It’s deployment day! After months of preparation and days of practice, this buoy is finally going in the water!
The sheer volume of stuff that’s involved is mind boggling. There’s the buoy itself, which is nearly 3 meters (approximately 9 feet) tall; one meter of that sits below the surface. There’s 16 MicroCats (which are instruments measuring temperature, salinity and depth of the water) attached to over 350 meters of chain and wire. Then there’s another 1,800 meters of wire and 3,600 meters of two different types of line (rope) — heavy nylon and polypropylene. Then there’s 68 glass balls, for flotation. After that, there’s another 35 meters of chain and nylon line. Attached to that is an acoustic release, which does exactly what it sounds like it does — if it “hears” a special signal, it detaches from whatever is holding it down. In this case, that’s a 9,300 pound anchor. (The acoustic release and the glass balls make sure that all the instruments on the mooring line can be recovered.) All in all, nearly 6,000 meters — three and a half miles — of equipment and instrumentation is going over the stern of the Hi’ialakai. The length of the mooring line is actually longer (approximately one and a quarter times longer) than the ocean is deep where the buoy is being deployed. This is done so that if (or when) the buoy is pulled by strong winds or currents, there is extra “space” available to keep the buoy from getting pulled under water.
Diagram of the WHOTS station. Notice how many instruments are on the mooring line, below the surface! Photo courtesy of the University of Hawai’i.
Take a look at the diagram of the WHOTS-14 buoy. It’s easy to assume that the everything goes into the water in the exact same order as is shown on the diagram — but the reality of deployment is actually very different.
First, the MicroCats that are attached to the first 30 meters of chain (6 of them) go over the side. Approximately the first five meters of chain stay on board, which is then is attached to the buoy. After that, the buoy is hooked up to the crane, and gently lifted off the deck, over the side, and into the water. Then, the remaining ten MicroCats are attached, one by one, to the 325 meters of wire and, one by one, lowered into the water. Then the additional 3,400 meters of wire and nylon line are slowly eased off the ship and into the ocean. After that, the glass balls (two-foot diameter spheres made of heavy glass and covered by bright yellow plastic “hats”) are attached and join the rest of the mooring line in the ocean. Finally, after hours of hard work, the end of the mooring line is attached to the anchor. Then, with a little help from the ship’s crane, the anchor slides off the stern of the ship, thunks into the water, and slowly starts making its way to the bottom.
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4:18PM HAST: Splashdown! The anchor is dropped.
From the morning-of preparations to the anchor sliding off the Hi’ialakai’s stern, deploying the WHOTS buoy took 9 hours and 41 minutes.
Personal Log:
My laptop, secured for sea!
Another item to file under Things You Never Think About: Velcro is awesome. Ships — all ships, even one the size of the Hi’ialakai — frequently move in unexpected, jarring ways. (If you’ve never been on a ship at sea, it’s a bit like walking through the “Fun House” at a carnival — one of the ones with the moving floors. You try to put your foot down, the floor drops a few inches underneath you, and you’re suddenly trying to walk on air.) For this reason, it’s important to keep everything as secured as possible. Rope and straps are good for tying down things that can stay in one place, but something like a laptop, which needs to be mobile? Velcro!
Did You Know?
Getting ready to attach the glass balls to the mooring line. The light blue Colmega is in the upper right hand corner of the picture, trailing out behind the ship. The buoy, at the end of over three miles of mooring line, is no longer visible.
Not all line is created equal. Aside from obvious differences in the size and color, different lines have different purposes. The heavy nylon line (which is white; see the picture in slideshow of the line being deployed) is actually able to stretch, which is another safety precaution, ensuring that the buoy will not be pulled under water. The light blue polypropylene line, called Colmega, floats. In the picture to the left, you can see a light blue line floating in the water, stretching off into the distance. It’s not floating because it’s attached to the ship — it’s floating all by itself!
The location of the ALOHA measurement site. Photo courtesy of the University of Hawai’i.
Since 2004, the WHOTS stations have been measuring the interactions between the ocean and the atmosphere, as part of a long term study on ocean circulation. The site where the WHOTS stations are deployed is called ALOHA (A Long-Term Oligotrophic Habitat Assessment), located about 100 kilometers north of Oahu, Hawaii. The ALOHA station, maintained and monitored by the University of Hawai’i since 1988, makes oceanographic measurements (like water temperature, direction and speed of ocean currents, and amounts of plankton). The objective of the project is to use the area as a case study, as it is representative of the North Pacific subtropical gyre.
