A Big Success for Malolo II, and We Take Stock

This morning dawned cold but calm. Allan, Stephanie, and the back of Amanda demonstrate the weather in the photo below. The seas were not half bad for viewing debris. While chatting with the UAS guys on the deck, our Chief Scientist, Kyle, saw 3 or 4 buoys before breakfast. Unfortunately, we didn’t see much more once we started up observations at 8am. Kelly commented that it felt like Groundhog Day – every morning we wake up sure that we’ll hit pay dirt, scan our eyes out, and come up with just a few buoys and plastic pieces. There’s an awful lot of ocean in between the debris!

After lunch, the small boats were launched and the Malolo II was ready to fly. Anticipation was high after yesterday’s somewhat disappointing showing, when an overheating controller part shortened all of the flights to about 10 minutes or less. Tim, Mike, and Curtis worked hard over night to rearrange the parts and got that problem cleared up. After just one short maiden flight yesterday, the Malolo II made two flights of about 50 minutes each. That was great news!

As the afternoon progressed, the winds picked up—between the swell and the whitecaps, we had a tough time picking out buoys and floats. The Big Eyes crew was trying to spot debris for the foursome in the Avon to pick up. We were able to point them to a couple buoys, but they had at least as much success just happening upon debris.

At one point, they threw a piece of net back into the water, radioed us on the flying bridge, and asked one of our most seasoned spotters, Amanda, if she could see it. No go. Without something like a float that sticks up above the water surface, most of us agree that the Big Eyes won’t be much help, particularly with moderate or big swells, whitecaps, and overcast skies. Kyle assures us that these sea conditions are better than usual in this area. If that’s the case, I can’t help thinking that we need to adjust our protocols.

I think we went into this cruise with a variety of expectations; some of us were thinking this was primarily a test, while others hoped or thought we were ready to do debris removal operations. The truth might lie somewhere in between. It’s a big ocean, and no one has done this before.

We have the DELI maps and the in situ oceanographic measures that we think will show us where debris should converge. How dense, how reliable, how patchy is that convergence? Evan, our oceanographer-in-residence, is working with the marine debris folks on devising measurements and ship’s routes to pin down the location of the convergent front.

We have the UAS with video feeds and anomaly detection software. How well will it work in its first large-scale test? There are a lot of on-the-fly modifications being made, and each day sees a major advance. Are five more days enough to really put the UAS into debris-spotting operations?

For the Big Eyes, we have an eager team, experienced leadership, and protocols borrowed from mammal observation cruises. How well do the protocols work for debris, which acts quite differently than mammals do? Allan, our leader, has tweaked our tally sheets almost daily and stayed up most of the night trying to determine where we’ve spotted the most debris and which set of “eyes” is most successful under various conditions of sea state and ship movement.

I think that with the open and creative minds of the various teams, we can make the most out of whatever the seas bring us for our remaining days—developing protocols, testing our ability to find debris with various methods, testing the oceanographic parameters’ ability to point us toward debris concentrations. The officers and crew of the SETTE have been flexible enough to allow us to modify the plans when they’re not working. Our cruise track was never written in stone—now it’s practically written in water, as we regroup and figure out a new approach to finding “pay dirt.” I’m excited to be working with a group that’s willing to improvise to get the most out of our time at sea. Of course, it wouldn’t hurt to come across a mother lode of nets, either.

Medium-sized Disappointments and Small Pleasures

OK, I’m not going to sugarcoat it. Today could have been better. The morning was plagued with fog. My scopolamine patch (seasickness preventative) wore out and my sea legs didn’t totally kick in. The UAS--remember, that stands for unmanned aerial system--flights went off, but not for as long or as productively as we might have hoped. We deployed the small boats but couldn’t locate a single piece of derelict fishing gear for them to retrieve. Not only that, I’m writing this wearing jeans, a long-sleeve shirt, jacket, hat, wool blanket around my shoulders, and sipping hot coca, and I’ve still got blue lips and fingers so shrunken all my rings are about to fall off. But there were a few bright spots. We had a delicious soul food dinner. And… drum roll please… the return of the prodigal reading glasses!!

