Author: Debra Brice

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Debra Brice, November 17, 2003

NOAA Teacher at Sea
Debra Brice
Onboard R/V Roger Revelle
November 11-25, 2003

Mission: Ocean Observation
Geographical Area: Chilean Coast
Date: November 17, 2003

Data from the Bridge

1.  171700Z Nov 03
2.  Position: LAT: 20-10.8’S, LONG: 085-05.1’W
3.  Course: Hove to
4.  Speed: 0 Kts
5.  Distance: 0 NM
6.  Steaming Time:  0H 00M
7.  Station Time:  24H 00M
8.  Fuel: 1845 GAL
9.  Sky: Cldy
10. Wind: 110-T, 18 Kts
11. Sea: 110-T, 2-3 Ft
12. Swell: 140-T, 3-5 Ft
13. Barometer: 1020.0 mb
14. Temperature: Air: 21.5 C, Sea 18.0 C
15. Equipment Status: NORMAL
16. Comments: WHOI buoy recovery in progress.

 

Science and Technology Log

The R/V REVELLE was positioned roughly 100 meters upwind from the anchor position.  The acoustic release was fired and it took approximately 40 minutes for the glass balls to come to the surface.  Once the glass balls were sighted the small a line was attached and they were pulled to the stern of the ship.  The line was threaded through the A frame, the winch hauled the glass balls over the stern of the boat.  Once all the glassfuls were onboard the process of uncoupling them to the mooring began, they were then loaded in groups of 4 into the shipping container to be sent back to WHOI.

Once the fantail was cleared, hauling began.  The polypropylene line was then spooled off using a winding cart and 7 empty wooden spools. (see photos) The line on the winch was off loaded into a wired basket which was then wound onto the wooden spools and then stored.  This process was repeated for several hours until all of the 2800 meters of line was recovered and the first instrument was brought aboard about 2pm.  Then we began to bring each instrument aboard and label it by depth and place it on the deck in the order it was recovered for labeling and photographing.  It is very important to document the exact condition of the instruments as they are recovered as it will help in the data analysis later.  For example if there are some strange readings in the data or the data suddenly stopped at some point during the year looking at the photograph could tell you that this instrument was covered in barnacles or tangled with fishing line that clogged or blocked the sensors. (see photos)

With 38 different sensors on the mooring it was a very long day just recovering all of them.  Once most of the sensors were all onboard and labeled they began the recovery of the buoy and the last 12 sensors.  The small boat was deployed and a line attached to the buoy. The ship’s knuckle crane was used in this part of the operation and the buoy was lifted and secured onto the port side of the ship (see photos).  Once the buoy was secured the retrieval of the last instruments began.  Again, labeling and photographically documenting the condition of the instruments was essential.  In the photos you can see the increase in bio-fouling as the instruments get closer to the surface.  The current meters nearest the surface were heavily clogged with fishing lines and although their temperature sensors were still functioning, the portion that measures the current direction and speed was completely jammed with the fishing line.

Although acoustic current meters are also used on the mooring, there has been some issues with the quality of their data and the mechanical current meters are still the most accurate, but they have the problems of being more susceptible to bio-fouling and  interference with fishing gear.  This emphasizes the need for redundant instruments for data collection and comparison.  Each year the sensors are evaluated and some changes in instrumentation and slight changes in buoy location might be made.  For example this year the buoy will be moved a little farther away from last years mooring to hopefully decrease the likelihood of being tangled by fishing lines. After all of the instruments were secured onboard and labeled and photographed, the cleaning began (see photographs).  Everyone participated in this phase with scrapers and , finally the power washer.  All of the instruments needed to be cleaned and many stored in the main lab for data analysis tomorrow.  All day tomorrow Nan, Lara, Jeff, Jason and Dr. Weller will be downloading and loading at the data from the sensors as well as preparing the new equipment for deployment on Wednesday.

