News
Mission Accomplished Despite Weather
Thirteen days at sea. Two weather days. Wave heights that ranged from 2 – 12 ft, with most days somewhere around 7 foot waves. Winds from a pleasant 5 knots to days with up to 35 knots, with higher intermittent gusts. Except for two days when the sun shone, the weather was damp, cloudy, rainy, with an occasional wintery mix. Despite the conditions, the Endurance Team 18 accomplished its main mission objectives.
Much of the experience for those aboard the R/V Sikuliaq for the 18th turn of the Coastal Endurance Array focused on the weather, which presented operational challenges and less-than-ideal working conditions on some days with wintery conditions. Yet it was unseasonably mild for March. The team did a great job of taking advantage of good weather windows and, when needed, donned foul weather gear and kept at it for the duration of the expedition.
[media-caption path="https://oceanobservatories.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/recoveryinRain-1.jpeg" link="#"]Not required: sunscreen. Required: a good set of foulies, dry socks, and breaks for hot chow and beverages. The Endurance 18 expedition experienced less-than-ideal weather during this late winter recovery and deployment mission. Credit: Jonathan Fram, OSU.[/media-caption]“I can’t say enough about the professionalism of our team, and the crew of the R/V Sikuliaq,” said Jonathan Fram, Chief Scientist for Endurance 18, and project manager for the Coastal Endurance Array. “We literally weathered storms together to ensure a timely recovery and deployment of the Coastal Endurance Array. Everyone worked safely, without complaint to get the job done. “
Every six months, the Endurance Array Team heads to sea off the coast of Washington and Oregon to recover ocean observing equipment that has been in the water reporting data. This time, the expedition happened earlier in the year, in late winter rather than in early spring. This timing could have been compounded this year by the atmospheric rivers on the west coast of the US, but luckily the associated storms stayed south of the Endurance Array.
Nonetheless, the Endurance 18 succeeded. They recovered and deployed seven moorings, recovered two gliders, and deployed four gliders on the array. The team also deployed a coastal surface piercing profiler. Working with a remotely operated vehicle, the team was able to locate and recover an anchor that was stuck on the bottom.
[media-caption path="https://oceanobservatories.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Anchor-clip-2.jpg" link="#"]A remotely operated vehicle was used to recover one of the mooring’s anchors that was stuck on the bottom. The ROV remote arm was used to clip on to the anchor and an onboard winch pulled it onboard. Credit: Alex Wick, OSU.[/media-caption]The expedition had a few non-weather-related novel components, as well. During leg two, University of South Carolina researcher Eric Tappa led the recovery and deployment of a sediment trap adjacent to OOI’s Oregon Slope Base site. This was the fourth time the sediment traps were deployed as part of Oregon State University Professor Jennifer Fehrenbacher’s and University of South Carolina Professor Claudia Benitez-Nelson’s work reconstructing ocean circulation, temperature, and chemistry in the past from sediment collected.
Each leg of the trip also had a new University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System (UNOLS) cruise volunteer and an OSU undergraduate, employed by OOI to help with the refurbishment of moorings, onboard. Such seagoing experience is invaluable to those deciding on future career paths. Listen to what UNOLS volunteer Olana Costa and OSU Undergraduate Athena Abramhamsen have to say about their experiences.
Last but not least, during leg two, OSU science videographer Kimberly Kenny recorded onboard work and shared her experiences in multiple videos and images that can be seen here and here.
“Regardless of conditions, there is nothing like being at sea with an energetic, committed group of colleagues,” said Fram. “Time at sea provides a unique opportunity to re-enforce the importance of our work to provide data to help better understand some of the changes taking place in the ocean.”
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Axial Seamount Helping Scientists Forecast Eruptions
On March 20, 2023, Oregon Public Radio reported about scientists work at Axial Seamounts, a seamount and submarine volcano on the Juan de Fuca Ridge, about 480 kilometers off the coast of Oregon. The story details how bottom pressure recorders connected to OOI’s Regional Cabled Array are helping reveal the inner workings of the Axial Seamount and helping scientists forecast when it might erupt next. Featured are Oregon State University Professor Bill Chadwick, University of North Carolina Professor Scott Nooner, Oregon State University Assistant Professor Jeff Beeson, and College of Charleston Assistant Professor Haley Cabannis.
Access the article here.