On day 2, something very sad happened during the fire drill or abandon ship drill (oh yeah, remember I promised a photo? Well here’s Barbara attempting a shaka with her survival suit on).Anyway, during those drills I lost my beloved green, blue, and orange reading glasses. In addition to their overall beauty and utility, they were a gift from my husband. I searched (almost) everywhere and asked the entire scientific crew and one or two of the ship’s crew to keep an eye out. Days passed, and my hopes faded. Then today they appeared, wet, a little scratched, but otherwise as good as new, on the desk Kelly and I share. It turns out our commanding officer found them on the deck. Oh, how I missed them, in both senses of the word. Sure am glad they're back. So much for my Zen lack of attachment to worldly goods...

OK, I don’t mean to downplay our first day of UAS operations. This afternoon, we had an all-hands safety briefing in the main mess (that's a dining room if you're not at sea). Here's the majority of us:

After the meeting, the crew lowered the small boats into the water. First in was the SAFE (secure all-around flotation-equipped) boat (basically a metal boat with a foam collar).

The occupants of the SAFE boat were in charge of recovering the UAS after its water landings. In future flights, when the UAS goes on auto-pilot, the SAFE boat will keep in sight of the UAS, so it can go farther from the ship. Next in was the AVON (an inflatable boat—you might know the term Zodiac, which is similar).

The folks in the AVON were prepared to recover debris, but as I said, there was none to be found today. The folks on the flying bridge were all eyes as Big Eyes operations were suspended for the launch. That's all of us and maybe a few others up there.

I'd have great photos of the launch and flight, but I took mini-movies and had adjusted the quality down so I could post them. Unfortunately, they're such low resolution that I don't think I'll inflict them on you. But here's a photo of Tim getting ready to launch the Malolo I for its second flight.

Sorry if I built today up to be more than it could deliver. Sigh… Again, it’s not that we’re rooting for debris, but since we know it’s out there, we’d sure love to find it and develop the protocols for locating and removing it at sea, so it doesn’t eventually approach Hawaii and endanger our seals, turtles, and coral reefs. Still, we have almost another week to work out the kinks and track down some monster nets.

In the meantime, we’re learning a lot, eating great meals, and occasionally finding something we missed.

A Foggy Day, with Big Things Coming up Tomorrow

What a surprise when I woke up this morning! The water was just about like glass (the antique ripply kind), and we were socked in with fog, so visibility was less than a mile. So on the one hand, it was ideal viewing weather, with no whitecaps to confuse the eye. On the other hand, with such low visibility, there was no question of using the Big Eyes – the naked eye could distinguish pretty much to the fog line, and even if we could see a little farther with the Big Eyes, there was no horizon against which to measure distance.

So, what makes fog? Cold water! It was sweatshirts and jeans weather today. You can see Robyn and Allan demonstrating the chilly weather.

We are at about 32 degrees north latitude (compared to about 21 or 22 degrees for Oahu). It turns out we drove through a tiny neck of the transition zone chlorophyll front during the night and are well and truly in the transition zone toward subarctic waters now, where the water is colder, more nutrient-rich, and more productive. We surmised this by looking at where our track fell on a Debris Estimated Likelihood Index (DELI) map that NOAA CoastWatch put together for us. The area of greatest convergence appears to be right along the chlorophyll front, so tonight we’ll go east to try to find a deep blue area on the DELI map, where the convergence zone is thicker.The plan for tomorrow is to start with the unmanned aerial system (UAS) work. Here are the ATI guys--Chuck, Tim, and Mike--giving the Malolo I some fresh air on the bow this morning.

If we can get out of the fog and into an area with some debris, the Malolo I (the UAS) and the small boats will be launched. Tonight we’re on what may be our last CTD station. The dedicated folks who’ve been working the 7:30pm to 7:30am shift can become daytime dwellers again. And many of the CTD crewmembers are ready to switch over to small boat operations. One boat will be following the Malolo to keep it in line of sight, per Federal Aviation Administration regulations. The other will be approaching debris that’s spotted by the Malolo or the Big Eyes.

