tplanz2018

July 15, 2018July 25, 2018

Taylor Planz: Oodles of Jobs on NOAA Ship Fairweather, July 13, 2018

NOAA Teacher at Sea
Taylor Planz
Aboard NOAA Ship Fairweather
July 9 – 20, 2018

Mission: Arctic Access Hydrographic Survey
Geographic Area of Cruise: Point Hope, Alaska and Vicinity
Date: July 13, 2018 at 8:50am

Weather Data from the Bridge
Latitude: 64° 29.690′ N
Longitude: 165° 26.276′ W
Wind: 15 knots SW, gusts up to 25 knots
Barometer: 761.31 mmHg
Visibility: 10+ nautical miles
Temperature: 14.4° C
Sea Surface Temperature: 15° C
Weather: Cloudy, no precipitation

Science and Technology Log
As you may or may not know, NOAA stands for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. NOAA is a branch of the Chamber of Commerce and gets funded by the federal government to undergo many important tasks. Their mission is “to understand and predict changes in climate, weather, oceans, and coasts, to share that knowledge and information with others, and to conserve and manage coastal and marine ecosystems and resources.” (http://www.noaa.gov/about-our-agency) NOAA Ship Fairweather’s role in that mission is to measure and understand changes in the sea floor to allow for safe navigation in our world’s oceans and seas.

Two NOAA Corps Members prepare to dive under the ship to clean sound-measuring instruments. — Two NOAA Corps Members (LT Moulton top, ENS Siegenthaler bottom) prepare to dive under the ship to clean sound-measuring instruments.

Many different career specialties are required to keep the ship running smoothly. The NOAA Commissioned Officer Corps operates ships, conducts dive operations, and manages the hydrographic research projects assigned to the ship. They make up one of the seven uniformed services of the United States: Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Airforce, Coast Guard, NOAA Commissioned Officer Corps, and Public Health Service. All NOAA Corps members have a bachelors degree or higher in a STEM field; some of the degrees earned by Corps members on NOAA Ship Fairweather are marine biology, environmental science, wildlife ecology, chemistry, physics, and math.

The Survey Department is comprised of scientists who exclusively focus on the hydrographic mission. They operate and monitor instruments, collect and process data, and deploy and recover survey equipment. Data collection sometimes takes place on the ship and sometimes on small boats. They have to be proficient with advanced hydrographic software and with combining multiple sources of data into one. I have even seen members of the Survey Team conducting dive operations, so being dive-certified is very useful for the job. The Survey team makes nautical charts used by many different industries worldwide.

We have the option to eat fresh fruits and vegetables at every meal, and there is always a new kind of meat to try! This meal was the first time I have ever eaten lamb! — Fresh fruits and vegetables are served at every meal, and there is always a new kind of meat to try! This was my first time trying lamb!

The Deck Crew consists of Able-Bodied Seamen (ABs) and General Vessel Assistants (GVAs). ABs and GVAs must be knowledgeable and capable of completing many types of work. They perform general maintenance, infrastructure repair, sanitation, and upkeep of the ship. They also assist in emergency operations and the launch and recovery of small boats. Another department is the Steward Team who cook our food, clean the mess (dining area) and galley (kitchen), and wash dishes in the scullery (dish room). They often work 12 hour days, and their work is needed 7 days a week. So far, they have planned nothing but delicious meals for us all to enjoy (especially the desserts!).

EU Meissner cuts a gasket to fit in between the engine and exhaust mainfold — EU Meissner cuts a gasket to fit in between the engine and exhaust manifold

Engineers keep the ship functioning well by inspecting, maintaining, and repairing all of the ship systems (water, sewage, power, heating, etc.). They must be familiar with a vast array of equipment in order to do their job well! We also have one medical professional, a Physician’s Assistant, who works in the sick bay to treat anyone who may be ill or injured and assist with emergency operations. Visitors frequent the ship as well. Currently, there is a meteorologist from the National Weather Service and an intern from Loyola University Chicago on board. Specialists may come aboard for a few days or a whole trip depending on what kind of work they are doing. As you can see, working aboard a ship is not limited to ocean-related careers. You can find positions for many different interests, and all of these people get to work in an environment that most others don’t get to experience!