Read MoreMaking the Ocean Accessible Through Sound
“Scientists are finding that people can sometimes pick up more information from their ears than the eyes can see. And ears can perceive patterns in the data that the eyes can’t see,” said Amy Bower, a Senior Scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Principal Investigator for the Accessible Oceans project. “Adding sound to science allows more people to experience science, follow their curiosity, and make science more accessible to all. “
Bower joined forces with a multidisciplinary team to explore ways sound could be used to visualize data. Funded by the National Science Foundation’s Advancing Informal STEM Learning Program, Bower and her team have been working for nearly two years on Accessible Oceans: Exploring Ocean Data through Sound. Their goal is to inclusively design and pilot auditory displays of real ocean data. They are implementing a process called sonification, assigning sound to data points. Each member brings expertise to the task at hand. Principal Investigator Bower is an oceanographer. Dr. Jon Bellona is a sound designer with specialization in data sonification at the University of Oregon. Dr. Jessica Roberts and graduate student Huaigu Li, both at Georgia Tech, are Learning Sciences and human-computer interaction experts. Dr. Leslie Smith, an oceanographer and specialist in ocean science education and communication at Your Ocean Consulting, Inc., rounds out the team. Bower is a blind scientist, who lends a crucial perspective in the research and overall execution of the project.
To begin, the team chose to use datasets collected by the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) that had previously been transformed into classroom-ready use by Smith and the Ocean Data Labs. The team is working first on three of these curated datasets: the 2015 eruption of Axial Seamount, the vertical migration of zooplankton during an eclipse event, and carbon dioxide exchange between the ocean and the atmosphere.
“Data is made of numbers. Sonification is basically just translating numbers into sound,” Bower explained. “So instead of seeing numbers go up and down on a graph, for example, you can hear them go up and down.”
To ensure an inclusive final product, the team has undertaken a co-design process in which a variety of stakeholders have been engaged for input throughout the process. The team interviewed both subject matter experts and teachers of the blind and visually impaired to ensure that both scientific and pedagogical needs were being met. They then explored the integration of various auditory display techniques and ended up with a mix of data sonification, narration, and environmental sounds. The team put together a sample of five to six sonification examples for each data set, then surveyed a group of blind, visually impaired and sighted adults and students with science and non-science backgrounds. The survey’s purpose was to ask which sounds and which approaches might work best for both sighted and visually impaired listeners.
“We asked, for example, which of these sounds do you think best represents gases coming in and out of the ocean. The feedback was overwhelmingly in favor of a breathing sound,” said Bower. “As listeners will hear in the first example below that deals with carbon dioxide exchange between the ocean and the atmosphere, the breathing sound, with narration explaining what to expect, really brings the data to life.”
Accessible Oceans is a pilot and feasibility study for a museum exhibit that would introduce the broader public to what it’s like to experience ocean data through sound. At the end of this two-year project, the team intends to submit another proposal to design and build an exhibit that make ocean data come alive in a new and accessible way.
“As we’ve been working on this project, we’ve come to realize that to engage more people in science, technology, engineering and math, we can appeal to their ears as well as their eyes,” added Bower. “And I’m determined to help make science as accessible as possible for everyone.”
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To hear more about Amy Bower’s work as an oceanographer and her exploration of sonification, tune into this episode of The Science of Ocean Sounds, Tumble Science Podcast for Kids.
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Eighteenth Turn of the Coastal Endurance Array
On Tuesday March 7th, 11 hearty scientists and engineers from Oregon State University (OSU) are heading out to the northeast Pacific aboard the R/V Sikuliaq to recover and deploy (turn) the Coastal Endurance Array. For some of the team members, this will be the eighteenth time they have made this journey to ensure that the Coastal Endurance Array continues to report data from this important region.
The array is in an important region with coastal upwelling, where strong winds cause surface waters to be pushed offshore and water from the ocean depths is pulled up – or upwelled – to the surface to take its place. These regions comprise less than 5 percent of the ocean’s surface area, yet account for a quarter of the global fish catch. The Endurance Array has been collecting data in this region since 2016, which scientists have used to examine ocean health issues, including hypoxia, ocean acidification, and how they affect ocean life.