The idea is something like this: the DELI maps will indicate where we should aim, the ship’s fluorometer counts will indicate when we hit the high-chlorophyll areas identified on the DELI maps, the Big Eyes will signal when we’re actually seeing a lot of debris, and the Malolo I will fly over areas that seem to have high debris density to compare what can be seen from the air with what can be seen from the flying bridge of the ship. When one of these platforms (the Malolo or the Big Eyes crew) spots a good-sized bundle of fishing gear, one of the small boats will approach it and truly ground-truth (ocean-truth?) the observations. At that point, there are a couple options, depending on the size of the debris bundle. If the bundle is too large to bring on board, the small-boat crew can attach a satellite drifter buoy and continue to track the movement of the bundle over the next year or so. If the debris is small enough that it can be dragged into the small boat or towed over to the ship, it may be possible to use the ship’s crane to lift it on board and into the Pepto Dumpster, a shocking pink container that was brought aboard in hopes that we can fill it with derelict fishing nets.

The key for tomorrow is be prepare and be flexible. Much is up to the weather and the technology. Our Big Eyes crew has been training hard for five days, and we’re ready to do our part. Wish us luck!

Ah, the CTD's Not the Life for Me

I had a light schedule of observing today, so after my last shift, I headed down to see how half of the other half lives. I got to see most of one CTD cast. Once the ship has come to a stop, they lift the metal-framed “rosette” of bottles and electronics with a winch (you can see the winch operator, Bruce, posing for his moment of fame), push it away from the ship, and lower it on a cable into the ocean. Because there’s a lot of tension on the cable and a break could send cable flying hazardously around, the CTD crew has to wear hard hats and life vests any time the winch is running.

While the ship is still stopped, the cable is fed out. The whole time the instrument is in the water, the bridge keeps the ship as stationary as possible—if the cable got under and behind the ship, it could be cut by or ruin the ship’s propellers. Several real-time measurements are taken all the way down to 600 meters—you can see a graph of the readings of salinity, temperature, dissolved oxygen, and chlorophyll as the rosette descends. Once the CTD rosette reaches 600 meters, they bring it back up to a depth of 200 meters. Every 20 meters from there to the surface, one of the bottles is “tripped” to close up and bring a sample of water from that depth. After the last sample is taken, the rosette is brought up out of the water, lassoed with a rope attached to an overgrown crochet hook, and pulled back onto the deck. At that point, the ship can get under way again.

Next step is getting the water from the 10 bottles on the rosette into other bottles that can be taken into the lab. It reminded me a bit of farmers milking cows—the scientists are all squatting down and watching a liquid flow into another container. There are three bottles filled from each rosette bottle; the smallest one is used for measuring nutrients—this sample is just frozen in a plastic bottle. The medium bottle (which holds one liter) is filtered for chlorophyll, and the largest one (holding two liters) is filtered to analyze by HPLC (high-performance liquid chromatography) to determine the community of organisms that contribute to the chlorophyll reading (diatoms? foraminifera? dinoflagellates?). They filter the water by filling a funnel that sits on top of a quarter-sized filter, through which the water is sucked by vacuum. So they’re really interested in what very small particles are in the water rather than the water itself. When the entire bottle of water is filtered, they use a tweezers to pick up the filter and lay it on a piece of aluminum foil that’s labeled with the station, bottle number, and sample type (for chlorophyll or for organism type). These go into a deep freeze—a vat of liquid hydrogen—for storage until we get back to Hawaii.

Then it’s just a matter of making sure the rosette is ready to go for the next cast. All the filtering and preparation takes up most of the time to cruise to the next station, so the CTD crew gets just a few 20-minute breaks during their 12-hour shifts. Makes me feel particularly spoiled to get two hours off a couple times a day. However, I haven’t found any CTD crewmembers who are dying to look through the Big Eyes.

The Big Eyes crew is improving day by day. Very few nausea complaints, and we’re getting the hang of data entry, scanning with the binoculars, and even putting in longer shifts on the Big Eyes. It helped that the sea was extra-calm today. At one point we were seeing so much debris that the data entry person was back-logged. It was just one patch, and you couldn’t say it was debris-filled, but instead of seeing a piece of debris every half hour, we saw something every 5 or 10 minutes. You hate to be excited to see debris, but it’s nice to get the practice in.

