NOAA Teacher at Sea
Brett Hoyt
Onboard NOAA Ship Ronald H. Brown October 8 – 28, 2006
Mission: Recovery and maintenance of buoy moorings Geographical Area: Southeast Pacific, off the coast of Chile Date: October 18, 2006
Weather Data from Bridge October 18
Visibility: 12nm(nautical miles)
Wind direction: 120º
True Wind speed: 10 knots
Sea wave height: 2-4ft
Swell wave height: 3-5 ft
Sea level pressure: 1021.6 millibars
Sea temperature: 19.3ºC or 67ºF
Air temperature: 22.5ºC or 72ºF
Cloud type: cumulus, stratocumulus
We are going to use a different format for today because it is recovery day!
On October 16th we deployed the Stratus 7 buoy. The second part of this cruise is the recovery of the Stratus 6 buoy that was deployed approximately one year ago. To ensure a continuous record, a new buoy is installed at the same time the old one is recovered. Today, October 18th, is the recovery of the Stratus 6 buoy. Please compare and contrast the photos of October 16th (Deployment) with that of October 18th (Recovery).
The Stratus 6 Buoy one year after it was deployed. The nearest Land is 600 miles to the east. These birds are feeding off the marine life this buoy collects in the waters around the mooring.Recovering of the Stratus 6. Can you spot the Scotsman? Hint: He’s the one in the cowboy hard hat.Instruments waiting deployment for Stratus 7.Stratus 6 instruments one year after deployment covered in barnacles. What would two years of deployment look like?Gooseneck barnacles from the Stratus 6 buoy.Damage to a current meter caused by fisherman’s gear. Of the 8 meters, 6 were fouled. Here we have entanglement of the current metering fans by fishermen’s lights. They use these lights on their lines to attract fish to their hooks at night. Once the entanglement occurs data cannot continue to be gathered.NOAA Teacher at Sea, Mr. Hoyt, scraping barnacles off one of the sensors from Stratus 6. “ I’ve got to talk to my travel agent.”Remember the glass balls from Stratus 7? Here are the glass balls from Stratus 6. It took them over one hour to reach the surface after the acoustic release was activated. They are not in the nice neat line as we had in deployment.Anyone like puzzles?The acoustic release, one year after being sent 13,000 ft to the bottom of the ocean. Scientists sent a signal to this release to let go of one side of the chain. Should one release fail, they could trigger the other release.Dr. Weller, leading by example, cleaning the equipment free of barnacles. Remember in an earlier posting when he stated he was a “hands on scientist”?
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