[media-caption path="https://oceanobservatories.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/IMG_6460-scaled.jpg" link="#"]The Endurance 18 will be deploying seven moorings, six gliders, and four coastal surface piercing profilers, which requires the expedition to be conducted in two legs because of space limitations on the stern. Credit: Darlene Trew Crist ©WHOI.[/media-caption]The Endurance team will be very busy during their 16-day expedition. Because of the size of the equipment, the expedition will occur in two legs so recovered equipment can be brought back to shore and replaced with equipment to be deployed. They intend to recover and deploy seven moorings and recover two gliders, while deploying a full contingent of six gliders. Three gliders will “fly” at shallow depths of 200 meters across the shelf. Another three will travel at 1000 meters depth offshore. Weather and seas permitting, the team also plans to deploy four coastal surface piercing profilers.
The team will also be conducting water sampling before and after each deployment. They will conduct CTD (conductivity, temperature, and depth) casts at the deployment/recovery sites and carry out shipboard sampling for field validation of the platforms and sensors that will remain in the water for the next six months.
Chief Scientist, Jonathan Fram, who will lead both legs of the expedition, said, “Endurance 18 is happening earlier than our usual spring expeditions, which means we are likely to face rough seas. We have a highly experienced team, the ship has an exceptional crew, and we’ll be on a weather-hardened ship, so we will be able to make the most of our time at sea. Platforms that can be deployed from a smaller vessel may be deferred to spring if there are long weather delays on this end-of-winter expedition.”
The team had already experienced some unexpected weather as a freak snowstorm covered the ocean observing equipment in the storage area in Corvallis. The team had to “clean off the cars,” so to speak, before loading the equipment onto trucks for transport to the dock in Newport, for loading on the ship.
[media-caption path="https://oceanobservatories.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Screen-Shot-2023-03-06-at-10.04.08-AM.png" link="#"]A few days before ocean observing equipment in Corvallis was set to be transported to the dock in Newport for loading onto the R/V Sikuliaq, an unexpected snowstorm made its way to Corvallis, covering the equipment in white. Credit: Jon Fram, OSU.[/media-caption]In addition to OOI’s recovery and deployment operations, during leg two, University of South Carolina researcher Eric Tappa, will lead the recovery and deployment of a sediment trap adjacent to OOI’s Oregon Slope Base site. “This is an example of how OOI tries to maximize ship time by partnering with scientists and other partners and institutions to make full use of the time at sea. We are always open to discussing ways we might advance other scientific objectives,” added Fram. (See How to Participate for more information.)
[media-caption path="https://oceanobservatories.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Screen-Shot-2023-03-06-at-10.06.37-AM.png" link="#"]One technical improvement that will be deployed during Endurance 18 is a new steel frame over the solar polars to prevent damage caused by frequent sea lion visitors. This is one of many incremental technical improvements that are made to OOI arrays to optimize their operations while at sea. Credit: Jon Fram, OSU.[/media-caption]During the expedition, two University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System (UNOLS) cruise volunteers will be onboard as well as two OSU undergraduates who are employed by OOI to help with the refurbishment of moorings. An OSU videographer will also be onboard to share the ongoing work. Bookmark this site and follow along on the journey.
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Test Deployments Underway for Pioneer Relocation
Tuesday February 21, 2023, a team of scientists and engineers from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) left Charleston, SC aboard the R/V Neil Armstrong to begin test deployments in preparation for the installation of an Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) ocean observing system in its new location in the southern Mid-Atlantic Bight (MAB). The science team will deploy two test moorings off the coast of North Carolina, occupying shallow and deep sites of the proposed array. The deployments will supplement computer modeling to ensure the mooring designs perform as expected in the MAB environment. Once the array is fully operational in 2024, the ocean data collected will be available online in near real-time to anyone with an Internet connection.
Ocean observing data helps to track, predict, manage, and adapt to changes in the marine environment. Coastal communities use ocean observing data to prepare for floods and other natural disasters. The instrumented arrays gather physical, chemical, geological, and biological data from the air-sea interface to the seafloor, providing a wealth of information for research and education.
[media-caption path="https://oceanobservatories.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/CNSM_buoy_atsea-2-1.png" link="#"]Offshore conditions can be brutal for moorings that remain in the water for six-month deployments. The new location for the OOI’s Coastal Pioneer Array is designed to withstand treacherous conditions, including extreme storms. Credit: ©Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.[/media-caption]“This new Pioneer Array location in the MAB offers many opportunities for scientists to obtain data to further their research, and will provide better insight into conditions in the area for a variety of stakeholders,“ said Al Plueddemann, Project Scientist for OOI’s Coastal and Global Scale Nodes group at WHOI, which is responsible for operation of the Pioneer Array. “We welcome researchers, educators, and industry members to reach out to us to explore ways we might work together to maximize the usefulness of the data.”
