Making Sense of it All

   We all survived the voyage on the New Horizon, even the stormy seas that knocked objects on the floors and tossed people into walls.  All of the OBS's were successfully recovered and the scientists and technicians have begun the daunting task of calibrating and interpreting the data.  Now as we compile the footage and decide how to present our wealth of knowledge and experience the bigger picture of our mission unfolds.  How do we share this experience with the people of the North American West Coast in a way that is meaningful, informative, and not boring?  Wish us luck and feel free to make comments!

Daily Grind

Now that we can walk a straight line on land, we've been going through all the footage from the trip and categorizing it. We're working on a script for the narrative for the movie so that we can get a good idea of what sort of footage and animations will be needed to illustrate it. I'm excited to make animations for the concepts, and I've got more ideas in my head than I'll ever be able to make. Erik and Dean are much better at expressing the ideas verbally and giving me an idea of the visual representations for them. We plan to complete a script first, and then collect and create the video to go along with it. We came up with some titles for the documentary and we have some favorites, but we may have a poll here on the blog if we can't decide between a few. So much to do!

Back on Land

Thanks to a wonderful group of scientists and crew, dependable design of the OBS, and smooth seas, we completed the recovery days ahead of time and arrived in Newport yesterday morning.


Being off the ship is a bit strange as it still feels like everything should be moving. I can't seem to help walking like Jack Sparrow.

I'm looking forward to seeing all the video we took and making it into a movie to illustrate just how profound the experience has been. I'll miss the R/V New Horizon and her crew!

Fishing

There's a pretty long distance between the 12th and 13th sites, so today I've been keeping an eye on the fishing lines hoping for another fresh albacore dinner. I think Anna and I have gotten the hang of standing in one place as the ship moves. Here's my first experiment with editing the video, trying for a small file size...watch the horizon!

Erik has been interviewing the crew and other scientists. The engines are pretty loud so we are planning to do some of the interviews when we get to Newport tomorrow. It's hard to believe that it's almost over!
Here fishy fishy!

Sunday, 15-July, 15:39 local time: After our 4 am recovery, we sailed northwest, towards the next site, offshore of Vancouver Island. Unfortunately, high winds streaming along a ridge between high pressure in the Gulf of Alaska and a low off California brought high seas, reducing safety on the main deck and postponing that recovery. We, instead, sailed past this site to the northernmost station, thus buying some time. This strategy worked, recovery at the northernmost site was fast and efficient. We now cruise towards the last site on this line with following seas, a nice ride at last.

Ahead of Schedule

We just pulled in the 9th OBS about lunchtime. So far everything has gone pretty smooth, and there's talk that if it continues to go as nice as it has that we will get back to Newport sometime on Wednesday.

The weather has been pretty nice considering we are way out at sea, the photo shows some downtime in the sunshine with Erik soaking it up with a book on the main deck.
There's about four hours until the next site, headed south now from Vancouver Island. This morning there were several giant container ships around, its amazing how big those things are.

Sunday, 15-July, 04:00 Ah, the challenges of science at sea. After recovering 5 OBS's, we are cruising up the coast of Washington state on a line off of Vancouver Island. The further north we go, the rougher the seas. Our line takes us more or less straight into the swells, and our speed makes for a lot of bumps. We recovered last night at about 8 pm, then midnight, now we will slow down and hope to recover our next in the pitch dark, with somewhat high seas, and (hopefully not!) half-asleep. Wow!

Day 2

At about 9:30pm we picked up the fourth OBS. With the exception of the first one, the rest have gone pretty smooth. The first one was late at night in some fairly choppy seas, so we had to make two runs to get a grab on it. It's supposed to get a bit stormier as we head north, and could make things more difficult.
On another note, the sea sickness has dwindled down to a constant low grade nausea with some dizziness when I move. Going up and down stairs is not a joy, hopefully it improves as we go along.

Friday, July 13th, what are we doing out here?!

We left Newport, Oregon at about 4:14pm, crossing the bar into somewhat heavy seas.  Winds were up and the 165 foot R/V New Horizon can roll a bit in the swells.

During our cruise out to the first recovery site, we explored the ship.  The main hubs of activity for the scientific crew, that's us, are the main lab, the fantail (back deck, close to the water), and the mess.  These are all on the same level ('main deck') on the New Horizon.  Our cabins were 'cozy,' with Erik and I sharing with others on the '01 deck' (1 up relative to the main deck), and Erika assigned her own cabin below the main deck.  The differences are the ride (rolls more in the 01) and the noise (more engine noise in the below deck). 

