1900 local time
Hiya!
Well, it is another beautiful Sunday and the last day of the CalCOFI Summer 2018 cruise. The past week brought us some pretty dramatic seas, but we pushed through it and finished sampling 74 of the 75 stations from San Diego to Pismo Beach.
Photo credit: Jim Wilkinson, CalCOFI
I really enjoyed working with CalCOFI on the “zombie shift” (midnight to noon) and getting a feel for various net deployments and considerations for current, wind, depth, and ship speed. The conditions at each station really dictate how the nets can be safely handled, so you need to be vigilant and able to communicate with the winch operator and not get complacent in the routine. Taking charge of deck operations comes with the ultimate risk of losing a net or walloping someone on deck with a heavy load, so situational awareness is critical. All the risks can be mitigated by maintaining clear and constant communication, and when things seem to be heading off course, like a wire drifting inboard toward the ship or a heavy weight coming up too fast, then you call a stop and assess the situation. After several deployments, I started getting a good feel for potential hazards and could easily prevent them. In the course of my Marine Engineering degree, deck work was always the provenance of the Marine Transportation students, so it’s been a good experience for me to develop my skillset with this equipment.
Photo credit: Jim Wilkinson, CalCOFI
Disruptions to the station regimen were welcome challenges as well – if everything were easy and predictable, then this wouldn’t be a very challenging or rewarding career. This week we deployed the last two of the familiar, orange wave buoys over the side despite the lack of a drogue. The first one went over without any issue as the seas were surprisingly calm. The second deployment was ultimately a good one, though the winds and seas were reminiscent of the Iceland transit on the R/V Armstrong, so I slowly worked the buoy down the line and then let go at the water line as a wave came along to carry it away…
Photo credit: Jim Wilkinson, CalCOFI
Another bit of fun came from creating some artwork on styrofoam pieces to attach and send down on the CTD cast. This shrinking activity due to pressure increases at depth is something that the previous cruise was doing with the multicore with thousands of styrofoam cups. This particular cast was a unique one in that is was at the Santa Barbara Basin, which is a well-studied, anoxic, pull-apart basin just off the coast. We sent the CTD down to 565 meters as opposed to the standard protocol 515 meters just to get more samples from the bottom.
Ideally, for a more dramatic transformation, you should be deeper than 1000 meters, but my ball is certainly more compact now and sporting rather deep pores like a golf ball. I decided to decorate it with some of the egg yolk jellyfish and tuna crabs we caught in our net tows.
Coming into port today is the busiest I have seen so far. This is partially due to the fact that the Team Attack Hunger people are picking up Anne, the ocean row boat we recovered. It is also due to the fact that we only have Monday to demobilize an extensive amount of equipment and instrumentation and then stock the ship with stores, items for various future cruise installation projects, and spares for six months of busy cruises up near Oregon and Washington, during which the ship will not be coming back to San Diego. It’s a whirlwind turnaround, to be sure.
Tuesday morning we will be setting sail for Newport, Oregon. This next haul is a “transit” and not a “cruise” as there are no ocean science operations happening on board. However, we are traveling with a team of kinesiologists who are doing a “sea legs study” about human movement on ships – how people stand and move and what they know about how ship motion affects stance and locomotion.
They need 12-15 volunteers and there are only 20 crew members, so I may end up participating on top of the various projects I have been assigned. See you next week!
– Emily