The OOI is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to collect and deliver ocean data in select locations for 25 years or more. This longevity of data collection makes it possible for researchers to identify both short term processes and long-term trends in our changing ocean. The OOI’s Coastal Pioneer Array was designed to be relocatable, and its first deployment was off the coast of New England at the Continental Shelf/Slope interface, where it collected data from 2016 until it was recovered in September 2022. The new location off the coast of North Carolina was chosen by NSF based on input from the science community during a series of NSF-sponsored workshops in 2022.
Dr. Reide Corbett, Executive Director of the Eastern Carolina University’s Coastal Studies Institute (CSI), is enthusiastic about the opportunities the Pioneer Array will bring to the region. “The cross-shelf suite of instrumentation off northeastern North Carolina’s coast is in a region of complex physics and critical ecosystem dynamics that draws interest from many disciplines and creates opportunities for transformational science. This is also in a region with a growing renewable energy sector, including two active offshore wind leases, with opportunities to partner with the agencies involved. The Coastal Studies Institute is excited about the observations that will be made from these instruments, allowing us to better address climate change influences in the coastal ocean, and improve ocean/weather/storm forecasts through data sharing. Beyond just the instruments in the water, the new partnerships and collaborations created as part of this deployment will provide the ability to better engage this socio-economically diverse region, with disadvantaged groups more impacted by sea level rise and climate change compared to many coastal regions. This broad network of partnerships across the region will provide a mechanism to drive knowledge to action,” states Corbett.
[media-caption path="https://oceanobservatories.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Pioneer-MAB-schematic.png" link="#"]Schematic drawing of the Pioneer MAB moored array to be deployed off the coast of Nags Head, North Carolina. The full array, to be deployed in the spring of 2024, will consist of ten moorings at seven different sites (three sites contain mooring pairs). For the test deployment, one Coastal Surface Mooring will be deployed at the Central site and one Coastal Profiler Mooring will be deployed at the Northeast site.[/media-caption]The new MAB site represents a different environment than the New England Shelf location and offers opportunities to collect data on a variety of cross-disciplinary science topics, including cross-shelf exchange and Gulf Stream influences, land-sea interactions associated with large estuarine systems, a highly productive ecosystem with major fisheries, processes driving biogeochemical cycling and transport, and fresh-water outflows during extreme rain events.
The MAB location is expected to have different wind, wave, and current conditions than the Pioneer Array experienced on the New England Shelf. In addition, deployments in the new location will be in both shallower and deeper water depths than those off the New England coast.
A Coastal Surface Mooring (CSM) will be deployed at 30 meters depth at 35o 57.00’ N, 75o 07.5’ W. The CSM is specifically designed to examine coastal-scale phenomena and withstand the challenging conditions of shallow coastal environments. The Surface Mooring contains instruments attached to a Surface Buoy floating on the sea surface, a Near Surface Instrument Frame 7 meters below the surface, and a Seafloor Multi-Function Node (MFN) located on the seafloor. Additionally, the Surface Buoy contains wind turbines and solar panels for power generation and antennas to transmit data to shore via satellite.
A Coastal Profiler Mooring (CPM) will be deployed at 600 meters depth, 36o 03.80’ N, 74o 44.56’ W. The CPM contains a Wire-Following Profiler that houses instruments. The Wire-Following Profiler moves through the water column along the mooring riser, continuously sampling ocean characteristics from about 23 m below the surface to 23 m above the sea floor. The CPMs also carry an upward-looking Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler to measure ocean currents over the same region of the water column traversed by the profiler.
The test mooring data will be evaluated during the deployment and after recovery to determine whether any modifications are needed to the mooring designs. The plan is to deploy the full array in the spring 2024.
An update on the Pioneer Array relocation is planned for April 20 at 6 pm at the Coastal Studies Institute on East Carolina University’s Outer Banks Campus. Contributing to the CSI “Science on the Sound” lecture series, WHOI’s Dr. Plueddemann will discuss the Pioneer Array infrastructure, instrumentation, and what is planned for its upcoming move off the North Carolina coast. The event is free and open to the public. For those unable to attend, the program will be live-streamed, as well as archived for later viewing, on the CSI YouTube Channel.
