News
Workshop: OOI Data in Project EDDIE Materials
Project EDDIE and the SERC (Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College) have an exciting workshop coming up that you won’t want to miss! It offers opportunities to build teaching modules using OOI data.
The Project EDDIE Module Development & Community Building Experience will be held online via Zoom as half-day meetings on January 20, 27, and February 10. This workshop will facilitate participants developing teaching modules that pair scientific concepts and quantitative reasoning with teaching with data. The teaching modules follow a tested design rubric developed by Project EDDIE and resulting materials will be published as part of a growing collection of modules.
During the workshop, participants will construct a 1-day module that uses an openly available dataset for a specific ecology, limnology, geology, hydrology, oceanography or environmental science course. Each module will focus on a scientific concept and address a set of quantitative reasoning or analytical skills using large, openly available datasets, such as OOI, following the Project EDDIE module structure. Interactive peer review and module share out meetings following the workshop will help improve developed materials before you pilot them.
Participants will be expected to 1) attend the workshop and develop a module 2)attend one virtual peer review and one module share out and planning session 3) teach and revise their materials, 4) and make revisions from the peer review and an external review before publishing. Final modules will be published online by December 2022. Participants will be provided a $1,500 stipend for completing, testing, and publishing their module.
This workshop also provides special opportunities to:
- Understand how working with large datasets improves quantitative reasoning in students
- Incorporate your module into your syllabus/course schedule and develop an assessment plan
- Meet new people who share similar interests in teaching and working with data
There is no registration cost for attending this meeting. The successful completion and testing of a module includes up to a $1,500 stipend. Successful completion of the modules includes authoring, piloting, revising, and publishing the teaching and supporting materials.
The application deadline for this workshop is November 28, 2021. Apply now. Conveners are actively seeking modules focused on OOI data.
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Student and Early Career Travel Funds Available: Apply Now!
Do you need travel funds to attend and present your OOI research at a conference?
If you need funding to offset conference expenses (registration fees, travel costs, accommodations, etc.), we encourage you to apply. Conference participation can be in-person or virtual. With the Fall AGU and Ocean Science Meetings approaching, we wanted to remind you of this opportunity.
Endurance Array to Provide Hourly Meteorological Data
On 11 October 2021, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)requested that OOI’s Coastal Endurance Array buoys provide hourly meteorological data to the National Data Buoy Center (NDBC) because a nearby NDBC buoy (46029, Columbia River bar) had gone offline. OOI buoy data are typically telemetered every two hours due to sampling schedule and bandwidth constraints (the actual sampling rate is higher).
Endurance Array team members examined sampling and telemetry schedules for the Endurance offshore coastal surface moorings to see if they could accommodate NOAA’s request. The team concluded that meteorological data from the moorings could be updated hourly while still meeting OOI sampling requirements.
“To help ensure continuity of data to the NDBC, we plan to distribute hourly meteorological data from the Endurance Array Oregon and Washington offshore sites for the duration of the outage at NBDC 46029,” said Edward Dever, lead of the Coastal Endurance Team. “We’re pleased to respond to NOAA’s request and hope these data prove useful to operational weather forecasts and marine safety.” The Oregon and Washington offshore sites have NDBC buoys designations of 46098 and 46100, respectively.
The Endurance Array team will continue to review the performance of the buoys and ensure the updated telemetry schedule does not impact OOI sampling. If data users do experience any impacts from this change in sampling frequency, please contact Jon Fram at Jonathan.Fram@oregonstate.edu.
Read MoreOcean Data Lab Nuggets Providing Foundation for Accessible Oceans
Example of Integrated Ocean Observing System
The potential of sharing ocean observations to determine ocean conditions in real-time was highlighted in last week’s update of the Environmental Monitors on Lobster Traps and Large Trawlers (eMOLT) project. EMOLT is a non-profit collaboration of industry, science, and academics focusing on monitoring the physical environment of the Gulf of Maine and Southern New England shelf.
