DAILY LOGS
Coral Connections in the Gulf
August 21-September 2, 2011
aboard the NOAA Ship Nancy Foster
Mission Log
Friday, August 26, 2011
It's Calibration Time!
by Will Sautter
NCCOS Biogeography Branch
Today was a landmark for the "beam team!" We calibrated the Ek60 single-beam sonar for the first time this trip. This task is not something one person can do sitting at a computer for a couple of minutes. It actually takes a well coordinated team and lots of patience.
To calibrate the sonar, a solid metal sphere made of tungsten carbide has to be placed precisely underneath the transducer, the sound emitting sensor. The sphere is about the size of a ping pong ball and is stronger and denser than titanium. We use the tungsten carbide sphere because the metal has a known sound return strength that we can adjust our sonar to.
Erik “Ek60” Ebert with the tungsten carbide sphere. Behind him is the monitor for the Ek60 with the three frequencies displayed. This sphere weighs about two pounds and is laced with a very secure knot that is attached to the downriggers over the side of the ship. (Photo: NCCOS/Sautter)
The first thing that had to be done was to set up three downriggers off the sides of the ship. These downriggers are actually used for commercial fishing, but they are perfect for the job because they have a clicker which is used to measure how much line we had to reel in or let out. The sphere had to be carefully tied to the end of all three downriggers, using methods done by sailors for centuries. The sphere also has a lead dive weight dangling below it so that the currents under the ship won’t move the sphere while the system is calibrating.
There were two downriggers on the port (left) side of the ship, and one on the starboard (right). One person stayed on each downrigger while scientist Erik “Ek60” Ebert coordinated the calibration in the dry lab with a survey tech. We were all communicating with each other through walky-talkies listening to Erik’s commands from the lab for how much to reel in or let out line.
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The sphere and weight were lowered down into the water on the port side while the starboard side reeled it in, moving the sphere under the ship. And so began the long and tedious task of Eric trying to get the sonar to find the metal sphere under the ship from the team’s reels. This is harder than trying to guide three blind golfers to make a putt together.
We started at 6:00 pm with plenty of light and calm seas. It took two hours just for the sonar to find the sphere. At one point, it ended up back on the side of the ship and almost out of the water. About that time, scientist Christine Addison came around the ship and delivered the team ice cream bars to keep moral high.
Once Erik located the sphere, he had to adjust the sonar to three different frequencies. The different frequencies are just different returns that the sonar uses to filter out the noise of the ocean so the sensor can more accurately detect fish. The chief scientist buzzed Erik in the lab on the radio, “Uh, we have about 20 minutes till it gets dark”. Erik responded with a slight sign of hopelessness, “Well, it is going to take about 20 more minutes to calibrate”. But he got it. By the time it got too dark to read the counters on the reels, Erik happily announced, “Congratulations! We just calibrated all three frequencies in three hours!”
This was the second time anybody has successfully calibrated the Ek60 on this ship and it was Erik’s first time (others have just given up and used the default settings). I was onboard the ship the first time the Ek60 was calibrated by marine ecologist Dr. Chris “Cal King” Taylor, who smoothly got the settings in an hour and a half. It was a great success for the Beam Team on the Flower Gardens cruise, and it assured the best quality fish acoustics.
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Mission Log
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Fresh to the Field
by Matt Rittinghouse
NOAA
Hey guys, I’m Matt Rittinghouse. I graduated from the University of Alabama at Birmingham last May with a degree in biology and a minor in chemistry. Since late last June, I’ve been working along with NOAA in Charleston, SC. I am also the youngest scientist onboard the Nancy Foster, and have been involved primarily with drop camera work for Gulf seabed habitat characterization, as well as fish acoustics data processing.
This has been an incredible experience for me, as it’s my first time traveling into the field with NOAA. My previous nautical experience was a single trip out deep-sea fishing with my uncle, so you can just imagine the adjustment to living at sea for two whole weeks! It’s been extremely enlightening for me – everything from getting my sea legs, to learning sailors’ superstitions, to learning just how important preparedness in the field can be.
