Fish Lips
The RVSJ is on station, Ted Waitt arrives in Honolulu and everyone has a Happy Valentine’s Day — even the fish…
SATURDAY, 02.14.09
0636: From Chris Nutter
Mike, if you think of it when Ted Waitt gets up in the air there, it would be interesting to get some pics looking at Howland at 1,000 feet at 20 miles and 10 miles heading about 068 degrees magnetic into Howland at 1912 GMT. Be interesting to re-create what Amelia Earhart was looking at in terms of the low profile island and the sun. Good hunting. Hope to see you soon.
1034: T-Minus 1 Day
Today we came within five miles of Gardner Atoll, and the fishing poles came out. Andy Sherrell and one of the deck hands from the ship’s crew, both hooked up fish, but all we landed was a pair of lips; Happy Valentine’s Day, little fishes.
The island looked much more verdant than I expected, palm trees and other vegetation easily seen from the ship as we passed alongside, as well as what looked to be a very nice stretch of beach on the southwestern side. The eastern edge of the island was shrouded in a thin layer of mist, evidence of what I would think is a fairly rough-breaking reef on that side of the island.
Gardner Island
Lee and I agreed to slow the ship for an hour or two to try and make a trawl for the scientist who is aboard to do biology sampling. Preparations were made to deploy the net by covering the LARS with a tarp, and attaching the net to the tow-winch on the upper deck and to the tugger winch on the work deck through the central and outside sheaves, respectively. These two winches pull the bar that supports the net up into a frame, rigged below the submersible A-frame, for deployment back out over the stern of the ship.
Net Trawl Test
Initial deployment of the trawl…
When the bar that supports the net (this same bar has a number of weights on either end to take the net down into the water column when deployed) neared the support frame, the port side cable attached to the tugger winch failed. In essence, the end of the cable had what would be akin to a knot tied in it to provide an eye by which it could be lifted, but the ‘knot’ slipped out. In this case the knot was a Swagelok fitting that was either the improper size or was improperly closed, allowing that end of the net’s towbar to fall to the deck. This was a close call. Had someone been standing under that bar, we would be steaming in the opposite direction right now with a serious injury or a body bag. Fortunately, everyone on the back deck was paying attention and the only damage was to a platform that had been added to the back of the LARS to allow personnel to safely walk across that area. We plan to load-test all of those eyes and reconstruct those that fail.
Research Specialist Mark Dennett of Woods Hole (WHOI) inspects a fitting that failed during a net deployment.
A piece of decking is bent when a large weight drops during operations. Note how quickly equipment can be degraded by an ocean environment. All the equipment in this picture is less than six months old, yet is already beginning to rust due to constant salt water exposure.
Other activities today included a briefing of the entire AUV team, reviewing procedures for launch and recovery of the vehicles, as well as a separate meeting with deck leads, covering how to improve procedures and safety.
Lunch was a very nice tuna melt on a kaiser roll, and supper was lasagna with a fresh salad. the weather was roughly 10 knots of wind, seas three to five feet with a period of nine seconds. We are making slightly better speed than yesterday, and our current eta to our search grounds is 2:00 a.m. tomorrow, roughly 19 hours from now.
Ted Waitt Personal Log Entry: 02.14.09
Left San Diego at 11:30 p.m. on February 14th, and landed in Honolulu for fuel after a four to five hour flight. Traveling with two dogs — Max and Domino — and upon landing, we had one sick puppy on our hands. Apparently, Domino got into some bad clams or something. After a minor delay, we are re-boarding the plane with full fuel and are now going back to sleep. All is well.
A CTD cast...
2315: We Have Arrived
We’re on station. We’re running a CTD (Connectivity, Temperature, Depth) cast to check underwater comms (checking for thermoclines and currents, seeing how our modems are doing). This will take a couple hours. We will then farm Deep Ocean Transponders (DOTs) and survey them in. We’re setting four on the first run, which will give us a set field for six boxes, 1-3B and 1-3A. That’s a fair bit of surveying, probably be close to 10 a.m. by the time we splash the first vehicle. My schedule is screwed, up at 3 a.m. this morning and can’t sleep. Probably get some sleep after the DOTs get started. Day 1 update tomorrow afternoon.
Just wanted you to know, Project 8 is officially underway on site. I would say morale is through the roof, people are stoked.
Weather is good with say three to five-foot seas, five knots wind and a surface current of just over one knots. Temperature is maybe 85.