Some Observing Observations

As I mentioned, observing marine debris is not an easy job. The ideal method would be having Big Eyes attached to a stabilizer or gyroscope (to keep the ship’s motion from moving the field of vision so much), anomaly detection software (to make up for our less-than-perfect spotting abilities), and a video feed (so we could save all the footage and examine it at our leisure or have a chance for a veteran observer to check our identification skills). That’s not going to happen, so the next best method is just looking through the Big Eyes.

Here’s a picture of me using the Big Eyes. Note the slightly hunched posture—it’s either that or on tiptoes, depending on which way you have to tilt the binoculars to keep the horizon in your field of vision. Next best in terms of observing, but far better in terms of keeping nausea at bay, is what we’ll call Medium Eyes: looking through binoculars. I took a picture of Kelly using the Medium Eyes. We spotted a few pieces of debris today through the Medium Eyes. Last on the list of observing power at distance, but essential if your stomach has fallen prey to seasickness, is Small Eyes, the human eye. The Small Eyes are actually best for spotting debris within a few hundred yards of the ship. Stephanie is shown here demonstrating the Small Eyes.

Today, we spotted 3 or 4 buoys, one with a bird floating on it. I’m including a photo of one so you can see how challenging it is to see with the naked eye. Naturally, the magnification is not real—I just blew it up in Photoshop. But you can get an idea of how important the binoculars’ magnification is. It’s also tough to see anything just below the surface of the water unless you’re almost on top of it, between the sun reflecting on ripples and the whitecaps. Today the seas were much calmer than yesterday, so the whitecaps weren’t nearly as big a challenge.

We Learn How It All Fits Together

This morning, our first full day out of sight of land, we had a meeting of the entire scientific party. Kyle, our chief scientist, put together a group of speakers to explain how each component (CTD crew, observers, unmanned aerial system (UAS) crew) is an important part of the cruise mission. First up was Evan, describing the CTD casts and how they fit in with the marine debris mission. Evan described the oceanography of the area we’ll be visiting. What we’re looking for as we head north is the chlorophyll front that signals the Subtropical Convergence Zone (STCZ). This feature, which goes pretty much across the Pacific Ocean, signals a transition from the warm and nutrient-depleted waters of the North Pacific Gyre to the south and the colder, productive (nutrient-rich) waters of the Subarctic Gyre to the north. These gradients and the high concentration of nutrients attract fish and birds, and the convergence brings marine debris together in a relatively concentrated area (more another day on what we mean by “relatively concentrated”).

Evan and the rest of the CTD crew will be testing the water every 15 nautical miles once we hit 26 degrees north latitude. In addition to measuring conductivity, temperature, and depth down to 500 meters, they’ll collect water samples at 10 depths on the way back up, between 200 meters and the surface. After the bottles are recovered, they’ll analyze the nutrients and chlorophyll in the water. In some respects, this work is ground-truthing the data being gathered by satellites. Sensors on satellites can measure the temperature and the amount of certain colors in the water and use this as a way to measure chlorophyll (the green stuff in plants, including tiny photosynthesizing plankton). The CTD casts’ chlorophyll measurements will be a check on the accuracy of the satellite-derived information. In addition to the CTD casts every 15 nm, the ship has a flow-through fluorometer, which measures chlorophyll concentration on a continuous basis from water that’s sucked into the ship. This will also be important in helping to identify when we hit the STCZ. Right now the fluorometer is measuring about 0.07 mg per cubic meter of chlorophyll. The convergence zone generally shows a jump up to 0.6 or even 1.0 mg/m3.

Next up was Kyle describing the role of the Big Eyes crew. What we are spotting on the way up to the convergence zone may be thought of as a background; we’re looking now mainly to train our eyes how to look through binoculars for a long time and how to spot debris, as well as getting a baseline of sorts so we’ll be able to sense the increase we hypothesized we’ll find. Our position at the top of the ship makes us much more likely to see debris than the folks in small boats who will be in the water once we get to the STCZ. The UAS may be the best at spotting, but until we get up there and start testing, we just won’t know. So it’s important for us to develop our “chops” so we’re ready to start supporting the UAS and small-boat operations in a few days.