Matt Rittinghouse is about to deploy a drop camera that is used for ground-truthing our habitat maps. This allows the mapper to improve accuracy of the bottom characterization. Photo: NCCOS/Ebert
Weather permitting, the Nancy Foster sends out three vessels for data collection two times each day. Fellow scientist Erik Ebert and I have been sailing our vessel out to various sites in the Flower Garden Banks sanctuary, and reeling a camera down to the sea floor. We departed with a brand new waterproof camera and frame unit that allows us to both view and record the video data in a digital format from the vessel.
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On our first expedition, we soon discovered that the waterproof camera didn’t quite work as advertised. The waterproof seal flooded the second it was let down, rendering it useless. The camera can be replaced, but it’s very difficult to ship it back to the manufacturer for warranty from a ship in the Gulf. However, we had brought a second camera with us.
Matt deploying the drop camera over the side of the launch. Photo: NCCOS/Ebert
On the second expedition, we finally had a working camera. Our GPS unit had all of our drop site coordinates pre-programmed in, and we collected data from four sites with no problems. En route to the fifth site, however, the frame unit blew a fuse, leaving us dead in the water once more. Again, there were spare parts on board the Nancy Foster, and after some tinkering, we were back and ready to take out. The third expedition went excellently. We collected data from fifteen sites that morning alone.
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From my perspective as a young biologist fresh out of college, a ship like the Nancy Foster seems absolutely overwhelming. Not only is it a genuinely huge ship, but it also never sleeps. The crew and scientists are constantly rotating shifts. I’ve spent nights working until 3 AM processing the fish acoustics data to wake up at 8 AM to go back out to visit more drop camera sites. The amount of resources invested into coordinating a two week trip like this are just as intimidating.
Erik Ebert is at the controls of the drop camera while Matt smoothly lowers it down to the bottom. Erik constantly checks the video feed and GPS, as well as the data storage and the power supply. So far the guys have made about 80 drops out of the over 200 sites that need to be ground truthed.
Photo: NCCOS/Rittinghouse
If the camera goes out, you can’t just order another one onboard. If a fuse blows, you can’t just send it in to the manufacturer for repairs. And if you lose essential equipment for data collection, it’s extremely difficult to just shrug it off until “next time.” Having multiple spare parts and a working knowledge of the essential equipment has saved the drop camera expeditions repeatedly. Science is a very organic process. Things can and frequently do change in the blink of an eye. It’s important to stay on your defense when in pursuit of good data!
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Mission Log
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Salt Dome Science
by Will Sautter
NCCOS Biogeography Branch
This is Will again. Operations have been running very smoothly and the data is looking good. Since we are mapping such a unique feature on the sea floor, I think it would be good to give a little geological background (geology is my primary field of expertise).
Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary lies on top of salt domes several miles wide that have been rising from the lithosphere for millions of years. Surrounding these salt domes is a vast abyss of sea floor gradually sloping down to thousands of feet deep.
The salt domes are formed from the remnants of an ancient seaway that cut through North America after the supercontinent Pangaea split up. As the seaway receded, the salt from the evaporation of the ancient ocean deposited a thick layer on top of granite over a billion years old. Over time, the salt layer was covered up with younger sediments from the erosion of the mountain chains of North America and the birth of the Mississippi River.
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This is a simplified cross section of the Gulf of Mexico. The salt from the ancient ocean rises in giant glob like domes that push up miles through sedimentary rock until they reach the surface of the sea floor. Once the dome rises high enough to get sunlight, corals can colonize. Trapped between the salt and the billion year old granites is the natural gas that escapes through the cracks and bubbles up to the surface. Illustration is not to scale. (Image credit: NOAA Explorer Deep Sea Habitats 2003 website)
The salt layer formed domes over millions of years from the slow and steady rise through the younger sediments. It is hard to believe that rock can move on its own, but the reason is quite simple. Density.