We made our first recovery site at about 9:30 at night, just after darkness fell.  This was a challenging recovery.  Ray and Matt, from Scripps Oceanographic Institute (SIO) and Oregon State University/NOAA (OSU) communicated with the ocean bottom seismometer (OBS) using an acoustic transponder attached to the ship's hull.  They controlled this using a 'deck box.'  The first command issues was an 'enable,' to wake up the instrument.  After it responded affirmatively, they then checked with the bridge, and received permission to send the 'drop anchor' command.  The OBS are weighted with ejectable anchors, such that they fall to the ocean floor during deployment, then rise up for recovery later on (9 months in this case).  After the OBS acknowledges receiving the drop anchor command, 'burn wires' within the unit (a SIO 'abalone') it takes several minutes for the wire to burn through and the anchor to release.  Once this is done, the OBS begins to rise through the water.  Depending on its original depth, it can take up to several tens of minutes for the unit to reach the surface.

This particular night the seas were high, and so siting the surfaced unit was difficult.  The engineers who designed the abalone, Martin, Ray, and Paul, have planned for night recover by installing a strobe light that starts up once the OBS surfaces.  There is also a radio direction finder (RFD) that the bridge crew can use to get a bearing towards the unit.  Thus, they were able to spot the unit and shine a flood light on it.  It took two tries, with the ship carefully approaching the unit so that it would move past down the starboard side.  There, the able crew of Matt, Bill, Martin and marine tech Josh (check) were able to snag it with clip hooks tied to ropes and clipped onto extensible poles (gaffs).  Once one line was secured to the OBS and the ship, the line to a winch, tied to another clip hook, was attached, and the winch was used to recover the instrument to the fantail.  Other lines are attached during this process to stabilize the unit, and ship roll and sea swells can make this a challenging operation.

After an OBS is on board, the technical crew remove the logger unit from it.  This is contained in a plastic tube that is sealed to keep sea water out, and engineered to withstand the great pressures at depth.  The logger tube is brought into the main lab, where the unit is depressurized, connected to a computer, and data are downloaded.  The logger's internal clock is also checked against GPS-time for drift.

This entire process lasted until about 11:30 pm.  Afterwards, we retired to our bunks to catch some (fitful) sleep as the ship cruised through swells toward the next recover site, with an ETA of 7:30 am.

All Aboard!

Our first look at our home for the next week, the R/V New Horizon. We're all set up in our staterooms and now wandering around the ship to get familiar with it. All of the crew and other scientists we've met are very nice, and our first meal aboard was delicious! We head out in two hours, very exciting!

The Calm Before the Storm

   Only a matter of hours separate us from setting sail on our planets largest ocean, the Pacific. As we make our final preparations the excitement mounts.  Soon Dr. D, Erika, and myself will be surrounded by open water imagining what the ocean floor is like and how the recovery of our scientific instruments will unfold. 

    Starting tomorrow we will be out on the Pacific Ocean collecting Ocean Bottom Seismometers (OBS's) that have been recording seismic data for the last year.  These OBS's are located on the North American continental shelf and the oceanic Juan de Fuca plate, some located beneath more then 4000 meters (12,000 feet) of water.  We will be recovering 15 of the 64 OBS's that were deployed in 2011, part of an amphibious array that stretches from Northern California to Vancouver Island, B.C. and from the North American coast to almost 600 Km (400 miles) out at sea.

Megathrust Subduction Zone Earthquakes

   As we sit here doing research and preparing for the expedition ahead I can't help but wonder... Will the big one come today?  And when it does come how will the work we are doing right now help the people impacted by this large earthquake and its associated Tsunami deal with the catastrophe and its aftermath?  The more communities and individuals we can reach out to, educate, and get involved in this scientific endeavor the more prepared people will be and the more lives we can save.  Because it is not a question of if, but when.

Expedition Begins!

  After weeks of email exchange and electronic greetings Dean Livelybrooks, Erika Jefferson and myself (Erik Bengtson) have finally had the pleasure of meeting face to face in the real world.  Our CC@Sea voyage sets sail this Friday so we are battening down the hatches and plugging all the leaky holes in anticipation for some hard work and rewarding experiences.  Ocean Bottom Seismometers (OBS's) here we come!