Finally, Tim briefed us on the unmanned aerial system (UAS) component that he’s leading. This entry is too long already, and the UAS story is a good one, so I’ll fill you in more on that once we get closer to the STCZ.

Plastic Bag

All of us were on the flying bridge. No, it’s not the Golden Gate doing a Mary Poppins’ levitation. It’s the top deck of our ship; it’s constructed on the roof of the bridge, which is where the ship’s officers steer the ship. I hope the sound of our footsteps overhead doesn’t interfere with their important job!

From the flying bridge you can see the distant horizon in all directions. The North Shore of O`ahu is off the ship’s stern. It’s a bit unsettling to see one’s home becoming hazy, blending with the clouds and then disappearing altogether.

No worries; O`ahu will be there to greet us when we return home. For the next 2.5 weeks our ship, NOAA’s Oscar Elton Sette, is heading away from O`ahu, traveling due north. One of our jobs is to scan the seas from ship to horizon looking for cetaceans (both whales and dolphins), sea turtles…and something that shouldn’t be in this open-ocean environment: marine debris.

Our basic protocol utilizes 4 observers:
• Two of us scan using either smaller, hand-held binocs or huge ones. The “Big Eyes” are mounted on adjustable metal posts that are bolted to the flying bridge.
• Another person enters data on a somewhat weatherproofed laptop computer.
• The fourth person will be used however needed. For example, she’ll use a camera to record scientists on board a small boat, launched from the Sette, to conduct experiments and retrieval operations around the marine debris. She’ll also photograph the debris itself.

I’m very excited to be a part of this investigation! This is the first time that such a major effort has been organized to record marine debris in the North Pacific Ocean! This is the Scientific Method in action! This is a part of science that non-scientists almost never see -- the testing stage. We will need to be flexible and perhaps modify our protocol to get the maximum amount of useful data.

Look out; a piece of marine debris has been sighted! It looks like it might be a plastic bag, and that strikes me as an interesting coincidence. I’m on a NOAA marine debris email list, and every week there are links to news stories from around the world about communities switching from plastic shopping bags to reusable canvas bags. Here’s the reason why; in the midst of the intense royal blue of the North Pacific, here’s an ugly plastic bag. I wonder how many of these we’ll see in the next two and a half weeks?

About the SETTE and Ford Island

It's a beautiful morning to sail. Because most of the crew took the night in port off, we scientists who stayed on board had to brave the wilds of Ford Island in search of supper. This restricted-access island looks like a cross between a World War II badlands (abandoned buildings and vast paved areas with weeds growing up through the pavement) and a new housing development. NOAA is apparently going to consolidate its work force out at Ford Island by building inside and between these two old airplane hangars. The hangars are historical buildings, so the exteriors can't be changed significantly.

The OSCAR ELTON SETTE is part of the NOAA fleet. She's 224 feet and can go about 10.5 knots (that's about 12 miles per hour). The information page for the SETTE is available at the NOAA Marine Operations website. The Big Eyes binoculars are set on the highest deck. See the arrow on this photo of the ship? That's where we'll be observing from. Note that the ship's motion is more extreme the higher you get off the water.

We've been sailing now for a few hours, having left Honolulu at 9am. The observer (Big Eyes) team started observing after lunch. As we rounded Kaena Point, the wind started hitting us and the seas increased considerably. As expected, looking through the binoculars was tough on the stomach, and we had to go searching for a bucket--just in case! Our leader, Allan, finally gave in and called off the effort since most of what we're seeing is whitecaps. We're stilling observing with the naked eye, but it's hard to distinguish a breaking wave from a breaching mammal, let alone see a float or piece of net. The practice is good for us though. We hope to be reasonably good observers by the time we hit the Subtropical Convergence Zone and the area where the oceanographers determine we'll be most likely to see debris.

We had a fire drill already and are waiting now for the "abandon ship" drill. I'll try to get a photo of us trying on our survival suits. That should be entertaining!