Personal Log

An incredibly long day which began with my watch at 4am and ended sometime after 9pm.  It was great and I was fascinated by the differences in the instruments as they were recovered from different depths.  It was brought home to me yet again the importance of keeping meticulous and very detailed records of each stage of a operation and the condition of the environment and effect on the equipment.  Any of these variables have to be considered when analyzing the data and can only be collected immediately upon retrieval or deployment.  It is also essential to have a very detailed plan of operation and to work together well as a team.  I think we were also out there testing several brands of sunscreen….mine failed and and I have the racoon-eyes to prove it…ahh well, it was a wonderful day and loved it.  Tomorrow and preparing for the deployment will be equally interesting. Oh, and one of the benefits of bringing in the buoy was that all the fish who were living under the buoy were now around the ship and the crew and some of the science staff caught some very nice tuna…hmmm dinner is looking promising tomorrow too:)

Cheers

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Debra Brice, November 16, 2003

NOAA Teacher at Sea
Debra Brice
Onboard R/V Roger Revelle
November 11-25, 2003

Mission: Ocean Observation
Geographical Area: Chilean Coast
Date: November 16, 2003

Data from the Bridge
1.  161700Z Nov 03
2.  Position: LAT: 20-10.6’S, LONG: 085-08.0’W
3.  Course: Hove to
4.  Speed: 0 Kts
5.  Distance: 20.8 NM
6.  Steaming Time:  1H 48M
7.  Station Time:  22H 12M
8.  Fuel: 2215 GAL
9.  Sky: Ptly Cldy
10. Wind: 120-T, 14 Kts
11. Sea: 120-T, 2-3 Ft
12. Swell: 150-T, 3-5 Ft
13. Barometer: 1019.7 mb
14. Temperature: Air: 20.3 C, Sea 19.5 C
15. Equipment Status: NORMAL
16. Comments: On station in vicinity of WHOI buoy.

Science and Technology Log

We are at the STRATUS buoy from last year and are preparing to trigger the acoustical releases so that the glass ball floats will bring up the instruments, almost 50 of them!  it will take about 40 minutes from triggering the release until they surface and they the retrieval will begin in earnest.  We will spend the day bring them all aboard, recording the depth, serial number and condition of each of them before Dr. Weller’s group will begin downloading the data.  Then we will clean them and begin to pack them for the return to WHOI. A little background on the project first:  The purpose of the cruise was to recover and then deploy a well-instrumented surface mooring under the stratocumulus clouds found off Chile and Peru in the vicinity of 20’S and 85’W.  The mooring has been deployed for  for 3 years as a component  of the Enhanced Monitoring element of the Eastern Pacific Investigation of Climate ( EPIC) programs.  Cruises for recovery and redeployment have occurred each October or November.  The science objectives of the Stratus Project are to observe the surface meteorology and air-sea exchanges of heat, freshwater, and momentum, to observe the temporal evolution of the vertical structure of the upper 500m of the ocean.  This year the Stratus project was joined by the ETL/NOAA group out of Boulder, Colorado.  The Environmental Technology Laboratory people are meteorologists who are looking at the formation of the stratocumulus clouds that are formed off the coast of Chile and Peru.  They brought and are using cloud radar and radiosondes to look at these phenomena. The Stratus moorings carry two redundant sets of meteorological sensors and the mooring line also carries a set of oceanographic instruments.  Although Acoustic rain gauges were deployed on the last 3 moorings, this year there will not be one on the buoy and there will be several more current meters and temperature gauges.  The Chlorophyll sensors will not be on the new one either.