In my previous blog, I promised to include a picture of a nautical chart developed by the multibeam echosounder (MBES) on NOAA Ship Fairweather and its small boats. The photo below shows progress on a survey that began in April 2018. As you can see by the colored boxes that not all of the surveying is yet complete. NOAA Ship Fairweather has experienced a fairly difficult season with some mechanical setbacks, but they use every minute possible when underway, sometimes working 24 hours per day in designated shifts to finish a job. Every team on this ship does a great job working together and adjusting to the unexpected!

This sketch was completed by staff on NOAA Ship Fairweather in May 2018 to replace surveys that were last updated as long ago as 1916.

The numbers around the chart show depth in fathoms from previous surveys (the survey is in meters). Before echosounding technology was developed, surveys were often completed using lead lines. Lead lines are exactly what they sound like; there is a long rope with a block of lead attached to the end. It is slowly lowered through the water column until it hits the sea floor. The line is then pulled back up and the water depth is measured. This form of surveying gives mariners some idea of what the sea floor looks like, but you can see that current technology allows for a fuller coverage map of the area. This is helpful because fishing and transportation ships need to know what obstacles they may encounter below the surface of the water while traveling.

Personal Log

Two whale ribs at the entrance of the Carrie McLain Museum in downtown Nome

Our ship is very close to Nome’s town center, and there are a few interesting things to do and see! Nome is the ending point of the famous Iditarod Sled Dog Race. You can find photos all over town of previous competitors in addition to standing under the arc of the finish line in the middle of town. There is a museum in town, the Carrie McLain Museum, that showcases the beautiful history of Nome and has over 15,000 artifacts.

Tropospheric Antennas build in the 1950s from the White Alice Communications (WACs) System

It’s also very easy to access some beautiful hiking. I hiked Anvil Mountain yesterday with a couple other friends on the ship. During our hike, we encountered two separate herd of Muskox. They are large, gentle creatures that call the Arctic regions their home. You can learn more information on this National Geographic website. We made sure to keep a safe distance away because both herds had young, and we did not want them to feel threatened in our presence.

After a few extra days in Nome, I am happy to announce that we began our 22 hour journey to Point Hope at 10:00 this morning! The survey work will start once we reach our final destination. If all goes well, we will cross the Arctic Circle tonight. There is a history in the Navy of awarding sailors unofficial certificates for crossing navigation lines at sea. For example, sailors earn the “Shellback” when they cross the Equator by boat. When we cross the Arctic Circle, many of us onboard will earn the “Blue Nose”. You can see other unofficial certificates that are offered around the globe on this Navy website.

I took this picture at 4:30am on July 13. Sunrise was at 5:03am. Even though the sun technically "sets", it doesn't get dark at night during this time of year. — I took this picture at 4:30am on July 13. Sunrise was at 5:03am. Even though the sun technically “sets”, it doesn’t get dark at night during this time of year.

Did You Know?
In January of 1925, the Nome hospital realized their treatment serum for the deadly diptheria infection was expired, and the winter weather was too harsh to send a replacement via plane. People began to get infected, and they were in a state of emergency! If treatment didn’t arrive soon, the entire town could acquire the disease. Luckily, over twenty sled dog mushers volunteered to take part in a relay on the Iditarod Trail, spanning over 650 miles of wilderness. The final sled dog team was led by 3-year old Balto, a siberian husky. Does this story sound familiar? In 1995, a cartoon movie was made and given the name “Balto” in honor of the brave, rookie sled dog who led his team into Nome on February 2, 1925 to save the town!

Question of the Day
How many nautical names can you think of for rooms/locations on the ship, and what would their equivalent name be on land? (For example: the “scullery” = “dish washer”).
Hint: reread the “Science and Technology” section of this blog for a few answers! Feel free to leave your answer as a comment!

Answer to Last Question of the Day:
If a CTD determined that the speed of sound in an area was 1,504 m/s and the time it took for the sound wave to travel from the ship’s transmitter to receiver was 0.08 seconds, how deep was the water in that specific area?