Diagram of the gyres (circulations) in the North Pacific Ocean. The green circles labeled “WGP” and “EGP” show the locations of the Western and Eastern Garbage Patches. Image courtesy of NOAA’s Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center.Diagram of the WHOTS station. Notice how many instruments are on the mooring line, below the surface! Photo courtesy of the University of Hawai’i.
WHOTS stations are moored (anchored) buoys. The buoy includes instruments floating on the surface to measure the weather (air temperature, wind speed, relative humidity, etc.), and there are also instruments along the mooring line to measure things like water temperature, currents and salinity. The instruments below the surface make measurements at the same time asthe meteorological measurements on the surface, so that air and sea interactions can be accurately studied.
Scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution visit the ALOHA site every year, to deploy a new WHOTS station, and retrieve older ones. Check out this video of the WHOTS-13 research cruise!
… the Teacher:
The summer I turned five, my house was struck by lightning. The bolt blew out my window, scattering glass shards across my bed, blasted chunks of concrete out of the driveway below, and set the garage on fire — which was almost immediately put out by torrential rain. I have been fascinated by the atmosphere ever since. When I learned I had been chosen for the WHOTS-14 research cruise, I was ecstatic. Not only because I’d been selected to participate in such an amazing opportunity, but because I would have the chance to learn more about the oceans, and how they interact with the ocean of air above them.
PAIHS Monroe students measuring water vapor and aerosols in the atmosphere, November 2016. Photo by SJ Adams.
I have taught science in New York City for eight years. For the past six years, I have taught twelfth grade geoscience at Pan American International High School at the James Monroe campus (PAIHS Monroe), in the Bronx. Each year, I do my best to get my students as excited about science as I am. For the past few years, that has meant dragging them outside in near-freezing temperatures to measure the local air quality. (So, maybe not the best method I could have chosen!)
(All of my students: “It’s too cold, Miss!” Samantha: “If it’s not too cold for the instruments, it’s not too cold for you!”)
These measurements were made as part of NASA GLOBE‘s Air Quality Student Research Campaign, and I was able to present their work at NASA Langley Research Center.
I hope that my experiences aboard the Hi’ialakai with the WHOTS-14 research cruise will teach me more about the ocean of air we live in, and help me develop more — warmer — ways to get my students interested in science!
PAIHS Monroe students studied a method of measuring water vapor in the air with an infrared thermometer as part of NASA GLOBE’s Air Quality Student Research Campaign.
Did You Know?
From NOAA’s Office of Marine and Aviation operations page: “Hi‘ialakai is a combination of Hawaiian words. Hi‘i means “to hold in one’s arms”; ala is route; and kai is the sea. Thus, NOAA named this ship to signify “embracing pathways to the sea”.”
While the visual team is working hard on the flying bridge, scanning the waters for our elusive cetacean friends, acoustics is down in the lab listening for any clues that there might be “something” out there.
The hydrophone array is a long microphone pulled behind the ship
At any given time, two acousticians are listening to the sounds of the ocean via a hydrophone array. This array is a long microphone pulled behind the ship as she cuts through the water. When the acousticians hear a click or a whistle, a special computer program localizes (or determines the distance to) the whistle or the click.
But it’s not quite as simple as that. There’s a lot of noise in the ocean. The array will pick up other ship noise, cavitation (or bubbles from the propeller) on our ship, or anything it “thinks” might be a cetacean. The acoustics team must determine which sounds are noise and which sounds belong to a mammal. What the acousticians are looking for is something called a “click train.” These are sound produced by dolphins when they are foraging or socializing and are a good indicator of a nearby cetacean. On the computer screen, any ambient noise shows up as a plotted point on an on-screen graph. When the plotted points show up in a fixed or predictable pattern, then it could be a nearby cetacean.
The acousticians are also listening to the sounds on headphones. When they hear a whistle or a click, they can find the sound they’ve heard on the plotted graph. On the graphical representation of the sounds coming in to the hydrophone, the x-axis of the graph is time, and the y-axis is a “bearing” angle. It will tell which angle off the ship from the front the noise is coming from. For example, if the animal is right in front of the bow of the ship, the reading would be 0 degrees. If it were directly behind the ship, then the plotted point would come in at 180 degrees. With these two pieces of information, acousticians can narrow the location of the animal in question down to two spots on either side of the ship. When they think they have a significant sound, the acousticians will use the information from the graph to localize the sound and plot it on a map. Often times they can identify the sound directly to the species, which is an extraordinary skill.