Think of an old fashioned lava lamp: the wax is heated up at the base of the lamp and becomes less dense and rises through the more dense liquid to the top of the tube than cools off and collects back at the bottom. The salt is like the hot wax because it is less dense than the sediment cover, so the domes slowly rise up through the sediment where there is low pressure.
There are hundreds of salt domes across the Gulf of Mexico and across the Central United States. Without the salt domes, it would be too deep out here for these corals to survive because they need sunlight and nutrients that concentrate here from the passing currents.
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This is an image from the Ek60 single-beam sonar that shows an area with a couple of gas seeps (blue markings) from the sea bed (red contour line at bottom). The vertical bars are spaced 100 meters apart. The gasses escape from a crack in the salt dome, or fault, covered up by young sediments about a hundred feet down. These gases naturally play an important role in the carbon cycle of the oceans and global warming. Image: NCCOS
Other interesting features around Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary are gas seeps from the sea floor. We have seen several on the Ek60 single beam “fish finder” and even at the surface of the water as bubbles.
These seeps are hydrocarbons, or natural gas, that rise to the surface the same way the salt does. The natural gas is released from oil deposited miles under the seafloor between the granite and the salt layers.
The oil actually started out as billions and billions of microscopic plankton skeletons from the ancient ocean that covered North America. The micro organisms sank to the bottom of the sea when they died and formed a layer of ooze.
As the ocean receded, the salt layer formed on top of the ooze, capping it and pressurizing the ooze. Over millions of years of loading, the denser salt and sediments on top of the ooze squeezed it into oil and natural gas which rises under the salt domes and escapes from the cracks of the domes.
This is why the Gulf of Mexico contains the most valuable biological and geological natural resources in the country.
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Mission Log
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Life on Board
by Will Sautter
NCCOS Biogeography Branch
The Nancy Foster is one of my favorite ships on the seas. It is a fully capable research vessel and work boat, and one of the flagships of NOAA’s Atlantic fleet. This is my second cruise on the Foster, but I have seen her sailing out of her home port in Charleston, SC many times growing up across the Cooper River. The 187 foot ship was originally built as a Navy torpedo test craft and transferred over to NOAA to replace the retired Ferrel in 2001. For the past ten years, she has served hundreds of scientists and conducted research in the Gulf of Mexico, along the East Coast, and in the Caribbean Sea.
There are currently 35 people on board keeping the ship running and conducting the scientific research. There are 22 crew members including seven NOAA Corp officers that perform the day to day operations like driving the ship, maintaining the engines, cooking the food, running the electronics, and working on deck. There are 13 scientists that will be conducting the research at Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary. Since the ship is running 24/7 the scientists and crew divide their work times into different shifts, so some people may not even get to see each other on the ship until there are all hands meetings, drills, or meals.
Brian Deegan uploading diver video data in the wet lab. Behind him is the arsenal of underwater video cameras the team uses for fish and coral surveys. Photo: NCCOS/Sautter
The Foster is a very versatile ship that can house many different kinds of oceanographic equipment for whatever marine scientist need. Currently we are fitted for full time dive operations and multibeam work, but the ship has been used for everything from air sampling to sediment grabs. We have a wet lab and a dry lab used for multiple purposes. The dive and the drop camera team work out of the wet lab where they fill their SCUBA tanks, check and clean their gear, and upload their underwater video. The "beam team" works out of the dry lab where we acquire and process all of our SONAR data.
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On the back deck there are three small launch vessels that are loaded in and out of the water by a crane to take the scientists to dive sites or drop camera points. There is also a CTD (conductivity, temperature, and density) recorder that gets dropped into the ocean every 4 hours during the mapping to improve the accuracy of the maps.