The time must be divided in half to find the time it took for the sound to travel one way:
0.08 seconds x 0.5 = 0.04 seconds
Plug your known values into the equation: distance = rate x time
rate = 1,504 m/s time = 0.04 seconds
distance = (1,504 m/s) x (0.04 seconds)
distance = 60.16 meters deep

July 11, 2018July 25, 2018

Taylor Planz: Rocks are Red, Valleys are Blue, July 10, 2018

NOAA Teacher at Sea

Taylor Planz

Aboard NOAA Ship Fairweather

July 9 – 20, 2018

Mission: Arctic Access Hydrographic Survey

Geographic Area of Cruise: Point Hope, Alaska and Vicinity

Date: July 10, 2018 at 5:30pm

Weather Data from the Bridge
Latitude: 64° 29.691′ N
Longitude: 165° 26.276′ W
Wind: 5 knots SW, gusts up to 12 knots
Barometer: 749.31 mmHg
Visibility: 10+ nautical miles
Temperature: 16.0° C
Sea Surface Temperature: 11.9° C
Weather: Cloudy, no precipitation

Science and Technology Log

The City of Nome from NOAA Ship Fairweather

Welcome to Nome — The center of town features a sculpture of a gold pan because Nome is historically known for gold panning and dredging.

I arrived in Nome on Saturday, July 7th around 7:30pm. The weather was a beautiful 65° F with just a few clouds in the sky! By the time I settled in my stateroom (bedroom) and unpacked my belongings, it was raining! According to the Western Regional Climate Center (WRCC), Nome receives and average of 16″ of rainfall each year and 60″ of snow. Despite this fairly low rainfall total, precipitation is a frequent
occurrence in Nome. Usually, the precipitation falls as more of a light drizzle in the summer, so the accumulation over the course of a year is very small.

I am here in Nome to join NOAA Ship Fairweather on a Hydrographic Survey of the vicinity of Point Hope, Alaska. Nome is the northernmost city in Alaska with a deep enough draft dock and facilities (such as sewage disposal and fresh water) for a ship. Therefore, we will start and end our trip in Nome. The ship has been experiencing some technical difficulties, so we were not able to go underway on our scheduled day of July 9. Over the weekend, engineers discovered a leak in the exhaust from one of the ship’s engines. Left untreated, black smoke could escape into the ship and personnel could be exposed to the unhealthy fumes. As of today, the exhaust pipe has been fixed, but there are a few parts that need to be shipped to Nome to finish the job. Hopefully NOAA Ship Fairweather will be underway later this week.

on a small boat — Here I am aboard one of the small boats with NOAA Ship Fairweather in Background at the Nome Harbor.

Once we are underway, the trip to Point Hope will take approximately 22 hours. That means we must reserve a full day on each end of the leg (another name for the trip) for travel. In order to maximize our limited time near Point Hope, NOAA Ship Fairweather will deploy up to four 28′ boats to work at the same time. There are also enough personnel onboard to allow data to be collected on the small boats for up to 24 hours per day. Two of the four 28′ boats are shown below.

Launch 2805 — Two 28′ boats with hydrographic instruments can be found on each side of NOAA Ship Fairweather.

So what are these boats all doing anyways? As previously mentioned, NOAA Ship Fairweather and its small boats are designed for hydrographic research. “Hydro” is a prefix meaning “water”, and “graph” is a root word meaning “to write”. The boats will map the sea floor (i.e. – “write” about what is under the water) and any of its contents with sonar devices. Sonar is an acronym that stands for SOund Navigation And Ranging. The main sonar device used on this ship is a multibeam echosounder (MBES for short), which can be found on the underside of the ship as seen below. Sound waves are emitted from the front of the device, known as the transmitter. The sound waves travel through the water column, bounce off the sea floor, and then get picked up by a receiver adjacent to the transmitter.