Explained in the update, observers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) were watching oceanographic activity at the Southern New England shelf edge as a warm core ring impinged on an area south of Nantucket. As shown by the purple worm in the animation above a drifter (deployed off F/V Lady Rebecca back in June on Jeffreys Ledge) had drifted near the Great South Channel and seemed confused on which way to go. After traveling along a fairly normal track, it had been affected by “eddies off eddies, off eddies.” Earlier last week, a sensor-laden Central Falls, RI, High School miniboat, deployed by the University of Rhode Island’s R/V Endeavor, was entrained in the outer fringes of the actual Gulf Stream ring.The NOAA team used Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) moorings, which are just downstream of this area, to explore multiple variables throughout the water column to get a better idea of ocean conditions that aligned with the drifter’s movements. The animation also shows the current velocity (red arrow) near 400 meters as reported by OOI’s moored profiling instrument.
Read MoreRide Along with Pioneer 17
After a three-day weather delay, on Friday 29 October, the 14-member Pioneer Array science party will board the R/V Neil Armstrong in Woods Hole, MA and head toward the array, 75 nautical miles south of Martha’s Vineyard. The team will recover and deploy moorings and instrumentation to keep the array operational, collecting and sending data back to shore.
What’s novel about this mission is not only is it the 17th time the array will have been “turned,” but this time, you can follow along. Bookmark this link for regular updates of progress, conditions, and life at sea. The team promises a good ride along.
Read MoreNew Underwater Camera with Off-the-Shelf Components
In September 2021, the Coastal Endurance Array began rolling out a much-needed upgrade to their underwater cameras. Endurance Array Innovator Chris Holm engineered a camera using off-the-shelf components to meet the specific needs of capturing environmental conditions and marine life in proximity to the Endurance Array moorings. The prototype was put in place on the inshore mooring (CE01) during the 15th turn of the Coastal Endurance Array.
[media-caption path="https://oceanobservatories.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/camera.png" link="#"]The newly configured Endurance Array underwater camera is attached to the inshore mooring, ready for deployment. Photo: Chris Holm, OSU.[/media-caption]The innovation came in multiple steps. Holm first tried to salvage the camera’s hardware and reprogram the camera with new software. He hit a snag, however, in that the motherboard that controlled the camera was no longer supported.
Since it didn’t make sense to rebuild the camera using an out-of-date motherboard, Holm looked into finding a new camera on the market. It had to be suitable for use underwater, with the capability to go into a low-power mode. “What is really needed for low-light conditions underwater is a camera with a large physical sensor, but with fewer megapixels,” explained Holm.
“Since the moorings run on battery power, the cameras need to be able to go into a very low-power sleep state in between taking photos,” said Holm. “If the sleep current is high, the deployment life is low. So, we were trying to find an off-the-shelf solution for a way to go into low power.”
After some searching, Holm obtained a Raspberry Pi High Quality Camera. Although the Raspberry Pi doesn’t come with native power management capabilities, Holm found he could use Sleepy Pi, an add-on-board from Spell Foundry that can power the Raspberry Pi on and off.
For its launch, the camera is programmed to autonomously take a burst of three images every four hours. The system can also take photos when triggered by a Data Concentration Logger (DCL) and can be partially configured remotely. Future iterations will be fully configurable remotely via the DCL.
The final touch to this first iteration was figuring out how to turn the lights and lasers on and off. Holm used a relay board from Waveshare Electronics to power the original systems lights and lasers. The lights adjust their brightness depending on the voltage being sent through a signal line which is controlled by the GPIO pins of the Raspberry Pi.
Altogether, the system is very suitable for the Endurance Array’s needs and is an extremely cost-effective, off-the-shelf solution. The cameras also can be easily swapped out if the Endurance team decides to upgrade the cameras.
Since this newly configured camera was put in place in early September, Holm said, it has been performing flawlessly, with the auto-exposure working well. Since this mooring uses a cell modem to transmit data, the team has been able to see the photos the camera is taking in near real-time. Once the formal approval process for the camera’s integration and use across the OOI is completed, Holm will be building more camera systems for the Endurance Array to deploy on the offshore and shelf moorings during the spring.
Since the cameras and its settings can be upgraded and/or optimized for different use cases, depending on what an investigator is interested in (such as marine snow or benthic organisms), Holm would like to hear from scientists about what they’d like the camera to focus on. He created a survey for data users interested in the underwater cameras.