Here’s where things go a little “Fight Club.” (First rule of fight club? Don’t talk about fight club.) Once the acousticians localize an animal, they must determine if it is ahead of the ship or behind it. Let’s say for example an acoustician hears a Pilot Whale. He or she will draw a line on a computerized map to determine the distance the whale is to the ship using the data from the graph.
This is a “clean” localization of a marine mammal. Notice the two spots where the lines cross – those are the two possible locations of the mammal we are tracking. The ship is the red dot, the blue dots are the hydrophone as it is towed behind the ship.
Because the hydrophones are in a line, the location provided from the array shows on the left and the right sides. So, the map plots both of those potential spots. The two straight lines from the ship to the animal make a “V” shape. As the ship passes the animal, the angle of the V opens up until it becomes a straight line, much like opening a book to lay it flat on the table and viewing how the pages change from the side. As long as the animal or animal group is ahead of the ship, the acousticians will alert no one except the lead scientist, and especially not the marine observers. If a crew member or another scientist who is not observing mammals just so happens to be in the acoustics lab when the localization happens, we are sworn to secrecy, as well. Sometimes an acoustician will send a runner to get the lead scientist to discreetly tell her that there is something out there.
The screenshot on the left shows a series of spotted dolphin “click trains.” Notice the marks all in a line along the graph. The right photo shows the various localizations that the acoustics team has picked up from the click train graph. The red dot is the ship, the gray line is the “track line”, and the two blue dots behind the ship are the hydrophone arrays. Notice the V shape gradually goes to a straight line and then turns in the opposite direction.
This way, the lead scientist can begin the planning stages for a chase on the mammals to do a biopsy, or send the UAS out to get photos with the Hexacopter. (More on this later.)
As the mammals “pass the beam” (the signal is perfectly on either side of the ship, and starting to make an upside down V from the ship), the acousticians can alert the visual team of the sighting. As soon as everyone is aware the mammals are out there, either by sight or sound, the whole scientific group goes “off effort,” meaning we funnel our energy in to counting and sighting the mammals we have found. When this happens, communication is “open” between the acoustics team and the visual team. The visual team can direct the bridge to head in any direction, and as long as it’s safe to do so, the bridge will aid in the pursuit of the mammals to put us in the best position to get close enough to hopefully identify the species. Today, one mammal observer had a sighting almost 6 miles away from the ship, and she could identify the species from that distance, as well! Even cooler is that it was a beaked whale, which is an elusive whale that isn’t often sighted. They have the capability of diving to 1000m to forage for food!
When the visual team has a sighting, the three visual observers who are on shift have the responsibility to estimate the group size.
Chris captures photos of Melon Headed Whales for Photo ID.
Here we go with Fight Club again – no one can talk to one another about the group sizes. Each mammal observer keeps their totals to themselves. This is so that no one can sway any other person’s opinion on group size and adds an extra element of control to the study. It is off limits to talk about group sizes among one another even after the sighting is over. We must always be vigilant of not reviewing counts with one another, even after the day is done. The scientific team really holds solid to this protocol.
Once the sighting is over, all parties resume “on effort” sightings, and the whole process starts all over again.
Now, you might be thinking, “Why don’t they just wait until acoustics has an animal localized before sending the mammal team up to look for it?
Ernesto on the “Big Eyes” during a Melon Headed Whale Visual Chase
Surely if acoustics isn’t hearing anything, then there must not be anything out there.” As I am writing this post, the visual team is closing in on a spotted dolphin sighting about 6.5 miles away. The acoustics did not pick up any vocalizations from this group.
Shannon and Jen in the acoustics lab “seeing” the sounds of the ocean.
This also happened this morning with the beaked whale. Both teams really do need one another in this process of documenting cetaceans. Further, the acoustics team in some cases can’t determine group sizes from the vocals alone. They need the visual team to do that. Each group relies on and complements one another with their own talents and abilities to conduct a completely comprehensive search. When adding in the hexacopter drone to do aerial photography, we now have three components working in tandem – a group that uses their eyes to see the surface, a group that uses the ocean to “see” the sounds, and a group that uses the air to capture identifying photographs. It truly is an interconnected effort.
