Welcome back everyone! It is now my second week aboard the R/V Point Sur. Morale on the ship is high as science is rolling smoothly, the weather has calmed down, and we all wear our matching Hawaiian shirts on Fridays! Let’s take a look at the week, shall we?
To get my day kicking, I always like to go straight for the power tools! Yippee! The winch wire is more than just a long line of tough metal- it’s special metal. On the inside of the slightly rusty exterior, is an electrical communication cable that is able to send data back and forth to equipment and sensors. This enables whatever we send into the water to communicate with us in live time! To connect the wire to equipment, we must make a connecting end called a termination. This process is begun by dremelling off the hard exterior layers as you see pictured. (Hi me!)
After the metal is removed, you reveal the inner wires which are coated in rubber insulation for protection. Once you have your winch wire and the cable for your equipment ready, you begin the process of joining them together. The wire is soldered together, and tested for communication. Once it is confirmed they can ‘talk’ to each other, you have to make a semi-malleable shell to protect this connection. It’s going in the ocean after all!
Heat shrink, many layers of hot glue, and electrical tape are the ingredients in this special recipe. These onion like layers work in tandem to offer protection from water, cross talk between cables, mechanical strength and shielding, and ensure that the termination lasts for many, many casts.
The ROV, affectionately named “Mohawk” by the team, has been swimming nonstop these days. While piloting over a smooth seafloor with limited obstructions, the ROV team decided it was a safe place for test drives! Anyone who wanted to was allowed to pilot the ROV and get a feel for the operation of the machine. With a simple videogame style joystick, Mohawk can move in 3D. Being covered in cameras and lights, the vehicle is surprisingly nimble and well equipped to navigate the dark and often murky depths.
Deep sea ROVs have been a passion of mine for quite some time, and piloting one has been on my science bucket list forever- CHECK! A huge thank you to the Mohawk team for allowing me to achieve one of my science dreams!
This screen may look like gibberish- and that’s because it totally is! This is a classic “blame the intern” moment, but allow me to back up a bit. When performing a CTD cast and sending the rosette down, we get a live stream of data from the sensors. The instrument package is connected to the winch wire with the same hot glue termination as previously displayed, allowing data to stream back to the computers shipside. This screen is where we watch the data come in, see how deep in the water the rosette is, and any other information we need to know while operating the machine. Those wide streaking lines however, are not normal. Why is my graph broken!
In this CTD software, there are a few steps that must be taken prior to launch. One of those steps includes turning the water pumps on. You know, the one that pushes water past all of the sensors. Kind of the important part. Yeah, so I forgot to turn those pumps on. My bad team.
When we recovered the CTD, we noticed this- a busted O-ring! My arch nemesis returns, the faulty niskin bottle… thankfully, its a quick little swap and all is well. Daily checks and routine maintenance are an often overlooked aspect of keeping life at sea running, but they are ever so important! Making immediate repairs, and ensuring all equipment is working well with each use keeps the malfunctions and disasters at bay.
Oh yeah, we’re doing ROV ops! One of my jobs on the back deck is to keep a wrastle hold on the winch wire as mentioned in my last blog. This is a much thicker winch wire than what the boat usually has onboard. When in use, these wires must be heavily greased for corrosion resistance and for smooth recovery and deployment. This makes handling the line a bit of a sticky situation. The science crew brought their own pair of sacrificial grease gloves for me to use, which keeps my normal work gloves looking spick and span in comparison!
Let’s take a better look at whats happening when we deploy Mohawk. The winch wire I have been handling comes out of a large pulley hanging from the A-frame at the top, just like the empty one that is hanging in the picture. It is raised and lowered with the winch spool by the winch operator.
Attached to the end of this thick line is the “clump weight”. Pictured in my previous blogs, this weight acts as a landmark for the ROV, and is covered in lights and additional sensors. From the weight, the ROV has maybe a hundred meters of tether line attached to it. This keeps the ROV communicating, and ensures that we can’t lose the little guy even if steering and propulsion of the vehicle fails. We could just drag him up by his tail, worst case scenario!
When we deploy, we first send the ROV into the water and allow the tether to ‘pay out’, or unspool into the water. After the ROV is driven away from the ship as far as it can reach, we can safely send the weight to the seafloor. The two sink down to depth together, holding hands. Once the weight is settled securely, and the ROV operators have their bearings, it’s off to explore!
The ROV has spent considerable hours in the water this trip which has been an absolute delight. The Mohawk teams focus is mainly on this white coral, that really loves to take over these shipwrecks. They collected a huge assortment of samples for studying!
Other important places to see are the yellow markers. They are named and cataloged, and every time they visit they redocument the same place. Over time, they are able to see how the feature shifts and changes, and how the animals grow or die.
The ship wrecks may be one of the most fascinating things I have seen on my adventures so far! This little guy is called a Blackbelly Rosefish, or Helicolenus dactylopterus. He is sat right on an old bollard of the ship, like a king on his throne! We saw many of these guys and a wide assortment of other spectacular species.
Once the ROV is back on deck, the science crew has a field day with their samples. They are examined, photographed, cataloged, and stored properly. The lab becomes a busy space when samples are being processed! I have thoroughly enjoyed watching the limitless passion and curiosity driven brilliance at work on board this cruise. It is inspiring to see so many intelligent people coming together in big ways.
Many ships have the ability to install what is known as a “transduer pole”. Thie is simply a large metal pipe, that can swivel up and down over the side. At the end, the scientists can attach any transducer they need to have in the water for their operations. This allows for a very easy installation of sensors, rather than trying to find a way to mount them to the hull of the vessel. For this cruise, we used the pole for one small transducer, which helped with positioning of the ROV.
When the pole is in the water, we have to reduce our travelling speed for vibration and drag. Meaning, when it is time to steam to the next site, we use the crane to lift the pole from the water and secure it upright. As we wrapped up this cruise, we secured the pole out of the water, and science was free to remove their transducer from it.
With ROV operations finished for this cruise, we began steaming back to the dock. When we arrive, busy days of offloading the ship will begin, and the next science crew will come aboard. I can’t wait to see what the next cruise will hold, so come along with me!
Micah Barton – God Bless – 09/17/2025