[media-caption path="https://oceanobservatories.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/A-Frame.png" link="#"]An A-frame at the stern of the ship is used to lift an OOI Coastal Surface Mooring into the water at the start of the deployment. A team secures guidelines to ensure its movements are controlled. Credit: Darlene Trew Crist © WHOI.[/media-caption] [media-caption path="https://oceanobservatories.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/DSC0418-scaled.jpg" link="#"]Surface Mooring Recovery operations. Credit: Deidre Emrich © WHOI.[/media-caption]
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Data Explorer Receives Environmental Business Journal Award
The Environmental Business Journal (EBJ) recognized the Ocean Observatories Initiative’s (OOI) Data Explorer’s ability to manage and visualize data with one of its annual awards for Information Technology.
Tetra Tech will accept the award at the EBJ awards ceremony in March 2023 for its role in designing open-source software to support the management, accessibility, and visualization of ocean data. Axiom Data Science, a Tetra Tech company, worked with the OOI Cyberinfrastructure team to develop both front-end and back-end systems for data management and visualization of OOI data feeds.
The OOI, funded by the National Science Foundation, delivers real-time data from sensors in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans to address critical questions regarding the world’s oceans. Axiom Data Science played a foundational role in designing and operationalizing the Data Explorer, the primary gateway for discovering, visualizing, and accessing OOI data. The Data Explorer makes it possible to search across data points, download full datasets, and compare datasets across regions and disciplines for more than 900 instruments in near real-time. In 2022, Axiom Data Science upgraded the OOI cyberinfrastructure to improve the OOI’s ability to serve ultra-high resolution data streams from next generation ocean instrumentation that span the ocean floor to the sea surface.
“We are honored to have worked with Axiom Data Science to make OOI’s vast amount of data accessible and useable and congratulate them on this recognition of their exceptional work,” said Jeffrey Glatstein, OOI’s Data Delivery Lead and Senior Manager of Cyberinfrastructure. “The capabilities of Data Explorer are only beginning to be realized and will serve the ocean community for years to come.”
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Visit to West Coast OOI Facilities
A group of Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) leaders visited OOI facilities at Oregon State University and the University of Washington last week to get a first-hand look at operations of the Coastal Endurance Array and Regional Cabled Array, respectively. National Science Foundation Program Director George Voulgaris, OOI Principal Investigator Jim Edson and Senior Program Manager Paul Matthias spent five days on the road meeting with their OOI west coast colleagues. The trip was designed to give recently appointed Voulgaris an opportunity to inspect the infrastructure and meet team members who keep the Coastal Endurance and Regional Cabled Arrays operational and reporting back data around the clock. Edson and Matthias seized the opportunity to meet in person with colleagues who they routinely see on the screen.
The following provides a glimpse of some of the activities that occurred during the trip:
[media-caption path="https://oceanobservatories.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/20230207_140014.jpg" link="#"]Grant Dunn, Mechanical Engineer with the Electronic & Photonic Systems Department at UW-APL (left) describes the level-wind system on the RCA profiler mooring to Dr. George Voulgaris during a tour of the RCA laboratory facilities at the University of Washington as RCA Project Manager Brian Ittig looks on. Credit: Paul K. Matthias © WHOI.[/media-caption] [media-caption path="https://oceanobservatories.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/20230207_144911.jpg" link="#"]Regional Cabled Array Principal Investigator Deborah Kelley (left) and OOI Senior Program Manager Paul Matthias take a selfie to commemorate their in-person visit during a tour of the RCA facilities at the University of Washington. Credit: Paul K. Matthias © WHOI.[/media-caption] [media-caption path="https://oceanobservatories.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/20230207_141656.jpg" link="#"]NSF Program Director George Voulgaris (from left), OOI Principal Investigator Jim Edson look on as Regional Cabled Array technicians Grant Dunn, Mechanical Engineer with the Electronic & Photonic Systems Department at UW-APL, and RCA Chief Engineer Chuck McGuire explain the engineering associated with the RCA profiler mooring during a tour of RCA’s facilities at the University of Washington. Credit: Paul K. Matthias © WHOI.[/media-caption] [media-caption path="https://oceanobservatories.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/20230209_123758.jpg" link="#"]NSF Program Director George Voulgaris (left) asks OSU technician Jonathan Whitefield questions about glider operations that provide critical water column data around the moorings of the Coastal Endurance Array. Credit: Paul K. Matthias © WHOI.