“It would be very helpful to know what kind of data would be most useful to scientists using the system,” he said.
For those interested in seeing underwater, please complete the survey here.
[media-caption path="https://oceanobservatories.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/camera-output.png" link="#"]The Endurance Array team has the capability to adjust the settings of the underwater cameras based on researchers’ interests. In addition, some post-processing tools could be developed to sort images or extract useful information from them. Photo: Chris Holm, OSU.[/media-caption]
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NERACOOS Makes Case for Ocean Observations
In an editorial opinion piece that ran in the Cape Cod Times and The Maritime Executive, Jake Kritzer, Executive Director of OOI’s partner organization Northeastern Regional Association of Coastal Ocean Observing Systems (NERACOOS), clearly and succinctly laid out the case for why ocean observing systems are so important and worthy of federal support. “Ocean infrastructure generates information that underpins our maritime economy, supporting navigation, safety and coastal resilience. We’re talking about the lighthouses of the 21st century.”
OOI data from the Pioneer Array are accessible on NERACOOS’ Mariner’s Dashboard, helping to provide a better picture of both current and long-term conditions on the New England Shelf. Together, this network of ocean observing systems is working to improve forecasting, enhance mariner’s safety, and ultimately helping to advance scientific understanding of ocean processes.
Read MoreKatie Bigham: From VISIONS Student to Co-Chief Scientist
Katie Bigham feels like her journey with the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) has come full circle. She first visited Axial Seamount as a University of Washington (UW) School of Oceanography undergraduate participant on the Regional Cabled Array (RCA) VISIONS 2014 program when the underwater observatory was being installed. This summer, she returned to Axial Seamount on her seventh cruise, this time as a Co-Chief Scientist.
[media-caption path="https://oceanobservatories.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Katie_V15_byLauren_DSC_0069.sm-copy-scaled.jpg" link="#"]Katie Bigham on the R/V Thomas G. Thompson. Credit: L. Kowalski, University of Washington, V15.[/media-caption]Katie was excited to step into the role of Co-Chief Scientist on the fourth leg of the annual RCA operations and maintenance cruise (VISIONS’21). She previously participated in many other roles on the ship and was looking forward to a new challenge sailing as a Chief Scientist aboard a global class research ship.
Her responsibilities as Co-Chief Scientist included much planning and communication during the round-the-clock operations and numerous remotely operated vehicle dives. “It’s really about keeping everybody who’s invested in the voyage up to date, from the RCA team itself, to the Captain and crew, to the VISIONS’21 students, to the RCA team shore-side,” she says. Katie credits the success of leg four to the OOI RCA team aboard the R/V Thomas G. Thompson and strong shore support. “I felt well-supported in my first time as Co-Chief, and that helped me step up to the challenge,” she says.
Katie says the coolest part of being on the cruise was working with recent UW graduate Katie Gonzalez. She met the younger Katie when she went to visit her school for an outreach event in the far western reaches of the Olympic Peninsula and later mentored her in the lab for a year. “To see her very confidently and competently prepping the osmotic fluid samplers and then sharing with the ROV pilots what the goals of the installation dive were, and what was needed for this instruments deployment within and active vent site was really cool,” she says.
Katie Bigham grew up as the granddaughter of a commercial fisherman and spent a lot of time on the water, but she didn’t know that oceanography was something people studied until high school, when she interned with an oceanography graduate student at UW. The lab was very welcoming to her, and she attended the lab’s summer barbecues and dissertation defenses in between her work helping to culture Arctic bacteria.
After that experience, Katie initially wanted to study geology at Arizona State University, but she decided to stay closer to home and attend UW instead. When she remembered how welcoming the oceanography lab was, she decided to take oceanography classes, and that’s when things started coming together. Early in her college career, Katie took Dr. Deb Kelley’s hydrothermal vents class and came away from it wanting to see the underwater hot spring environments in person and work with Dr. Kelley and the OOI team.