Personal Log
I haven’t gotten the chance to discuss just how beautiful Hawai’i is. I would think that it is generally understood that Hawai’i is beautiful – it’s a famed tourist destination in an exotic corner of the Pacific Ocean. But you have to see it to believe it.
Melon-Headed Whales take an evening ride alongside the starboard side of Sette.
I’ve been lucky enough to see the islands from a unique perspective as an observer from the outside looking inland, and I just can’t let the beauty of this place pass without mention and homage to its stunning features.
Hawai’i truly is her own artist. Her geologic features create the rain that builds her famed rainbows, which in turn gives her the full color palate she uses to create her own landscape. The ocean surrounding the shores of Hawai’i are not just blue – they are cerulean with notes of turquoise, royal, and sage. She will not forget to add her contrasting crimson and scarlet in the hibiscus and bromeliads that dot the landscape. At night when the moon shines on the waters, the ocean turns to gunmetal and ink, with wide swaths of brass and silver tracing the way back up to the moon that lights our path to the sea. With time, all of her colors come out to dance along the landscape – including the sharp titanium white foam that crashes against the black cliffs along Kona. And if a hue is errantly missed in her construction of the landscape, early morning showers sprout wide rainbows as a sign of good fortune, and as a reminder that she forgets no tones of color as she creates.
It is our responsibility to protect these waters, this landscape – this perfect artistry. It is critically important to protect the animals that live in the ocean’s depths and the ones that cling to the island surface in their own corner of paradise. I like to think that this study takes on this exact work. By giving each of these species a name and identifying them to each individual group, we share with the world that these cetaceans are a family of their own with a habitat and a purpose. When we “re-sight” whales that the team has seen in past studies, we further solidify that those animals have families and a home amongst themselves. The photo identification team counts every new scar, marking, and change in these animals to piece together the story of their lives since they last met with the scientists. Everyone on Oscar Elton Sette talks about the new calves as if we were at the hospital with them on the day of their birth, celebrating the new life they’ve brought forth to continue their generations. I like to think we all make a little room in the corner of our hearts for them as a part of our family, as well.
Did you know?
The Frigate bird has a Hawaiian name, “Iwa”, which means “thief.” They call this bird “thief” because they steal prey right from the mouths of other birds!
“Spyhopping” is the act of a whale poking his head out of the water and bobbing along the surface.
It is legal for research ships to fish off the ship, so long as we eat what we catch while underway. This led to the shared consumption of some delicious mahi mahi, fresh from the depths for lunch today. Yes. It was as good as it sounds.
Oscar Elton Sette knows how to celebrate! Yesterday was Adam’s birthday, a marine mammal observer. They decorated the mess in birthday theme, cranked up the dinnertime music, and the stewards made Adam his favorite – blueberry cheesecake for dessert!
Much of the crew likes to pitch in with food preparation. The on ship doctor, “Doc”, makes authentic eastern dishes, and the crew made barbeque for everyone a few nights ago at dinner.
Mission: WHOI Hawaii Ocean Timeseries Station (WHOTS)
Geographical Area of Cruise: Pacific Ocean, north of Hawaii
Date: June 29th, 2016
Weather Data from the Bridge
(June 29th, 2016 at 12:00 pm)
Wind Speed: 12 knots
Temperature: 26.3 C
Humidity: 87.5%
Barometric Pressure: 1017.5 mb
Science and Technology Log
Approaching Weather
When an anchor is dropped, forces in the ocean will cause this massive object to drift as it falls. Last year, after the anchor of mooring 12 was dropped, an acoustic message was sent to the release mechanism on the anchor to locate it. This was repeated in three locations so that the location of the anchor could be triangulated much like how an earthquake epicenter is found. This was repeated this year for mooring 13 so next year, they will know where it is. From where we dropped the anchor to where it fell, was a horizontal distance of 3oo meters. The ocean moved the 9300 pound anchor 300 meters. What a force!
The next morning as the ship was in position, another acoustic message was sent that triggered the release of the glass floats from the anchor. Not surprisingly, the floats took nearly an hour to travel up the nearly 3 miles to the surface.
A small boat went to retrieve the mooring attached to the floats
Once the floats were located at the surface, a small boat was deployed to secure the end of the mooring to the Hi’ialakai. The glass floats were loaded onto the ship. 17 floats that had imploded when they were deployed last year. Listen to imploding floats recorded by the hydrophone. Implosion.
