NOAA Teacher at Sea
Debra Brice
Onboard R/V Roger Revelle
November 11-25, 2003
Mission: Ocean Observation
Geographical Area: Chilean Coast
Date: November 14, 2003
Data from the Bridge
1. 141700Z Nov 03
2. Position: LAT: 14-54.6’S, LONG: 084-55.0’W
3. Course: 180-T
4. Speed: 12.2 Kts
5. Distance: 293.6 NM
6. Steaming Time: 24H 00M
7. Station Time: 00H 00M
8. Fuel: 4245 GAL
9. Sky: OvrCst
10. Wind: 120-T, 17 Kts
11. Sea: 120-T, 2-3 Ft
12. Swell: 140-T, 3-5 Ft
13. Barometer: 1016.2 mb
14. Temperature: Air: 21.5 C, Sea 19.0 C
15. Equipment Status: NORMAL
16. Comments: None.
Science and Technology Log
We are still underway, about 800 miles off the coast of Peru. We will arrive at the Woods Hole Stratus Buoy tomorrow at about noon. We will be taking out a small boat ( zodiac or the RHIB) to look it over before we try to bring it in. It is heavily instrumented and will be covered in many animals. They will have to be cleaned off and I will enjoy preserving and identifying some of them. I found a copy of my old invertebrate zoology book onboard so this should be worth several hours of entertainment for me. Dr. Weller’s group will be removing the instruments in preparation for taking the buoy out of the water and loading it onboard. Then we will spend another day deploying the new Stratus Buoy. The old one will be shipped back to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution for Arica, Chile.
Most of the day we were deploying sea surface drifters and several radiosondes for the ETL group. Tomorrow Jason Tomlinson, from Texas A&M will be taking some aerosol samples for his research. I will be interviewing the Chief Engineer, Paul Maurice and touring the engine room of the REVELLE. Radiosondes are used to collect data on atmospheric temperature, humidity, pressure and uses onboard GPS for wind direction and windspeed from the surface up to the lowest part of the Stratusphere. I have put up some pictures of the radiosondes. My e-mails and internet access are being made possible by the ROADnet system that is installed here on the R/V REVELLE. We have “live” cameras off the fantail of the boat and in the main lab as well as telphone and internet capabilities due to ROADnet. The Visualization Center at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, located at the Cecil H. and Ida M. Green Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics ( IGPP),houses the state of the art system that allows scientists to take enormous data sets, such as earthquake activity east of San Diego, the morphology of the global seafloor, or the topography of Mars and illustrate them on a large screen in 3 dimensions. One new project taking advantage of the Visualization’s data management capabilities is termed ROADnet ( Real time Observatories, Applications, and Data Management Network). ROADnet sensors, located throughout the world and on Scripp’s largest ship, the Roger Revelle, deliver real-time data to the center for nearly instantaneous review by scientists on campus. I will be using ROADnet to do a broadcast to a geography class next week at San Marcos HIgh School in San Marcos, California. The class of teacher Larry Osen will be able to see me and the scientists on the Revelle as we deploy a CTD as it is happening and ask questions of the scientists. This system is presently being installed on Scripps other large ship the R/V MELVILLE. This is an exciting example of how technological innovations help advance scientific understanding of the oceans.
Personal Log
I’m a little disoriented on my times as I am doing the 12am to 4am watch. I get up a little later that I normally would, about 10:30am. Tomorrow we will come up on the buoy so I need to be up earlier enough to participate. We will be filming and doing interviews during the recovery. Besides if I get up earlier enough they might let me go out in the zodiac! I will ride on any boat that floats, so this is too good an opportunity to miss. Since the buoy has been out at sea for a year it will be covered in animals and surrounded by fish. Anything that floats in the open ocean becomes a little miniature ecosystem, So there will be some fishing and lots to see. We will also being doing our first CTD cast tomorrow and I will have some pictures and descriptions of what a CTD is and why we are deploying it ( actually some of us are deploying it just to shrink our decorated styrofoam cups!) I will be explaining that tomorrow too. What oceanographers do for entertainment on long voyages. So tune in tomorrow for some fun at sea!
Cheers