Types of measurements taken by Stratus moorings:

  • Surface measurements
  • Subsurface measurements
  • Wind speed
  • Water temperature
  • Wind direction
  • Conductivity
  • Air temperature
  • Current speed
  • Sea Surface temp
  • Salinitybarometric pressure
  • Current direction
  • Relative humidity
  • Incoming short-wave radiation
  • Incoming long wave radiation
  • Precipitation

Most of the equipment , including the new buoy, was loaded on the R/V REVELLE in San Diego with some of the equipment being shipped to Guayaqil, Ecuador and loaded onboard in Manta, Ecuador.  The science party flew into Manta to meet the ship and we will fly out of Arica to return to the U.S. On November 15, we stopped to lower and test the acoustic releases to be used in the mooring.  They were lowered to  500,  and 1500m depths.  Jason Smith (WHOI) communicated with the releases at each depth.  After the release test two CTD casts were made to 4000m.  When we arrived at the buoy mooring ship and buoy data comparisons began.  This is a check to see whether the sensors on the mooring are still calibrated. At 7:20 the release of the glass balls was triggered and they should surface about 45 minutes later.  The small boat will go out to put a line on the mooring and bring it back to the ship.  The line will be secured on deck the the recovery will begin.  As the instruments are brought onboard they will be laid out in the order they are hung on the mooring up the starboard side of the ship and photographed and labeled by depth and type of instrument.  This is to document the condition of each instrument before cleaning begins.  Most of the instruments are covered by barnacles and a host of other organisms, this is termed Bio-fouling.  The bio-fouling is dominated by goose-neck barnacles.  These are quite thick on the buoy hull and down to 30m; some goosenecks were even found down to 135m last year.  These can be quite a problem for the data collection, for example: last year the floating SST on the buoy hull was stuck in the down position by the barnacles.  This is why it is important to document the condition of the instruments with photographs so that when you are looking at your data and it suddenly changes or stops you might get some clue as to why the flow on the current meters changes significantly in one of the sensors ( bio-fouling for example).  We will finish recovery of the instruments today and tomorrow will recover the buoy late today.

Personal Log

Went out on the zodiac in the morning to look over the buoy.  Sunny, beautiful, water was 20’C and 30 to 35′ visibility.  There were 3′ swells and it was a wonderful view of the REVELLE, see the attached photos.  Many fish around the buoy and there will be many around the back of the boat today when we bring up the mooring.  We are 800 miles off the coast of Chile and the ship is in water  of about 4400m depth.  Nothing but blue ocean all around and it is breathtaking, reminds you why oceanographers go to sea.  You are surrounded by a mysterious blue liquid and it becomes a lifelong fascination to learn what lies beneath.  We began our “Fantail Interviews” last night with the chief engineer, Paul Mauricio, Nan Galbraith, WHOI Information systems associate and Paquita Zuidema a scientist with NOAA Environmental Technology Laboratory.  We talked about their research, jobs and experiences working at sea.  Our first videos should be online today.  We will be touring the ship and video taping interviews with other science party and crew members all week as well as filming the work onboard. There is something special about being part of science as the observations are made.  Jason was checking his aerosol readings last night and sharing his graphs.  He was seeing some things he expected and some he didn’t.  Many things he was seeing had as much to do with visual observations of the changing cloud shapes and precipitation as the sensor readings.  This kind of on-site observation is irreplaceable in science and definitely what makes science exciting.  Chris Fairwell of ETL was talking about the stratocumulus formations and how the behavior of the clouds was not necessarily what was expected, but then observations in this area had never really been done before and this was really exciting.  For me as a teacher it is interesting because these are things that my students can share by logging onto the internet and seeing on various NOAA , WHOI and SIO web sites as well as many other good science web sites and no text book can hope to compare with this.  We can also e-mail these scientists to ask questions about what they are seeing and a possible explanation.  Well they just call the acoustical release and may watch is almost over which just means the real work begins:)

Cheers

Posted on

Debra Brice, November 15, 2003

NOAA Teacher at Sea
Debra Brice
Onboard R/V Roger Revelle
November 11-25, 2003

Mission: Ocean Observation
Geographical Area: Chilean Coast
Date: November 15, 2003