Selfie with an imploded float.
Next, came the lengthy retrieval of the line (3000+ meters). A capstan to apply force to the line was used as the research associates and team arranged the line in the shipping boxes. The colmega and nylon retrieval lasted about 3 hours.
Bringing up the colmega line and packing it for shipping.
Once the wire portion of the mooring was reached, sensors were removed as they rose and stored. Finally the mooring was released, leaving the buoy with about 40 meters of line with sensors attached and hanging below.
Navigating to buoy.
The NOAA officer on the bridge maneuvered the ship close enough to the buoy so that it could be secured to the ship and eventually lifted by the crane and placed on deck. This was followed by the retrieval of the last sensors.
Bringing the buoy on board.
The following day required cleaning sensors to remove biofoul. And the buoy was dismantled for shipment back to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
Kate scrubbing sensors to remove biofoul.
Dismantling the buoy.
Mooring removal was accomplished in seas with 5-6 feet swells at times. From my vantage point, everything seemed to go well in the recovery process. This is not always the case. Imagine what would happen, if the buoy separated from the rest of the mooring before releasing the floats and the mooring is laying on the sea floor? What would happen if the float release was not triggered and you have a mooring attached to the 8000+ pound anchor? There are plans for when these events occur. In both cases, a cable with a hook (or many hooks) is snaked down to try and grab the mooring line and bring it to the surface.
Now that the mooring has been recovered, the science team continues to collect data from the CTD (conductivity/temperature/depth) casts. By the end of tomorrow, the CTDs would have collected data for approximately 25 hours. The data from the CTDs will enable the alignment of the two moorings.
CTD
The WHOTS (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Hawaii Ocean Time Series Site) mooring project is led by is led by two scientists from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; Al Plueddeman and Robert Weller. Both scientists have been involved with the project since 2004. Plueddeman led this year’s operations and next year it will be Weller. Plueddeman recorded detailed notes of the operation that helped me fill in some blanks in my notes. He answered my questions. I am thankful to have been included in this project and am grateful for this experience and excited to share with my students back in Eugene, Oregon.
Al Plueddeman, Senior Scientist
The long term observations (air-sea fluxes) collected by the moorings at Station Aloha will be used to better understand climate variability. WHOTS is funded by NOAA and NSF and is a joint venture with University of Hawaii. I will definitely be including real time and archived data from WHOTS in Environmental Science.
Personal Log
I have really enjoyed having the opportunity to talk with the crew of the Hi’ialakai. There were many pathways taken to get to this point of being aboard this ship. I learned about schools and programs that I had never even heard about. My students will learn from this adventure of mine, that there are programs that can lead them to successful oceanic careers.
Brian Kibler
I sailed with Brian Kibler in 2013 aboard the Oscar Dysonup in the Gulf of Alaska. He completed a two year program at Seattle Maritime Academy where he became credentialed to be an Able Bodied Seaman. After a year as an intern aboard the Oscar Dyson, he was hired. A few years ago he transferred to the Hi’ialakai and has now been with NOAA for 5 years. On board, he is responsible for rigging, watch and other tasks that arise. Brian was one of the stars of the video I made called Sharks on Deck. Watch it here.
Tyler Matta, 3rd Engineer
Tyler Matta has been sailing with NOAA for nearly a year. He sought a hands-on engineering program and enrolled at Cal Maritime (Forbes ranked the school high due to the 95% job placement) and earned a degree in maritime engineering and was licensed as an engineer. After sailing to the South Pacific on a 500 ft ship, he was hooked. He was hired by NOAA at a job fair as a 3rd engineer and soon will have enough sea days to move to 2nd engineer.
There are 6 NOAA Corps members on the Hi’ialakai. They all went through an approximately 5 month training program at the Coast Guard Academy in New London, CT. To apply, a candidate should have a 4 year degree in a NOAA related field such as science, math or engineering. Our commanding officer, Liz Kretovic, attended Massachusetts Maritime Academy and majored in marine safety and environmental protection. Other officers graduated with degrees in marine science, marine biology, and environmental studies.