The drop camera team is getting ready with the deck officer to load and deploy the Anbar launch vessel to ground-truth the habitat map of Flower Garden Banks. Photo: NCCOS/Clark
The ship also has everything you need for day to day life. There is a coffee maker and espresso machine to keep us alert and a juicer for a refreshing drink whenever anyone is thirsty. There is a soda machine that is 50 cents a can, which is used to fund the ship’s store that sells souvenirs and any kind of conveniences, like toothpaste and soap. The best thing is the ice cream freezer that is continuously stocked to keep moral high!
Below the main deck is a very nice gym that has everything from a punching bag to a step-master. And whenever anyone gets bored, there is a small library and movie lounge with a big screen tv and hundreds of movies. The movies range from the classics to the summer’s biggest blockbusters. NOAA ships get their movies on 8mm cassettes from the Navy, some of which haven’t even come out to video yet! Living on this ship is not a bad life and it is great for me to get out of the office, get out into the field, and get wet!
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Mission Log
Monday, August 22, 2011
Let the Science Begin!
by Will Sautter
NCCOS Biogeography Branch
We arrived at East Flower Garden Bank yesterday at sunset. Everyone was raring to go and making their final preparations for the first data collection in the morning.
After a big hearty breakfast the dive team zipped up their wetsuits, checked their gear, and loaded up one of the specially fitted launch vessels on the back deck of the Foster. There are two dive teams that will do a morning and an afternoon dive each, making four dives a day.
The specially certified NOAA science, safety, and technical divers make their way to the cap of the reef about 120 feet down and begin their coral and fish surveys. These divers can go deeper and stay down longer than recreational open water divers. They are also followed by highly trained safety divers that can assist the others if there is an incident, or signal the boat above if there is an emergency.
NOAA technical diver Brian Deegan finishing up a survey line. They use a tape measure to mark a straight line that they will swim across with video cameras and document the species of coral and algae to classify the habitat. Photo: NCCOS
Another launch vessel set out in the morning with drop camera equipment for habitat video analysis. The drop camera crew has a high-quality underwater digital video camera that is rigged to a frame that has two laser beams and is connected to a receiver, battery, and monitor by a long cable to the launch at the surface. The drop camera video is very important for the mapping of the sea floor because it provides a window of the habitat which the mappers will use to prove the accuracy of their maps. This is called ground-truthing, and it is essential for good science.
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Drop camera system used for ground truthing
and habitat classification. Photo: NCCOS
After all of the dives and the launch vessels were loaded back on board, the cooks served a delicious baked turkey for dinner. Then it was time for me and the "beam team" to step up and start mapping.
We are running three types of SONARS for bathymetry and backscatter, fish acoustics, and water column data. Bathymetry is what you call a map of the sea floor which is recorded by the multi beam echo sounders (MBES). Backscatter imagery of the sea floor is a map of the intensity of the sound that returns to the sensors from the ping of the sonars. Marine spatial analysts use backscatter data to define the habitat boundaries of the sea floor based on the brightness of the images.
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SONAR survey room. The monitors on the bottom row are for tuning the echo sounders to get the best quality data and logging the data. The monitors on the top row are for tracking the ship position and managing the data files. Photo: NCCOS
Fish acoustics use a single beam echo sounder (SBES) which is a scientific grade fish-finder to study where the fish are congregating over the reefs. Water column data serves the same purpose of the SBES, but it actually provides a 3D view of what is swimming in the water under the ship, which allows scientists to actually count how many fish could be in a school.
The concert of the three teams of scientists work together day and night to provide a complete and accurate assessment of the entire ecosystem of the marine life here at Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary. Once all of the data is analyzed, it will be available for anybody to see, including other scientists around the world for their own research.
A school of brown chromis swim above the reef at Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary. Photo: FGBNMS
This ecosystem is so pristine that is almost like going back in time to see what coral reefs used to look like before man had any impact on the oceans. The work that NOAA is doing will allow scientists and managers to monitor the health of the reefs and preserve it for future generations.