Data from the Bridge
1.  151700Z Nov 03
2.  Position: LAT: 19-50.1’S, LONG: 085-03.3’W
3.  Course: 189-T
4.  Speed: 12.3 Kts
5.  Distance: 295.6 NM
6.  Steaming Time: 24H 00M
7.  Station Time:  00H 00M
8.  Fuel: 4233 GAL
9.  Sky: OvrCst
10. Wind: 110-T, 09 Kts
11. Sea: 110-T, 2-3 Ft
12. Swell: 200-T, 3-5 Ft
13. Barometer: 1018.9 mb
14. Temperature: Air: 23.5 C, Sea 19.0 C
15. Equipment Status: NORMAL
16. Comments: None.

Science and Technology Log

We arrived at the Stratus Buoy at 1:30pm.  We had some problems putting out the zodiac and will have to go and do a survey of the buoy up close tomorrow.  Dr. Weller’s group will be calibrating the instruments on the buoy all day tomorrow and the following day they will be taking it out of the water in preparation to store it and ship it home.  The new Stratus Buoy will be deployed in a couple of days.  We continued to release radiosondes at 6 hour intervals.  We are finished drooping surface drifters for awhile as well as ARGO floats. Dr. Weller did 2 CTD casts tonight to 4000m and we attached our styrofoam cups to the CTDs.  I have attached some photos of our cups and my wig head after their trip into the abyss.  We filmed a video of the cast that should be up in a couple of days.

A CTD stands for Conductivity, Temperature and Density.  Sea water conducts electricity as a function of the amount of dissolved salts, in other words it will be a better conductor of an electrical current if it has a higher amount of salts dissolved in it.  The density is calculated based on the salinity and the temperature.  The salinity is calculated using the conductivity and temperature. Warm water is less dense than cold water and water with a higher salinity is more dense than water with a lower salinity.  Evaporation removes water but leaves behind the salts and creates more dense water at the surface.  The densest (heaviest) water sinks and the less dense water rises and you get stratification or layering of different water masses.  The wind does cause mixing of the surface layer but this varies with wind speed and can vary in depth between 1 meter to 1500 meters in some areas.  The CTD that we just took shows a very shallow mixed layer and we will be analyzing it a bit more closely later today.  I have included a picture of the temperature/salinity/density plot from the CTD cast.   The green line represents density, which is increasing from the surface down.  The red line is salinity which is decreasing from the surface down but you can see some variations which show different water masses and some mixing.  The brown is conductivity and the blue is temperature. We sent down the styrofoam cups and the wig heads as a demonstration of  the effects of pressure.  All of the air piled on top of us from the surface of the earth up into the stratosphere equals one atmosphere, but water is much more dense so if you go down 33 feet you are under 2 atmospheres of pressure and another atmosphere for every 33 feet.  So how many atmospheres were our cups under?  E-mail me (Debra.Brice@noaa.gov)and let me know your answer?

Personal Log

Long day punctuated by being on watch.  Food is wonderful, the cooks are really creative and we have enjoyed all the meals.  After dinner a lot of people will go into the lounge and watch DVDs or play board games.  Most of us read or check e-mail.  There is always something to do or sea and sometimes it is just nice to go outside and watch the sunset or the cloud shapes.  At the CTD cast we had a spotlight on the water where the CTD went in and it attracted quite a group of large squid up to the surface.  They were over 3 feet long and quite fast.  The buoy has a group of 4 boobies that live on or near it feeding on the fish that gather around it.  They will be most unhappy when we take it out but they will have a nice new one soon.  Well, my watch is almost over and I am fading fast and this will be a busy day coming up…rumor has it that those styrofoam “cup of soup” cups shrink really well, hmmmm we need to do some more experiments on pressure……can we carve some pieces of packing styrofoam…..getting a bit carried away here:)

Cheers

Posted on

Debra Brice, November 14, 2003

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

Posted on

Debra Brice, November 13, 2003

NOAA Teacher at Sea
Debra Brice
Onboard R/V Roger Revelle
November 11-25, 2003

Mission: Ocean Observation
Geographical Area: Chilean Coast
Date: November 13, 2003