[/media-caption] [media-caption path="https://oceanobservatories.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/20230207_112718.jpg" link="#"]NSF Program Director George Voulgaris (foreground) and RCA Chief Engineer Chuck McGuire discuss the RCA data monitoring systems as OOI PI Jim Edson points to real-time data on the screen being relayed by instrumentation on the Regional Cabled Array. Credit: Paul K. Matthias © WHOI.[/media-caption] [media-caption path="https://oceanobservatories.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/20230209_130353.jpg" link="#"]NSF Program Director George Voulgaris (left) gets a hands-on look at the multiple instruments contained on multi-function node that will sit on the bottom of the ocean floor for six months collecting data for the Coastal Endurance Array. Coastal Endurance Array Principal Investigator Ed Dever (middle) and Project Manager Jonathan Fram the functionality of each instrument during the visit to Oregon State University. Credit: Paul K. Matthias © WHOI.[/media-caption]
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Captain Eric Haroldson: 20 Years Aboard the Thompson
20+ Years on the Thompson; A Decade as Captain
Captain Eric Haroldson has lived half of his professional life as a captain aboard the R/V Thomas G. Thompson, which is operated by the School of Oceanography at the University of Washington. With a schedule of three months on, three months off, Haroldson spends roughly half his life at sea each year. And, when he returns to the vessel after three months on terra firma, he said, “The weirdest thing is that I can walk onto the ship after being away for three months and stand in the stair tower just after the galley. Same sounds same smells, everything’s the same. I click right back into it. It’s like I’ve never been gone.” Haroldson’s adjustment to land isn’t as smooth. He finds he needs to adjust to driving a car again and needs to have ceiling fans in his home to mimic the white and perpetual noise of the ship.
While onboard, Haroldson oversees offers 20 officers and crew, two marine technicians, and up to 36 scientists, depending upon the nature of the expedition. At home, he spends time making improvements to the home he built for himself in the woods.
In January, 2023, Haroldson marked a decade at the helm of the R/V Thompson. His journey started in the early 1980s, when he occasionally went to sea as part of the requirements for school and marine-related jobs. The seagoing bug finally hit him in full force in 1989, when he entered the California Maritime Academy. Four years later, he graduated with a third mates’ license and began a career focused on oil industry work.
His first job as a licensed officer was on an oil spill response vessel. After that, he sailed on oil tankers as a third mate. After the company he was working for was sold, he met some folks from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, which moved his career in the direction of oceanographic research. Haroldson sailed as third mate on a couple of Scripps’ ships, until the R/V Thompson needed someone to fill in for a couple of months in 1999. “That couple of months turned into 20 or something here, “ he joked.
Haroldson worked his way up to captain in a traditional way, starting as a third mate. After spending 365 days at sea, he was eligible to test to move up as a second mate. After another 365 days at sea, he tested for chief mate. With another 365 days at sea as chief mate and lots of additional classes and learning experiences, the next step was a master’s license, and ultimately followed by a captain’s license. Each step on the journey requires hands-on sea experience, as well as successfully learning (and passing) the requirements of the next job up the ladder with a host of new, different responsibilities.
Once Haroldson left the oil industry, he never looked back. “Not only is the work better aboard a research vessel, it’s more varied and interesting, not to mention important, but the variety is particularly important for those of us who have spent so much of their lives on the water.
He compared the work aboard an oil tanker – which ran between Valdez, Alaska and Exxon Benica in San Francisco Bay. “It was eight days to Valdez, a day and a half to load, followed by an eight-day journey to Benica, where we’d spend a day and a half offloading. The cycle constantly repeated itself and we could literally set our clock by it,” Haroldson explained. “When I started sailing oceanographic vessels, it was okay, well, this is more interesting, I was seeing something different every day. The variety of it gives the job definition and we manage the ship much differently.”
“As captain of a research vessel, we have the opportunity to work along-side scientists, which is great,” he added. “We sit around a table and together we figure out “how do we do this? Or how do we approach this? So there is not only the importance of the work that is happening onboard, but we have the opportunity to see the bigger picture of why this work is so important.”