Under Way! (sort of)

This morning we met in Honolulu near the Arizona War Memorial to consolidate vehicles to get onto Ford Island, berthing place of the NOAA ships in Hawaii. The majority of the scientists came on board and about 8:30am we left Pearl Harbor for a shakedown to test some of the equipment. The oceanographers did a test CTD cast, and the observing (Big Eyes) crew got familiar with the equipment. We never got out of sight of land, but we did have an opportunity to try out our sea legs when the ship stopped and stayed on station to do the CTD cast. The swells rocked us a bit, and looking through binoculars from one of the highest decks was queasiness-inducing.

Once we truly get under way tomorrow, we’ll start taking shifts on the Big Eyes. Remember I showed a photo of the binoculars in the March 10 entry? Most handheld binoculars are between 6 and 12x magnification. These Big Eyes binoculars are 25x power, and they’re so big that you’d never be able to hold them steady, even if you could pick them up. So the Big Eyes are mounted on a pedestal that swivels up and down and from side to side. We were trained today on how to use them by Allan Ligon, a research assistant at the Maui office of the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary. He and others have used the Big Eyes to spot marine mammals, but we think this may be the first time this technology has been used to spot marine debris.

We’ll work in two teams of four observers, so each team will be on for a two-hour shift, then off for two hours. We’ll be observing from sunrise to sunset, pretty much 6:30am to 6:30pm. Within a two-hour shift, we’ll swap off every 30 to 40 minutes between manning the binoculars and recording data on the computer or paper, because it can be tiring to look through the binoculars. The binocular stations require that you look through the binoculars and scan the water from ship’s edge to the horizon, and from dead ahead to 90 degrees away from center (straight off your side of the ship). One set of binoculars covers the port side (left as you’re facing the front, or bow, of the ship), and one set covers the starboard, or right, side. As the people looking through the binoculars spot marine debris or marine mammals, they shout (or just say) what they’ve spotted, what direction the binoculars were pointed when they saw it, and how far away the item was. The distance is measured with a set of marks, called a reticle, in the binocular eyepiece; by lining one end of the scale on the horizon, you can see how many marks “away” from the horizon the item is. A computer program takes into account the curvature of the earth and the height of our position as observers and calculates the distance to the item. With the ship moving up and down, it can be hard to hold one of the lines at the horizon, but Allan assures us we’ll get better with practice.

We’re using a toughened field computer to enter the data, but we just had a brief introduction today. We’ll also be recording some additional information on paper forms. I’ll tell you more about data entry another day.

We got back to port by about 1:30pm today, and a lot of scientists left to spend the night with their families. We also had a couple folks who came along just for the day today, so we dropped them off. We’ll also be gaining two more of the Big Eyes crew who are flying in from Maui today. Oh, and just so you know, we didn’t spot any marine debris or marine mammals in the short time we scanned today near Oahu.

Two Weeks to Go

Two weeks out, and most of the administrative requirements are out of the way--health services questionnaire, TB test, contact lists, conduct form, and so on. I learned a little more from Russell about what I'll be doing.

The cruise will be doing oceanography (CTD casts, which measure the physical characteristics of seawater, Conductivity (=salinity), Temperature, and Depth) 24 hours a day on the way up to the Subtropical Convergence Zone. During daylight hours, we'll be doing visual surveys using the Big Eyes binoculars, which are used to spot and get distance to marine debris and cetaceans. We'll be entering the data, presumably connected to GPS, when we spot something.

Once we get to the STCZ, the unmanned aerial system (Malolo I) will be tested in autonomous flights (with coordinates entered in to tell it what route to fly), launched manually from the ship's deck and retrieved from the water in a small boat (to land, it cuts its engine and deploys a little parachute). The UAS will be sending back video feed and capturing still photos when it detects an anomaly or when the ship sends it an instruction to do so. When it spots particularly juicy hunks of debris, we may steer the ship to the debris and either attempt to collect it or attach a tracking buoy to it. The guys from the Coral Reef Ecosystem Division of NMFS Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center will be in the water and small boats.

In addition, Russell from the Monument has been asked by Discovery Channel Canada to shoot B-roll for a story they hope to do about ghost nets. (B-roll is extra footage without narration that's intercut with the main story to give background, but the "B" doesn't actually stand for background, I discovered.)