NOAA Teacher at Sea Lisa Kercher Onboard NOAA Ship Fairweather June 11 – 24, 2006
Emily pulls in the CTD.
Mission: Hydrographic and Fish Habitat Survey Geographic Area: Alaska Date: June 19, 2006
Science and Technology Log
The morning began at 7:00 with a delicious breakfast to fuel me up for what lie ahead. I was on the POD (plan of the day) to go out on a small launch boat. How exciting! My only hesitation was knowing that I would be out on a small boat for 8 hours and I might just have to pee! Regardless of my worriers, shortly after the 8:00 safety briefing, Launch 1010 was put in the water and myself, ENS Jonathan French, and boatmen Emily Evans and Ron Walker boarded with our gear for the day! We headed south of Andronica Island, where the FAIRWEATHER had been anchored for the night, and began our hydrography work. Each launch is equipped with the same technology that the FARIWEATHER has, making it easy to collect more data at one time. As we located the polygon where we were assigned to work, we dropped the CTD (conductivity, temperature, depth) device into the water.
Jon and Emily watch the computers to monitor our work
Jon and Emily quickly processed the data and then we began making passes through the polygon collecting data from the bottom of the ocean using the MBES (multi beam echo sounder) that is located on the underside of the boat. This equipment provides a picture of what the ocean floor looks like and locates any features such as rocks and rough terrain by bouncing beams of sound to the bottom of the ocean floor and then receiving them back. The speed at which the beams return and the length at which they travel is combined with the data that is collected from the CTD to get an accurate representation of the surface of the ocean bottom. I was able to run the equipment for a short time as Jon looked over my shoulder. It was not too difficult! I was excited to learn later that night, after our work was processed that we collected very clean data that they survey team was very happy with! Good work team!
I work the computer system, logging data as we cruise through our polygon
Personal Log
I could not believe how absolutely gorgeous it was in Alaska today! The skies were clear, the wind was calm and the temperature was warmer than it has been since arriving here! I even got to sunbathe on the launch for a short while as we cruised back to the FAIRWEATHER at the end of our workday. I got to see lots of wildlife on the launch and on Andronica Island. While surveying today and yesterday we had to travel at precise speeds to acquire the most accurate data. While on Launch 1010 today we surveyed at 8 knots, completed our roll test at 7 knots, and yesterday while surveying on the FAIRWEATHER we cruised at 10 knots. Convert each of these speeds to miles per hour to get a better idea of how fast were we moving through the water in each instance.
Stellar Sea Lions sun on a small island southwest of Andronica Island.A black oystercatcher comes close to our campfire on Andronica Island. We were invading his habitat.The remains of a sea urchin were washed up on the beach of Andronica Island.
Lupine, a beautiful purple flower, grew wild all over the banks of Andronica Island.
There will be no fish caught today. The OREGON II is steaming to port in Galveston. One of the two radars has failed. The ship is required to have two functioning radars in the event that one should fail. Therefore, we must return to port and make repairs.
When the radar was lost, we were underway to the tip of Texas, off the coast of Brownsville, to begin surveying in preparation for the Gulf Coast shrimping season. We expect to make port this afternoon and get underway south again sometime Monday.
Personal Log
I don’t mind having this time off from the fish. Part of my mission is to write lesson plans that correspond to the activities aboard. This will give me time to work on the plans.
Question of the Day
What does the radar do?
The radar serves as a set of electronic “eyes.” It recognizes obstacles in the distance so that they can be avoided by making necessary course corrections.
NOAA Teacher at Sea
Jacob Tanenbaum Onboard NOAA Ship Miller Freeman June 1 – 30, 2006
Mission: Bering Sea Fisheries Research Geographic Region: Bering Sea Date: June 18, 2006
Weather Data from the Bridge
Visibility: 10 miles
Wind Speed: 9 miles per hour
Sea Wave Height:2 feet
Water Temperature:41 degrees
Air Temperature:40.8 degrees
Pressure: 1013 Millibars
Personal Log
NOTE: We will arrive in the port of Dutch Harbor, Alaska on June 20. As the project draws to a close, I would like to evaluate how effective it was. There is a link to an electronic survey. I would like to ask students, teachers, parents, and other visitors to the site to take a few moments to let me know what you think of this idea. The survey is all electronic and only takes a minute or two to complete. Thank you in advance for your time. Click here to access the survey.