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Mission Log
Sunday, August 21, 2011
First Day Underway
by Will Sautter
NCCOS Biogeography Branch
This is Will Sautter from NOAA’s Biogeography Branch. I will be mapping the coral reefs from the ship's sophisticated mult-ibeam echo sounders (MBES) to produce high quality 3D maps of the coral reefs of the Gulf of Mexico. I am joining a team of survey technicians who will be operating the multi-beam SONARS, a dive team of scientists, safety, and technical divers, and the crew of NOAA Corp officers, engineers, and seamen aboard NOAA Ship Nancy Foster.
Image: NCCOS
We have just shoved off from Galveston, TX heading out to Flower Garden Banks. The survey team had a planning session after lunch to decide what settings we will use for the SONARS and where the ship will go to map. The dive team did a preliminary check on all of their equipment to make sure that their gear is all in good working order and safe for the over 40 dives they will be conducting. The field operations officer (FOO) debriefed us on ship safety and etiquette, which are the two most important things on this vessel.
Soon after our meeting, the fire alarm rang for our first emergency drill. Most of the scientists and crew have a set station where we meet on the back deck of the ship, while the officers quickly put on their fire-fighting gear and rushed to the scene of the pretend fire. After the drill was finished and we returned to the air conditioned labs to wipe the sweat off our brows, another alarm went off signaling abandon ship! Fortunately it was another drill, but we all grabbed our life vests and survival suits and headed to the life rafts.
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Me wearing a survivor suit and hurrying to the life raft
during an abandon ship drill. Although it can get pretty
hot wearing the thick full body suit in the summer
heat, I can still keep it cool. Photo: NCCOS
After everybody was accounted for and the drill was completed, the newest members of the ship went back into the lab to routinely try on their survival suits, aka “Gumby suits”. These full body insulated rescue suits are really easy to put on for emergency situations and zip up from the waist up to the nose. They are bright red with a strobe signal and help whistle dangling off the front. In a matter of minutes, the hallway became crowded with red lobster-looking humanoids.
Emergency drills always happen on the first transit out to the mission site, but I’m sure that it won’t be the last one over the next two weeks. They help prepare the crew for the real thing and it keeps everyone a little on their toes, but most importantly, everyone knows what to do when an actual emergency occurs.
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You get quite a shine off the reflective patches on the suit, a great feature to help rescuers locate you. Photo: NCCOS
Life on a ship is a lot different than your house on land. We will be over a hundred miles off shore for the next two weeks, so it is very important that we all understand how to live together and respect each other. The ship is its own little world; a floating community of people working 24/7 to keep the engines running, on course, and everybody happy and fed. Crew morale is very important when you’re stuck with the same group of people every day. The people who you want to be the happiest are the cooks, or stewards. Happy cooks = good food = happy crew!
Everyone on the science team seems very excited about getting to work and starting explorations. I can’t wait to see what we will find or what surprises are lurking down at Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary.
Mission Log
Wednesday
, August 17, 2011
by Kelly Drinnen
Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary
Outreach Specialist
Trip schedule has been altered slightly. Departure is now set for Sunday, August 21st. Looks like the first dive will take place on Monday, the 22nd, so expect a blog posting later that day or first thing the next morning.
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Mission Log
Monday
, August 15, 2011
by Kelly Drinnen
Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary
Outreach Specialist
Expedition planning and equipment gathering has begun. The scientists have submitted their bios, the mission plan is online, and we're a "Go for Launch" on Saturday, August 20th.
The last time we were scheduled for a research expedition on board the Nancy Foster, Hurricane Gustav and mechanical difficulties derailed our plans, so we're more determined than ever to get things off to a good start.
Stay tuned to see how this scientific adventure turns out...
Back to the most recent blogs...
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Mission Information
See where the Nancy Foster is right now using NOAA's Ship Tracker website.
For a general overview of this expedition, please visit the Nancy Foster Cruise 2011 page.
To learn more about the scientists on this expedition, please visit the Meet the Scientists page.
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