Data from the Bridge
1. 131700Z Nov 03
2. Position: LAT: 10-01.0S, LONG: 084-55.0W
3. Course: 180-T
4. Speed: 12.5 Kts
5. Distance: 299.5 NM
6. Steaming Time: 24H 00M
7. Station Time: 00H 00M
8. Fuel: 4238 GAL
9. Sky: OvrCst
10. Wind: 130-T, 21 Kts
11. Sea: 130-T, 2-3 Ft
12. Swell: 140-T, 3-5 Ft
13. Barometer: 1013.8 mb
14. Temperature: Air: 22.4 C, Sea 19.0 C
15. Equipment Status: NORMAL
16. Comments: Drifter array deployment in progress.

Science and Technology

We are still underway towards the Stratus buoy. We spent the day deploying Surface drifters and 2 radiosondes. Surface drifters are small instruments attached to a “drogue” or sock that is about 40 feet long. The are thrown off the back of the ship while it is still moving. They will float on the surface and the drogue will float about about 15 meters below the suface taking sea surface temperatures and sending the data back to a satellite that is operated by the French ARGOS System. The data is downloaded at Wallops Island in Virginia and processed at various laboratories. We deployed 10 surface drifters today and will send off another group tomorrow. We are deploying them for the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory in Miami, Florida. This is a NOAA research facility. A noted drifter researcher is being done by Dr. Pieter Niiler at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Ca.

The purpose of the drifters is to measure sea surface temperature and check the accuracy ( calibrate) satellite data on sea surface temperature. Infra-red satellite data is sometimes blocked by stratus clouds and volcano eruptions. This brings to the light the question of why we need to go to sea in ships to study oceanography when we can supposedly get all the information we need from satellites. I will be interviewing Dr. Weller on one of my webcasts and he will address this question. Since I needed some additional enlightenment on why ships and shipboard research are still so essential to the study of climatology, atmospheric science and, of course, oceanography and Dr. Weller was busy today, I went to Scripps Institution of Oceanography ( via e-mail….those satellites are quite useful) and asked Dr. Robert Knox to help me out. Dr. Knox is the Associate Director of Ship Operations and Marine Technical Support and has helped me many times in the past with education outreach. The following is his wonderful explanation of why ships are still an essential tool for scientists in our exploration of the oceans and atmosphere.

Dr. Robert Weller’s research is an excellent example of why this type of data collection is so important and cannot be replaced by satellite data. It absolutely depends on using ships to handle his systems and is vital to gain a quantitative understanding of what the satellite sensors are seeing. In the absence of programs like Dr. Weller’s we could be seriously misled as to what the satellite data are telling us about the properties we actually care about, like sea surface temperature, heat flux between air and sea, etc. No satellite ever has measured or ever will measure sea surface temperature (SST). Yet we often see “satellite maps” of “sea surface temperature.” How? The satellite measures some component of electromagnetic radiation coming upward from the sea surface. That in turn can be related to the temperature of the sea surface, but only by way of a number of assumptions and calibrations having to do with basic physics of the radiation, the interactions of that radiation with whatever is in the atmosphere between the sea and the satellite, and on and on. In order to construct the formulas or recipes used to convert the radiation numbers to temperature numbers, real temperature measurements at the sea surface will always be needed to some extent, and with some distribution around the globe and over time. This is particularly true for long-term climate purposes, where slow changes in, for example, the atmospheric properties could lead to slow, subtle and unrecognized shifts in the correct recipes/formulas, and thus to unrecognized shifts in the deduced temperature results that were not real. Temperature is just one parameter. There are others, most of them harder to do via satellites.