“Deb bringing me onboard as a VISIONS student and then mentoring me through that process was what helped me know I wanted to stay in oceanography,” Katie explains. “I was really inspired by her research and her work with students, and I’d really like to continue in academia because of her influence. I wouldn’t be doing the things I’m doing without all her support.”
[media-caption path="https://oceanobservatories.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/20210903_100228_01-scaled.jpg" link="#"]VISIONS’21 Leg 4 students and participants. Credit: M. Elend, University of Washington, V21.[/media-caption]Katie is currently pursuing a joint PhD at the Victoria University of Wellington and the National Institutes of Water and Atmospheric Research in New Zealand. She is continuing with deep-sea science, researching the impact of turbidity currents, or underwater landslides, on benthic communities living in submarine canyons. This work builds on some of the work she did for her undergraduate senior thesis mapping megafauna at methane seeps along the RCA. Katie hopes that her research will be helpful for management of marine protected areas in New Zealand and inform about impacts in other marine canyons, such as those on the Cascadia Margin.
Katie returned to Washington from New Zealand during the COVID-19 pandemic. She has been able to continue her writing and data analyses while abroad from an office within the RCA space. Ironically, thanks to the pandemic, she was able to participate in this year’s RCA cruise.
After she obtains her PhD, Katie hopes to continue her research as a postdoc. “I would really like to bring what I’ve learned during my PhD and my experiences with the RCA back together,” she comments. “I’d love to do a postdoc working with RCA data.”
[embed]https://youtu.be/_YOsgNNLOP8[/embed]
Katie Bigham also played an instrumental role in the production of this video that was a project for the VISION’14 class. It was selected as one of the top ten videos in a nationwide contest sponsored by the Florida Center for Ocean Sciences Education Excellence. The video has been viewed by nearly 38,000 student judges in 1,600+ classrooms in 21 countries.
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Rocky Seas Didn’t Deter Endurance 15’s Success
In spite of rocking seas, a generator in need of repair, and a medical delay, the Coastal Endurance Array team successfully completed its mission to turn the array for the 15th time, achieving all of its science objectives.
Weather conditions in the northern Pacific were less-than-ideal for two of the three legs of the two-week expedition. At one point, winds speeds of 25-30 knots, with accompanying waves of up to 10 feet, caused a weather delay in operations and subsequent alterations in cruise plans.
“While it was comfortable to be aboard the R/V Thomas G. Thompson even in such conditions, sea conditions were borderline for entering or exiting Newport and deploying or recovering most platforms, “explained Chief Scientist Jonathan Fram, who led the 10-member science party. “Fortunately, we had good weather during the first leg of the cruise, which gave us some leeway to address weather-related downtime and other delays during latter legs of the cruise. We were able to switch the order of some activities, delay some deployments, and ultimately got most everything in and out of the water as planned during our time at sea.”[media-caption path=”https://oceanobservatories.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Screen-Shot-2021-09-28-at-5.20.52-PM.png” link=”#”]When seas were calm, the team was able to deploy moorings like this one. After deployment, they headed back to port with a deck full of recovered equipment.[/media-caption]
The team successfully deployed and recovered six surface moorings, four gliders, and two profilers. They also recovered two additional profilers and an anchor from 2020. In addition, the team conducted CTD water sampling and also conducted sampling for researchers with instruments on Endurance Array moorings. The team succeeded in collecting fouling communities growing on buoy panels for researcher Linsey Haram of the Smithsonian Institution and organisms on devices attached to two multi-function nodes for Oklahoma State researcher Ashley Burkett.
While in the roaring sea, the team tested potential instrument replacements and new sampling strategies. They also assessed first-time implementation of technical improvements including a new solar panel frame to prevent sea lions from unplugging the panels, an underwater camera constructed with off-the-shelf replacement parts to ensure longevity and resilience, and a stretch hose from a new manufacturer with a slightly different design than previous versions.
“In spite of having to repeatedly change our plans,” adds Fram, “we were pleased to be able to meet all of the cruise objectives. The ocean in the Pacific Northwest is too harsh for scientists to go to sea often in fall and winter, so it is important to refresh this array of autonomous platforms that will keep recording and delivering data during rough times.”
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