Nikki Chappelle, Bryan Stephan and Brian Kibler on the bridge.NOAA Ensign Nicki Chappelle
Ensign (ENS) Nikki Chappelle is new to the NOAA Corps. In fact, this is her first cruise aboard the Hi’ialakai and second with NOAA. She is shadowing ENS Bryan Stephan for on the job training. She spent most of her schooling just south of where I teach. I am hoping that when she visits her family in Cottage Grove, Oregon that she might make a stop at my school to talk to my students. She graduated from Oregon State University with degrees in zoology and communication. In the past she was a wildfire fighter, a circus worker (caring for the elephants) and a diver at Sea World.
All of the officers have 2 four hour shifts a day on the bridge. For example ENS Chappelle’s shifts are 8am to 12pm and 8pm to 12am. The responsibilities of the officers include navigating the ship, recording meteorological information, overseeing safety. Officers have other tasks to complete when not on the bridge such as correcting navigational maps or safety and damage control. ENS Stephan manages the store on board as a collateral assignment. After officers finish training they are sent to sea for 2-3 years (usually 2) and then rotate to land for 3 years and then back to sea. NOAA Officers see the world while at sea as they support ocean and atmospheric science research.
ET Frank Russo
Electronics technician (ET) seem to be in short supply with NOAA. There are lots of job opportunities. According to Larry Wooten (from Newport’s Marine Operation Center of the Pacific), NOAA has hired 7 ETs since November. Frank Russo III is sailing with NOAA for the first time as an ET. But this is definitely not his first time at sea. He spent 24 years in the navy, 10 at Military Sealift Command supporting naval assets and marines around the world. His responsibilities on the Hi’ialakai include maintaining navigational equipment on the bridge, making sure the radio, radar and NAVTEX (for weather alerts) are functioning properly and maintaining the server so that the scientists have computer access.
I have met so many interesting people on the Hi’ialakai. I appreciate everyone who took the time to chat with me about their careers or anything else. I wish I had more time so that I could get to know more of the Hi’ialakai crew. Thanks. Special thanks to our XO Amanda Goeller and Senior Scientist Al Plueddeman for reviewing my blog posts. And for letting me tag along.
Did You Know?
The buoy at the top of the mooring becomes a popular hang out for organisms in the area. As we approached mooring 12, there were several red-footed boobies standing their ground. There were also plenty of barnacles and other organisms that are planktonic in some stage of their lives. Fishing line is strung across the center of the buoy to discourage visitors but some still use the buoy as a rest stop. The accumulation of organism that can lead to corrosion and malfunction of the equipment is biofoul.
Red-Footed BoobiesWires and line to prevent biofoul.
One More Thing
South Eugene biology teacher Christina Drumm (who’s husband was Ensign Chappelle’s high school math teacher) wanted to see pictures of the food. So here it is. Love and Happiness.
Mission: WHOI Hawaii Ocean Timeseries Station (WHOTS)
Geographical Area of Cruise: Pacific Ocean, north of Hawaii
Date: June 28th, 2016
Weather Data from the Bridge (June 28th at 2pm)
Wind Speed: 12 knots
Temperature: 26.2 C
Humidity: 81%
Barometric Pressure: 1016.3 mb
Science and Technology Log
The Aloha Station is about 100 miles north of Oahu, Hawaii and was selected because of its closeness to port but distance from land influences (temperature, precipitation etc). The goal is to select a site that represents the north Pacific, where data can be collected on the interactions between the ocean and the atmosphere. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Hawaii Ocean Time Series (WHOTS) has used this site for research since 2004. You can find real time surface and meteorological data and archived data at the WHOTS website.
We are stationed in the vicinity of mooring 12 and 13 in the Aloha Station to begin intercomparison testing. CTD (conductivity/temperature/depth) casts are conducted on a regular schedule. This data will help align the data from mooring 12 to mooring 13. If CTDs don’t match up between the two moorings then efforts will be made to determine why.
Mooring 13 is being inspected to make sure sensors are working. Photographs have been taken to determine measurement height of the instruments and where the water line is.
When I was aboard the Oscar Dyson, there were multiple studies going on besides the Walleye Pollock survey. The same is true on the Hi’ialakai. The focus is on the mooring deployment and recovery but there are a professor and graduate student from North Carolina State University who are investigating aerosol fluxes.
Professor Nicholas Meskhidze earned his first Physics degree from Tbilisi State University (Georgia). He completed his PhD at Georgia Institute of Technology (USA). He is now an Associate Professor at NC State University Department of Marine Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.
