2030 Local Time

Hi there!

It’s a chilly and foggy Sunday at sea and winds and swells are starting to pick up as we head north along the Alaskan coast toward Nome. We will be anchoring instead of tying up to a dock, which means that the scientists will need to take a small boat out to the Healy on Tuesday and then be ready to go 8 hours later when we reach the first station.

Having 41 scientists board and settle in with such a short turnaround time is probably going to make for a very busy day so we are prepping as much as we can in advance. There are 28 mooring deployments and so we found and tested the acoustic release deck box, which will send and receive messages to each mooring via unique transmission pulses to figure out the exact location and to also trigger the release when we are ready to bring them back on board. Additionally, we also researched terminal connections for the SBE-49 FastCAT, which will be attached to the cable towing the large bongo nets. We found the necessary pigtails, terminated the 0.322 cable, and set up the deck box in the control station. Earlier today, we also warmed up the AutoSal and did a trial water sampling run including testing known standards with very precise salinity. The machine requires quite a bit of fine-tuning, but STARC technician Kristin and I were both glad for the experience in running a sample set through it.

In addition to assembling and prepping equipment and instrumentation, I also took on a project to make XBT launches a bit smoother and faster. This involved first cutting then splicing and soldered the launch cable to a male 4-pin wet bulkhead connector instead of the 4 spade terminals it had previously. The impetus for this is so the cable can be easily unplugged and switched between our primary and back up deck box and server connections. I did some testing and rewiring and then fitted both junction boxes with a female wet pluggable connection. We completed a test cast and a real cast with both systems and it worked great!

I also had a chance this week to brush up on some old familiar skills and pick up a new one. Mike, one of the STARC technicians, brought a handful of breadboards and circuit components with the hope of creating a 1PPS signal generator, similar to what a GPS unit or oscillator outputs. He sketched out a rough circuit diagram and I learned a new web-based diagram creation program called Lucidchart in order to make a cleaned-up digital version then put it together. It was quite fun.

I love projects like these, though I had to put a hold on them for the last two days as I voluntarily took place in the Arctic Circle Line Crossing Ceremony on board the Healy. We had about 35 people participate and I am sworn to secrecy as to the various activities we completed. I will say that I got the chance to meet and work with a lot of new people and really appreciate the time and effort that the seasoned Blue Nose crewmembers put in to this. Two whole days worth! It was really impressive and, as of 0600 this morning, I have now graduated from humble ice worm to the rank of the noble Polar Bear.

Until next time! Thank you for reading 🙂

– Emily