[media-caption path="https://oceanobservatories.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Screen-Shot-2023-02-10-at-3.05.25-PM.jpeg" link="#"]Captain Eric Haroldson looks out from the R/V Thompson’s bridge windows as Third Mate Todd Schwartz and AB Pam Blusk steer the ship thru the icy waters off Antarctica. Credit: Instagram.[/media-caption]While the ocean itself still presents the same challenges as it did 20 years ago when Haroldson began his journey, he has witnessed a lot of ancillary changes in how and where the ocean is used. “Ports are more interesting, with a greater variety of types of boats and people are fishing in areas where people didn’t fish ten years ago or so.” Haroldson added. He’s also witnessed the evolution of a more diverse crew, with women having a greater presence than in his early days aboard the oil tankers. At times, he’s sailed the R/V Thompson when all of the mates were female, and at other times, the crew has been more than half women.
Haroldson clearly relishes his job and provides a sense of safety, security, and humor while onboard. His greatest challenge seems to be always having to be two-steps ahead of everything in a realm where the rules and the physical condition under which he must safely operate his vessel are perpetually changing. This is no small task.
Sailing in and out of port at Newport Oregon is an example of staying two steps ahead of the game. Haroldson has to ensure that all ship operations are executed in a timely way so they can arrive at Newport at high tide slack water in daylight to avoid running aground. This requirement also provides the captain some flexibility in dictating scheduling. “If the weather is picking up and it will take a couple of hours to get to the site, there’s a decision to be made. Do you want to leave the dock and go out there and bounced around? Or does it make more sense to delay a little bit to the make the passage easier and more pleasant for everyone on board?”
Staffing creates another challenge onboard. Much like airline personnel, ship crew are limited in the number of hours they are allowed on the job. The maximum a crew member can work in a day is 15 hours. But if they work that full 15 hours, then for the next two days, they are only allowed to work up to a total of 20 hours. “We always have to be aware of the crew’s schedules and operate within these guidelines that help ensure safe operations.”
In looking back at his life on the water, Haroldson was enthusiastic about his path and optimistic of others who may follow him on a life well-lived a sea. “It makes for a challenging and rewarding life, and in some cases, there really are opportunities to travel and see the world. And, as long as one likes people and doesn’t mind being part of a community, it can be extremely gratifying—makes one appreciate life on and off the water.”
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Bio-Optics Sensor Summer School Applications Open
Are you interested in using OOI’s optical attenuation and absorption data in your research? Have you ever faced challenges finding and interpreting this type of data? If so, we hope you will consider applying for the 2023 OOI Bio-Optics Sensor Summer School.
The Ocean Observatories Initiative Facility Board (OOIFB) will host the summer school on July 17-21, 2023 on the campus of Oregon State University in Corvallis, OR. The course will focus on learning how to analyze and interpret the Sea-Bird AC-S measurements of optical attenuation and absorption. The AC-S is a hyperspectral instrument used to characterize the way seawater absorbs and scatters light and total scattering can be derived for living and detrital particles in the ocean. The OOI Program deploys the Sea-Bird AC-S on most of the OOI platforms, including coastal, cabled, and high latitude moorings.
Marine phytoplankton play an important role in ocean ecology and global biogeochemical cycles. The optical attenuation and absorption data from the AC-S provides information on the relative biomass of different phytoplankton size classes and phytoplankton functional types. In addition, other biogeochemical proxies, such as particulate organic carbon, may be estimated. The AC-S data also may be used to validate remote sensing measurements. These observations will be useful in addressing science questions covered by several OOI research themes including:
- Climate Variability, Ocean Circulation, and Ecosystems.
- Coastal Ocean Dynamics and Ecosystems.
- Turbulent Mixing and Biophysical Interactions.
About 25 advanced graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, and early career scientists will be selected as participants for the summer school. Other career level researchers will be considered, based on space availability. Participants should have a general understanding of oceanography/biology. Only applicants from U.S institutions can be considered. Participation will be in-person only and all selected students must be available to attend all days of the course. Funding for reimbursement of travel expenses, accommodations, and meals is offered.
Additional details about the summer school program, as well as a link to the application form are available here.
Please submit your application by the end of the day on February 28, 2023. Selections and notifications will be made in March. The selection process will strive to maximize diversity of the summer school program with regard to race and ethnicity, gender, ability, sexual orientation, geography, and research experience.