Sea cucumbers
By now, you have met many of the interesting people aboard NOAA ship MILLER FREEMAN. There are three groups of people aboard these ships. The officers on the ship are part of the NOAA Corps. This is a uniformed service of the United States consisting of about 300 officers who complete rigorous training and hold ranks, like ensign, or commander. They are in charge of ships operations and stand watch on the bridge. The scientists aboard are mostly from NOAA research labs, like the Alaska Fisheries Science Center in Seattle. Many of the other members of the crew are civilian wage mariners. These are professional sailors who handle many of the day to day operations of the ship. Some, such as Chief Engineer Bus, have made their home on this ship for close to 30 years. Other sailors are contract workers who come aboard for a few months, go home and take a break, then join the crew of another ship for a different sort of cruise. Sometimes they are on research vessels, sometimes they are on freighters, sometimes they are on tankers. Today, lets meet able-bodied seaman, or AB Michael O’Neal. Click each question to listen to the answer.
We had another in a series of amazing bottom trawls last night. When the nets trawl along the bottom out here, some of the most interesting creatures of all get swept into our nets. Creatures that live on the bottom are often stranger looking for a few reasons. They are adapted to blend into the bottom so that predators cannot see them. They often wind up looking like rocks or plants as a kind of defense. They are also adapted to an environment with higher pressure and less light than the surface. Some of their adaptations can also make them look very different from other fish. Since they don’t have to worry about predators below them, these fish may be flat and have both their eyes sticking up. These creatures often do not need to be fast swimmers, since their defense is to blend into the environment rather than swim away when predators approach. The basket of sea cucumbers was one of the strangest things I’ve seen so far. These sticky blobs are not plants. They are sea creatures that live on the bottom of the sea and sift through the sand or water to find food. There are several different kinds of sea cucumbers in this basket. Can you see the different types? Mud stars, on the other hand, are soft and sticky, not like the sea stars we have at home. It may be called a mud star, but I think looks like Patrick from Sponge Bob.
Another kind of sculpin with large fins that look like the wings of a butterfly, called a Butterfly sculpin.
Question of the Day
Now that you have seen some of the different jobs aboard NOAA Ship MILLER FREEMAN, if you were on a ship, which job would you prefer? Write me a comment on the blog and let me know!
Answer to Yesterday’s Question
Look at the movements of the ship described above. When the ship drives into the wind and waves, sailors call it a corkscrew motion. Can you think why?
A corkscrew motion occurs when the ship is struck by waves in such a way that it moves in several motions at once. In other words, it may pitch, roll, surge, and sway all at the same time. I’m getting a funny feeling in my stomach just thinking about it!
Answers to Your Questions
Sorry that I left off the link from Friday where you can see the position of the ship. Here it is. Fair warning, the site was down for most of today, so if it does not work, just try again later.
After we put in to port, I’ll have a day or two in Dutch Harbor to look around, before I can get a flight in to Anchorage. After that, I’ll be visiting some friends and family out west before I head back east. Thanks for writing.
NOAA Teacher at Sea Lisa Kercher Onboard NOAA Ship Fairweather June 11 – 24, 2006
LCDR E.J. Van Den Ameele, XO of the Fairweather
Mission: Hydrographic and Fish Habitat Survey Geographic Area: Alaska Date: June 18, 2006
Ship Crew
The ship’s Executive Officer (XO) is LCDR E.J. Van Den Ameele. The XO is responsible for the administration of the ship. He is synonymous with the principal of a school! He supervises each department, supervises the officers, and handles the budget, logistics, and personnel.
LT Jennifer Dowling
Field Operations Officer (FOO) LT Jennifer Dowling is the project manager for the activities that go on when conducting hydrography operations. She describes some of her duties. “I am the liaison between the ship and scientists when they are aboard conducting their own missions. I determine what my resources are (qualified personnel, working boats, up-to-date equipment and software), and create daily plans to accomplish each mission. I evaluate all data once it is processed and submit it to the CO who will send it off for final evaluation and publication. I also keep candy at my desk to lure junior officers and survey techs over so that I may give them jobs to do!”
Junior Officers (JOs) include ENS Jonathan French, ENS Matthew Glazewski, ENS Wendy Lewis, and ENS Allison Martin. Their duties include maintaining weather and deck logs, assisting in training the crew, planning for emergencies on board, acting as an Officer of the Deck (OOD), assisting with positioning of beacons and lights, and most importantly NAVIGATING THE SHIP!