Multibeam Echosounder on NOAA research vessel (Photo courtesy: NOAA)

Conductivity, Temperature, and Depth Sensor (CTD) — Conductivity, temperature, and depth sensor (CTD)

There is a lot of math involved both before and after sound wave data is collected! The photo below is a CTD instrument, which stands for conductivity, temperature, and depth. Conductivity is a measure of how well an object conducts electricity. This instrument is lowered through the water column, collecting data on all three parameters listed above. The speed of sound varies based on conductivity and temperature, so the sonar data can be adjusted based on the results. For each individual data point collected along the sea floor, the actual speed of sound is multiplied by half of the time it took the sound wave to travel from transmitter to receiver. Using the equation distance = rate x time, one can find the distance (i.e. – depth) of each point along the sea floor. Put a bunch of those results together, and you begin to see a map!

Workstation — Many screens are needed to put all of the data together into an accurate sea floor map.

Sea floor maps use color to show different depths. The most shallow areas are colored with red, while the deepest areas are colored with blue. The remaining colors of the rainbow form a spectrum that allows us to see slopes. Today, we took a small boat out and surveyed the harbor where NOAA Ship Fairweather is docked. The harbor was very shallow, so every large rock in the harbor showed up as red on the map. The deeper areas showed up as blue. Hence my blog title! In my next blog, I will include pictures of maps that have recently been completed! Stay tuned!

Personal Log

Sea glass and rock treasures from the Bering Sea

Living on a ship that is docked in a tiny town with little to no cell phone service is fairly challenging. However, everyone on the ship finds creative solutions to keep themselves and others entertained. It is not uncommon for groups to form in the conference room to watch a movie on the big projector screen or to host a game night. There is also a fitness room onboard with plenty of exercise options! The Bering Sea and a long beach are a short, five minute walk from the ship. We had a campfire with marshmallows the first night that everyone returned to the ship from their time off. One person in our group found a whale bone on the beach! See the picture below. I spent some time walking the water line looking for sea glass. I actually found a few pieces, in

Whale bone — This is a whale bone that was found on the beach near NOAA Ship Fairweather

addition to a couple of rocks I thought were quite pretty! Sea glass is made from containers, bottles, and other glass objects that end up in the ocean. Over time, these objects break into smaller pieces, and the sandy and/or rocky sea floor erodes them. By the time they reach the beach, the pieces of glass have smooth edges and a translucent color. They are fun to collect as they come in many different colors, shapes, and sizes!

Did You Know?
Ocean water has a high conductivity, or ability to conduct electricity, because of all of the dissolved salts in sea water. The ions that form from dissolved salts cause ocean water to be about 1,000,000 times more conductive than fresh water!

Question of the Day
If a CTD determined that the speed of sound in an area was 1,504 m/s and the time it took for the sound wave to travel from the ship’s transmitter to receiver was 0.08 seconds, how deep was the water in that specific area? Make sure to use proper units, and remember that the total time is two ways and not just one way!
(Answer in the next blog post)

June 27, 2018July 17, 2018

Taylor Planz: Welcome to my Adventure! June 27, 2018

NOAA Teacher at Sea

Taylor Planz

Aboard NOAA Ship Fairweather

July 9 – 20, 2018

Mission: Arctic Access Hydrographic Survey

Geographic Area of Cruise: Point Hope, Alaska

Date: June 27, 2018

Weather Data from the House

Lat: 33.4146° N Long: 82.3126° W
Air Temperature: 23.3° C
Wind Speed: 6.1 Knots
Wind Direction: West
Conditions: Mostly Cloudy, 69% humidity

Personal Log

Welcome to my blog! My name is Taylor Planz, and I am so honored to be a Teacher at Sea this season! My passions in life besides education are my family, my cats, the mountains, and, of course, the ocean! In college I studied Oceanography and conducted undergraduate research in Chemical Oceanography where I explored phosphate dynamics in estuarine sediments. I went on multiple afternoon research cruises as part of my undergraduate degree, but I have never been on a ship overnight before now. I married my husband Derrick in 2014 on the beach, a childhood dream of mine. We got married on the Gulf of Mexico in Destin, Florida.