The list goes on. Ships are needed for any number of laboratory-style experiments and measurements that simply cannot be done by remote sensors, but require samples of water, organisms or seafloor to be acquired and dealt with at sea. Questions in biology, chemistry and geology figure prominently here. New remote sensors, whether destined for satellites or unmanned vehicles in the ocean, in most cases require lengthy periods of development, testing and comparison against existing (shipboard) techniques before they can really be trusted to deliver the data desired – and even then (as in the case of SST above) there may well be an open-ended need for some level of ship-based, high-quality measurements to serve as a calibration standard in space and time. There are a host of chemical and biological parameters for which no remote sensor exists or is even imagined, yet shipboard/manned techniques do exist and can be used to answer important research questions. Take for example the identification and quantification of species or species assemblages in water samples (plankton, etc) and how these change over time, perhaps as a result of climate variations. If we waited until a remote sensor existed we might wait ad infinitum, yet we can do this identification and quantification now, using people and samples. The accumulation of those observations over time (more than 50 years thus far in the case of the CalCOFI program) sheds considerable light on the actual ecological changes taking place in the ocean and will continue to do so; we should most certainly not stop doing these measurements just because we cannot do them remotely. Or consider the business of measuring trace metals, notably iron, in seawater. This has gone from a curiosity to an important set of research programs in just the last couple of decades. It depends on exquisitely sensitive shipborne lab-style analyses of seawater samples for minute concentrations of these metals. Yet the tiny amount of iron in seawater may be a key limiting nutrient for phytoplankton under some circumstances. So iron trace concentrations get connected to important policy and economic questions such as whether deliberate iron fertilization could be a viable technique to enhance phytoplankton growth, thereby drawing down atmospheric CO2 via photosynthesis, and thus ameliorating greenhouse warming. Both the scientific and policy answers are far from clear at this juncture, but you can readily see the basic importance of the shipboard effort underlying the whole issue.

Finally, the advent of various remote sensors, on satellites and on unmanned vehicles, creates a whole new possibility for joint ship/other device campaigns that can do a much better job of focussed observation than has been possible in the ship-alone mode characteristic of nearly all history to date. The ship can serve as home base/deployment platform/data integration and analysis center/command post for adaptive, real-time control of a fleet of these devices, for ingesting streams of satellite data from overhead, and for deploying its own specialty ship-deployed instruments. Sort of a vision of the ship as the AWACS centerpiece of a flotilla or network of tools aimed at some common experimental objectives. Oceanography historically has been bedeviled by the inability to measure with coverage in both space and time matched to the problems of interest. A single ship can never be “here” and “there” simultaneously, nor can it cover the distance between “here” and “there” fast enough for some purposes. But operating as the mother ship/control center, many of these gaps can be closed. It’s going to be fascinating to see how some of these potentials are used in the coming decades.

Personal Log

As a teacher at sea one of the things I have learned in the short time I have been on the ship is that many times observing the conditions under which the data are collected can be as essential as the actual data itself in enabling a scientist to analyse it and put the data in the proper perspective. For example: when we retrieved the Equadorial Buoy and brought up all the instruments that were hanging on the mooring it was absolutely amazing to see the vast numbers of animals that had made these instruments their home ( see my pictures). Could these animals have effected the instruments and their data collections by blocking water flow or changing environment around the instruments? Yes. Is it important to note this and take this into consideration when analysing the data? Very possibly. The ship I am travelling on is named for a very famous and well respected oceanographer, Dr Roger Revelle, who understood how important it is for scientists to actively participate in the collection of their data by going to sea in order to get a more accurate perspective on what the data they collect is telling them about the oceans. As a teacher I hope I can share this with my students, I know that in my classroom, no amount of lecture or reading can replace the experience of doing a laboratory and collecting and analysing your own data. My watch is almost over and I have 2 more surface temperature readings to take before I sleep……the old fashioned way, drop the bucket with the thermometer over the side, fill it with water and read the thermometer. We are just checking those computerised sensors to make sure everything is working:)

Hasta manana