Meskhidze’s study on this cruise is looking at sea spray aerosol abundance in marine boundary layer and quantifying their flux values. Sea spray is formed from breaking waves. Sea spray analysis begins by collecting the aerosol. Using electrical current, particles of a given size (for example 100 nanometer (nm)) are selected for. This size represents the typical size of environmental climatically important particles (70-124 nm). The next step is to remove all other particles typically found in the marine boundary layer, such as ammonium sulfate, black carbon, mineral dust and any organics. The remaining particles are sea salt.
Dr. Nicholas Meskhidze with the sea spray analysis equipment
Meskhidze is looking at the fluxes of the salt aerosols. Sea salt aerosols are interesting. If a salt aerosol is placed in 80% humidity, it doubles in size. But then placed in 90% humidity, it quadruples in size. Due to their unique properties, sea salt aerosols can have considerable effect on atmospheric turbidity and cloud properties.
Aerosols are key components of our climate but little is known about them. Climate models are used to predict future climatic change, but how can one do this without understanding a key component (aerosols)?
Source: IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, Summary for Policy Makers
Personal Log
The galley (ship’s kitchen) is a happening place three times a day. The stewards are responsible for feeding 30-40 people.
Chief Steward Gary Allen is permanently assigned to the Hi’ialakai. He has worked for NOAA for 42 years and he has stories to tell. He grew up in Tallahassee, Florida and his early work was at his father’s BBQ stand. He attended Southern University on a football scholarship and majored in food nutrition. After an injury, he finished school at Florida A & M. He worked for a few years in the hotel food industry, working his way up to executive chef. Eventually he was offered the sous chef job at Brennan’s in New Orleans. He turned it down to go to sea.
Chief Steward Allen Gary
In 1971, he sailed for the first time with NOAA. The chief steward was a very good mentor and Gary decided to make cooking at sea his career. He took a little hiatus but was back with NOAA in 1975, where he would spend 18 years aboard the Discoverer and would become chief steward in 1984. He would sail on several other ships before finding his way to the Hi’ialakai in 2004.
In the 42 years at sea, Gary has seen many changes. Early in his career, he would only be able to call home from ports perhaps every 30 days. Now communication allows us to stay in contact more. He is married to his wife of 43 years and they raised 3 daughters in Seattle.
I asked him what he enjoys the most about being at sea. He has loved seeing new places that others don’t get to see. He has been everywhere, the arctic to Antarctica. He enjoys the serenity of being at sea. He loves cooking for all the great people he meets.
I met Ava Speights aboard the Oscar Dyson in 2013 when she was the chief steward and I was participating in the walleye pollock survey as a Teacher at Sea. She has been with NOAA for 10 years.
Ava Speights (on the right) and me
She and a friend decided to become seamen. Ava began working in a shipyard painting ships. In 2007, she became a GVA (general vessel assistant) and was asked to sail to the Bahamas for 2 weeks as the cook. This shifted her career pathway and through NOAA cooking classes and on the job training, she has worked her way up to chief steward.
She is not assigned to a specific ship. She augments, meaning she travels between ships as needed. She works 6 months of the year, which allows her to spend time with her 2 daughters, 1 son, 2 stepdaughters and 4 grandchildren. Her husband is an engineer with NOAA. Her niece is an AB (able bodied seaman) on deck. Her son is a chief cook for Seafarer’s. And her daughter who just graduated high school will be attending Seafarer’s International Union to become a baker. Sailing must run in her family.
She loves to cook and understands that food comforts people. She likes providing that comfort. She has also enjoyed traveling the world from Africa to Belgium.
2nd Cook Nick Anderson
Nick is 2nd cook and this is his first cruise with NOAA. He attended cooking school in California and cooked for the Coast Guard for 6 years where he had on the job training. In 2014, he studied at the Culinary Institute of America and from there arrived on the Hi’ialakai. He also is an augmenter, so he travels from ship to ship as Ava does.
Did You Know?
The Hi’ialakai positioned mooring 13 in an area with a 6 mile radius known as the Aloha Station. Check out all of the research that takes place here at Station Aloha. There is a cabled observatory 4800 meters below the ocean surface. A hydrophone picks up on sounds and produces a seismograph. Check the results for the night the anchor was dropped.
Seismograph during Mooring Deployment
Click here to hear whales who pass through this area in February.