My husband Derrick and I got married on the Gulf of Mexico in 2014.

In the fall I will be teaching Physical Science and Forensic Science to juniors and seniors at Harlem High School in rural Harlem, GA. In the past, I taught middle school science and this year will be my first year in a high school classroom. I am excited to teach a new age group this fall as there are many big decisions students must make during these critical high school years. I hope that my experience with NOAA Teacher at Sea will inspire at least one student to pursue science, and maybe even ocean science, as a career! There is so much out there to be explored in the ocean, atmosphere, landscape, and even space!

Alaska is about to be the 34th state I have visited in my life! I never really understood how far away it was until my flights for this trip were booked. After departing Atlanta, Georgia, I will land briefly in Portland, Oregon and then Anchorage, Alaska before arriving in Nome, Alaska. From there, I will board NOAA Ship Fairweather for Point Hope. The flights and layovers alone will take 16 hours! It is quite amazing how far the United States stretches!

Flight Map — My trip from Atlanta, Georgia to Nome, Alaska will span 3 flights and 16 hours.

NOAA Ship Fairweather will be my home for 12 days next month where I will help conduct a hydrographic survey of the Point Hope region in northwestern Alaska. We will be so far north that we may cross the Arctic Circle! Only 30% of this region’s ocean floor has ever been surveyed, and those surveys need updating because they took place in the 1960s. Updated and new surveys will be vital for the continued safe navigation of the ever-increasing maritime traffic, especially because the size of the vessels navigating the local waters continues to grow.

Science and Technology Log

Most of the blog posts I write onboard NOAA Ship Fairweather will tie back to physical science, so today I would like to discuss some earth science! Point Hope, AK is located at 68.3478° N latitude and 166.8081° W longitude. As you may know, Earth is divided into 90° of latitude per hemisphere, so 68° is pretty far north! In comparison, Harlem, GA is located at 33.4146° N latitude and 82.3126° W longitude.

What is significant about a region’s latitude? Latitude affects many things including sunlight distribution, seasons, and climate. For most of us in the United States, we know that summer days are long and winter days are short (in reference to hours of sunlight per 24 hour day). In Alaska the effect is much more dramatic! Parts of Alaska experience 24 hours of daylight around the summer solstice in June and 24 hours of darkness around the winter solstice in December. Not only are the daylight hours much different than what most of us experience, the concentration of sunlight that reaches Alaska is different too.

No matter which hemisphere you live in, as your latitude increases away from the equator (0° latitude) the amount of sunlight that reaches you decreases. The sun has to travel a longer distance through more of Earth’s atmosphere to reach you. As the light travels, it becomes more diffuse and less of it reaches its final destination: the Earth’s surface. The less direct sunlight makes those places feel cooler throughout the year than places like Ecuador, which is close to the equator and gets direct sunlight year round. Regions closer to the equator also do not get the long summer days and long winter nights because their daylight hours average around 12 hours per day year round.

It’s a common misconception to think that Earth is closer to the Sun in the summer and farther in the winter. If this were true, summer would start in June all over the world! Instead, the Earth’s tilt (at 23.5°) determines which hemisphere is pointing towards the Sun and that hemisphere experiences summer while the other experiences winter. As latitude increases, the seasonal effect becomes more dramatic. In other words, the difference between summer and winter is more and more noticeable. That is why warm, tropical places near the equator stay warm and tropical year round.

With all of this important science to consider, my 12 days in Alaska will definitely be an adjustment! I purchased an eye mask to help me to get restful sleep while the sun shines around me close to 24 hours per day. In addition, I will be packing plenty of layers to stay warm during the cool days and cold nights. In Georgia, most summer days reach temperatures in the mid-90s with high humidity. In contrast, Alaskan days on the water will reach 50s-60s on average.

Did You Know?

NOAA Ship Fairweather was built in Jacksonville, Florida in the mid-1960s, and its home port today is on the opposite side of the country in Ketchikan, Alaska.

Question of the Day

How many hours of daylight did you experience in your home state during the summer solstice on June 21? Nome, Alaska had 21 hours and 21 minutes of daylight!