooling water line to a forward SW supply pump, which created a lot of water that had to be pumped through a garden hose running through the length of the ship to the aft OWS system. We also had an early morning rendezvous with the M/V Warren Jr. to pick up a replacement part for the towed VPR. The 2nd Mate took the fast rescue boat over with the documentary cameraman on board. Since this happened shortly after sunrise, the watch team could observe the boat being lowered and recovered from out on the deck.
I also got to expand my deck experience to include operating the main 30,000 lb. hydraulically driven A-frame controls to retrieve the MOCNESS and deploy the VPR. Moving the directional lever outboard or inboard with over 3,000 psi of accumulator pressure provides an interesting resistive feeling I haven’t experienced before. Though the control is a simple out or in, you also need to watch your speed and pressure, as well as the potential entanglement of the winch blocks while simultaneously watching and listening to the Bosun for instruction and keeping an eye out for safety hazards.
I am curious to see what the next few days are going to be like at the R/V Armstrong as one cruise offloads and another moves on. When I arrived two weeks ago, the science vans and large equipment were already onboard, so I missed that particular operation. In addition to helping with the transition this week while the ship is pier-side, I am also looking forward to spending more time on marine technician projects. This should also be my focus during the two-week transit to Iceland. There will be fewer science missions so that should, potentially, free me up to spend more time on the various shipboard instrumentation and networks with Amy, my new mentor. I am lucky to have the chance to learn from her as she has a wealth of knowledge and experience.
Tonight, I am going to try to go to bed at a more usual hour and wake up for the day shift to try to readjust to a new schedule. My next update will be a couple of days in on our transit to Iceland.
More soon!
– Emily
0330 Local Time
Hi there!
I’ve spent the last week on board the R/V Neil Armstrong on my first ever ocean-going research vessel. I am starry-eyed over the variety of instrumentation and technology that the ship is kitted out with. It’s so cool! This includes, of course, the 3 separate satellite ship-to-shore connections allowing me to be online and sharing my experiences with you.
The current mission objective is to complete 12 cross-shelf section transects of the Middle Atlantic Bight, which is an area of diverse productivity well known to local fisheries. Our first few days were dominated by heavy seas, which made for some difficult and uncomfortable working conditions for a majority of the science team (ie. wide-scale, debilitating seasickness). I was placed on the 0000 – 1200 hydrology watch with some truly delightful people and am gaining some good insight into field sampling methodologies and the herculean effort required to complete a study of this magnitude. The amount of water we constantly collect and filter through is on a scale I was previously unfamiliar with. It has been a week, and for nutrients alone, I count 400 individual sample vials now frozen and waiting for analysis.
My role as a nutrient sample collector has also given me the time during watch to get familiar with the deployment and recovery procedures for the CTD carousel. For our safety, we communicate with both the bridge and the winch operator during casts. The combined weight of the CTD, Niskin rosette, Video Plankton Recorder (VPR), and the frame is significant and so following safety procedures is paramount!
An added bonus of being on the 0000 – 1200 team is watching the sun rise out at sea, which is always a beautiful and welcomed sight.
When I am not working with the science team or sleeping, I am shadowing the two Shipboard Scientific Services Group (SSSG) technicians – Cris and Joe – to get a foundational understanding of their job duties. So far, I’d say this has been an incredibly eventful week and I have already absorbed so much. I look forward to more and will be back next Sunday with another update.
– Emily
0745 local time
Hello!
My name is Emily Shimada and I am a UNOLS/MATE long-term, marine technician intern. That smiling portrait above was taken off the coast of Maui on my senior training cruise this past July. I am graduating in fourteen days (but who’s counting?) from the California State University, Maritime Academy with a BS in Marine Engineering Technology and a minor in Marine Science.
Marine technician work is the dream job that I never knew existed before coming to Cal Maritime. It combines my love and passion for scientific research with my desire to be out at sea and getting my hands dirty. Later today I will board the R/V Neil Armstrong at Woods Hole and am really looking forward to meeting the crew and science teams. My trusty duffel is packed and ready to go.
This is an amazing opportunity, and I am very excited to get started. I have a lot to learn and will be posting my experiences here each week. More soon!
– Emily
Hi all,
It’s been 0.286 weeks since my last blog and since I’ve completed another cruise. AR22 was super short but super intense at the same time.
We pulled away from WHOI around 0830 Saturday morning and we docked at WHOI at 1400 Sunday afternoon.
AR22 was an MIT – WHOI Joint Program student orientation cruise. A handful of 3rd year graduate students planned the cruise while the 1st and 2nd year students experienced sailing/oceanographic research with WHOI, some even for the first time.
My job was to supervise deployment and recovery of the CTD and make sure they didn’t hit the bottom during the cast. It was different and a bit more complicated than normal casts because one of the instruments the science party brought on board was strapped to the CTD. The VPR is a video plankton recorder and it is really heavy – that meant we had to closely monitor deployment and recovery of the CTD.
Because of the short nature of the trip, Joe and I didn’t do typical SSSG on call hours. We alternated casts at the beginning so that we both got used to deployments and recovery with the VPR, we took cat naps throughout the cruise, and were mostly both available to the students because with it being so short we wanted to optimize our presence to them.