OOI Data Classroom at Sea
Ocean Data Labs researcher Sage Lichtenwalner took his data capabilities to the waves, so to speak, as he shared how Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) data can be used in the classroom with researchers and teachers aboard the R/V Neil Armstrong in early January. The OOI is funded by the National Science Foundation to collect ocean observations from five scientifically important sites in both the Atlantic and Pacific and make the data available over the internet for research and education.
Lichtenwalner, a research programmer at Rutgers University, was asked to join the cruise as part of an effort to build partnerships and future opportunities between STEMSEAS (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Student Experiences Aboard Ships) and several Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). The cruise was designed to align with STEMSEAS’ objectives and be both immersive and experiential for 12 participants from ten institutions, including six HCBUs. The idea was for faculty to experience the cruise as students on other STEMSEAS expeditions do, and to take back what they learned from their onboard experiences to share with their students and classes. They traveled from Woods Hole, MA to Pensacola, Fla., from January 3-11, 2023.
Lichtenwalner provided participants with practical, hands-on ways to integrate OOI data into their courses. During the eight-day cruise, Lichtenwalner gave four presentations to the group, including a demonstration about how they can use the OOI Data Labs Manual in their classes. “The OOI Data Labs Manual is an easy, accessible way to use real ocean data to teach oceanographic concepts,” he said. “Educators have found that the real-time nature of OOI data inspires students, making them more engaged with the data because of their timeliness and relevance.”
Lichtenwalner’s presentations were part of a series of talks given by the STEMSEAS team and HBCU participants, which included hands-on activities and resources to build students’ problem-solving and scientific thinking skills. Participants also shared their research and teaching strategies to foster collaborative discussions.
[media-caption path="/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/group-shot.png" link="#"]Spending eight days at sea together provided participants with plenty of hands-on learning about sampling at sea, as well as opportunities to share research and teaching strategies they use when on land.[/media-caption]
Onboard the R/V Neil Armstrong, Dr. Magdalena Andres, a physical oceanographer at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and co-Principal Investigator of the PEACH program, which is investigating physical processes that drive exchanges between the shelf and deep ocean at Cape Hatteras, served as chief scientist on the cruise. She put the visiting team to work, helping deploy instruments and make underway measurements as part of the “SWOT Adopt a Crossover Field Campaign—Cape Hatteras.” The project, funded by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, falls under the umbrella of the Surface Water Ocean Topography (SWOT) Adopt a Crossover Consortium. Andres is part of a multi-institution research team that has “adopted” the site east of Cape Hatteras near the OOI Mid-Atlantic Bite array site, both to advance the community’s dynamical understanding of this key oceanographic region and to help validate measurements provided by the SWOT satellite which launched in December 2022. “SWOT promises to revolutionize our understanding of earth’s surface water. It’s exciting to have the STEMSEAS, HBCU, and Ocean Data Labs participants working side-by-side with the project’s scientists, engineers, students, and technicians on this forefront of ocean observing,” explained Andres.
[media-caption path="/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/IMG_5670-2-scaled.jpeg" link="#"]Loretta Williams Gurnell (right), founder of the SUPERGirls SHINE Foundation, is learning about atmospheric turbulence with a hands-on demonstration led by Dr. Alex Gonzalez from the Physical Oceanography department at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Alex is part of the NSF-supported DIYnamics Team, https://diynamics.github.io/pages/about.html, which is working to provide access to affordable materials for geoscience teaching demonstrations.[/media-caption]
While onboard, Andres had the team assist her in deploying current and pressure sensing inverted echo sounders (CPIESs) and XBTs (expendable bathythermographs), as well as collecting measurements with the ship’s CTD (conductivity, temperature, depth) profiler. CTDs measure vertical profiles of conductivity (a proxy for salinity) and temperature. XBTs collect profiles of temperature. CPIESs measure bottom pressure and vertical acoustic travel time data (a proxy for temperature and salinity profiles) and near bottom current measurements (velocity of ocean water). The CPIESs were left in place to collect data over the next 18 months.
In 2024, the OOI Pioneer Array will move to the Mid-Atlantic, not far from where the cruise deployed the CPIES and collected CTD casts. To prepare participants for future potential educational applications of OOI CTDs and other instruments in the area, Lichtenwalner made quick plots of the data collected along the way. “Doing real-time plotting to support operations is actually how I got started in oceanography, so it’s been fun to re-live that experience, while also introducing a new group of professors and educators to the power of using ocean data in real-life and in the classroom.”
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