Left to right: ENS Jonathan French, ENS Matthew Glazewski, ENS Wendy Lewis, and ENS Allison Martin
ENS Glazewski, a 2005 graduate of Penn State University, recalls, “like many people from PA, I always thought of Alaska as the little inset on the map of the US. After moving here and driving around on the FAIRWEATHER, I’ve realized just how amazingly huge Alaska is, and how each area of the state has its own personality, climate, wildlife, terrain, and rugged beauty.”
ENS Allison Martin
ENS Allison Martin shares a memorable moment of her job, saying, “one of my duties on board is Assistant Horizontal Control Officer. Basically, this means that when we have a project that includes a beacon or another Aide to Navigation (ATON) we must get a precise position of it for the charts. In order to do this Grant Froelich and I get to climb up, often very tall, rocks or structures to reach the light. On our last project in the Gulf of Esquibel (near Ketchikan, AK), we got to climb up a 105-foot tall rock. That’s 10 stories high! It was a lot of fun.”
Chief Survey Tech, Lynn Morgan
Chief Survey Tech, Lynn Morgan describes her job: “My position as chief is to run the survey department and to ensure that the survey equipment is available and in good working order. Most of our acquisition and processing of data is on computers, so there is a lot of installing and troubleshooting of software. Standard operating procedures are necessary to ensure quality data is collected and submitted, so the survey department maintains documentation on our procedures and trains new survey personnel and junior officers.”
Lynn shares a personal story about her life on the ship. “One of the most rewarding aspects of this job for me personally, besides getting to learn about hydrography from really sharp people, is that I’m getting to see what life was like for my father when he was on this ship 20 years ago. He was in the NOAA Corps and still works for NOAA’s Office of Coast Survey, so it’s a lot of fun to chat with him now about ‘ship stuff’ and to be able to relate to what he was doing when he wasn’t home.”
Electronics Technician (ET) Richard Conway
Electronics Technician (ET) Richard Conway can be seen doing all kinds of necessary jobs around the boat from repairing computers to establishing communications for the ship. “After several weeks of being on board and learning the layout of my sate room, I found out that I could navigate in my room in the dark without turning the light on. Well one night I went to the bathroom and being I did not want any bright lights in my eyes, I navigated my way in the dark. After flushing the toilet I suddenly saw all these green and white sparks start flashing in the bowl. ‘Oh no, what did I do?’ Being half asleep, my first thought was I had accidentally knocked something electrical into the toilet so I turned on the lights. I saw nothing…nada, zippo. By then my brain was more awake and I remembered the FAIRWEATHER uses seawater to flush its toilets. What I was seeing were the little critters, phytoplankton and zooplankton, that give off bioluminescence when excited. In this case it was the agitation from flushing. So I turned off the lights and waited for my eyes to adjust. I then flushed several more times, each time enjoining the light show. Don’t tell anybody but I was pretending I was at a 4th of July fireworks show complete with Oooooo and Ahhhhh sound effects!”
Personal Log
I have to admit that living on a ship with all of these people can be quite challenging, but so enjoyable at the same time. It is almost like teaching middle school! They all make me laugh all the time! The camaraderie on board is great. We often sit at meals joking around and sharing stories. Everyone is of varying ages and backgrounds and from different parts of the United States, so they have many interesting experiences to share and a wealth of knowledge to pour out. Each night there are movies to watch and it is fun to get together with the others onboard to hangout in the evening after all your work is complete. There is a very apparent team effort when on the FAIRWEATHER which is very important for completing tasks that are as cutting edge as the research that these scientists are doing! I am grateful to those aboard the FAIRWEATHER for making me feel so welcome and teaching me so much that I will be able to take back to use in my science classroom!
This watch began, again, with fish waiting on the deck. We processed that catch just as we had all the others. While we were processing, another catch of fish were being collected. A CTD was also performed. When the fish catch has been processed, it is necessary to return the processed organisms to the sea. There is a shoot in the wetlab designed for this purpose. The shoot has not been working properly so far on this cruise. During our watch it backed up completely. Water was rising up through the drain in the floor. Clearing the blockage took several hours.
The catch was sitting on the deck and we had no reason to believe that we would get the shoot clear any time soon. The Watch Leader elected to process the catch “dry” so we separated and identified the species without the benefit of water to clean the organisms. Following this catch, the shoot was cleared and the lab was cleaned. We are now making our way south to assess the Texas Gulf Coast shrimp prior to the beginning of their season..
Personal Log
What a mess! Each organism had to be dipped into water just so that we could be sure it was identified properly. We found hundreds of little shrimp that are not even harvested for food purposes.
Question of the Day
Where do the shrimp live? Answer: In the mud on the bottom of the sea.