Right when we pulled up to Station 9 it turned midnight – which meant it became my birthday! My birthday day continued on like the previous, and we worked until ~0600 when we finished all 12 stations. I then proceeded to sleep like a rock.
It was an intense and exhausting 30 hrs, but it was an amazing learning experience!
This about wraps up my internship. I want to thank everyone who followed me on this adventure; I gained a lot of experience. This internship definitely solidified my drive to be a marine technician in the future.
Thanks again!
~Lauren
Hi all,
This past week aboard the Armstrong was spent in port while we prepped for our next cruise and did some routine maintenance.
Monday, I reviewed instrument instruction sheets for the instruments that we will be primarily using during the Labor Day Weekend cruise. We’re doing a whole bunch of CTDs, but during transits between stations the science party is planning on using acoustic instruments, like the ADCP, EK80, Knudsen depth sounder, or the multibeam.
On Tuesday, I had the pleasure of doing routine maintenance on the -80°C freezer in the main lab where while cleaning it out the inside I accumulated a bucket full of snow. My other focus that day was completing the data disc (which I did!). Joe and I notified the chief scientist from AR21, so that he knew the disc was ready.
Wednesday morning, the R/V Atlantis departed WHOI to chase storms in the Atlantic Ocean. It was a unique experience to see the boat off because typically I’m the one who is on the boat sailing away.
The R/V Atlantis departing WHOI. Photo credit, me.
Since the data disc was finished, I started the new cruise process by running a newcruise command in our servers which mounts all of our instruments to the server and makes sure that data for this next cruise is collected in the appropriate locations on our servers. I set up the science Elog for the new cruise and Joe and I completed and sent in our SSSG cruise report from AR21.
Science started loading their equipment aboard for this weekend’s cruise on Thursday. This proved to be a busy day for me. I created packets of the updated instrument instruction sheets for the science party to reference throughout the cruise. The end of the day was hectic because I was the primary contact for the science party so I was running around making sure they had everything they needed, etc. This short cruise is going to force me to learn at a wicked fast pace.
And lastly, today is full of final cruise prep. I started off Monday with a to-do list that was barely half a page long however, now it is spilling over a page, so my goal is to have everything checked off today (its about 95% checked off already).
Stay tuned on Monday for a post about the Labor Weekend Cruise which departs early tomorrow.
~Lauren
Hi all,
We have made it back to WHOI a smidge early. Now that I’m connected to the shore network, I can finally share some photos!
R/V Neil Armstrong docked at WHOI. Photo credit: me.
Sailing through the North Atlantic. Photo credit: me.
Supervising CTD recovery. Photo credit: Rebecca Travis, WHOI.
Surface mooring deployment. Photo credit: me.
R/V Neil Armstrong and long finned pilot whales during surface mooring deployment. Photo credit: James Kuo, WHOI.
Operating the a frame during an instrument deployment. Photo credit: Rebecca Travis, WHOI.
Rebuilding the Saturn V Lego rocket that was damaged during transit. Photo credit: Joe McCabe, WHOI.
Working on the incubator pump. Photo credit: Vasile Tudoran, WHOI.
Cleaning behind the rack in the main lab. Photo credit: Rebecca Travis, WHOI.
Using the rescue boat to attach a tag line from the ship to the glass floats at the base of the old surface mooring. Photo credit: me.
Helping recover synthetic line used at the base of the surface mooring. Photo credit: Rebecca Travis, WHOI.
More pics to follow in regularly scheduled blog! 🙂
~Lauren
Hi all,
This week was full of transiting back to WHOI. I finished up my 10pm – 2am ice watches, which was nice because I got to go back to a regular schedule. In the morning, around 0700ish , the bridge spotted a LARGE ice berg that was miles away. I was asleep at this point so I didn’t see it, but I saw pictures from the crew.
On August 21, we were near Halifax, Nova Scotia and scientists predicted about ~40% complete eclipse at that location. The best time to view the solar eclipse was at 3:55pm. The morning was foggy, but thankfully throughout the day it cleared up and it turned out to be a beautiful day and an even better day to see the solar eclipse! Around 3:45pm I went up the bridge to take a peak, and one of the scientists had special eclipse glasses so I could clearly see the partial eclipse! Later that night the sky was still clear and it was perfect for stargazing. I saw the Milky Way, the Big Dipper, stars that may have been planets, satellites, shooting stars, and so much more. It was a nice clear and not too cold night.
We finally finished installing the incubator pump and it works and the area looks great!
Because we had time during the transit, Joe and I started some end of cruise tasks like prepping our data disc that we give to the science party and starting our SSSG cruise report.
Fun fact – my internship has been extended to include a short 2 day cruise over Labor Day Weekend! Since that doesn’t depart until 2 September, I’m going to be working in port next week prepping for the cruise and doing some other SSSG tasks.
We docked yesterday but we didn’t start doing the majority of the demobing until today. Because we had some down time yesterday Joe showed me around the R/V Atlantis. The Atlantis, for those of you who do not know, is the sister ship to the University of Washington’s R/V Thomas G. Thompson, and it’s home to HOV Alvin! I got to see Alvin! My oceanography dreams are coming true!
Posing with the R/V Armstrong, while on the R/V Atlantis! Photo credit: Joe McCabe, WHOI.
~Lauren