Seeking Marine Debris

The Last 24 Hours of the Cruise

2008-04-08T16:50:00.000-07:00

It’s Tuesday, and we’re scheduled to get in tomorrow morning to Ford Island and home. We could have made it back by late tonight, but apparently you can enter the harbor only during daylight hours, so we’re going a little slower than usual and should be hanging out at daybreak waiting our turn to enter the harbor. Today we had our farewell meeting of the scientific party, at which Kyle gave awards to Robyn as MVP for the cruise—with her sharp, young eyes, she spotted both the debris fragments we tagged with tracking buoys—and to Barbara, for most questions ever asked on a cruise! Barbara awarded Allan an honorary set of Big Eyes (made of paper towel rolls, a ship’s patch, and Andrea’s knitting yarn), signed by all who put in a shift, in recognition of his leadership and countless hours on the flying bridge every day and in the electronics lab every evening.

The CTD and small boat crews spent the day cleaning up the spaces we’ve used. The ship’s crew spent most of the day cleaning and preparing for our return to port. Each member of the Big Eyes crew put in a 2-hour shift, which felt astoundingly easy! Here I am, a seasoned ol’ salt on the Big Eyes, having just in the last day or so finally gotten the hang of how to scan efficiently (well, relatively so—I’m sure it’s an art that one improves at with many more than our 16 days).

The rest of the day looks like cleaning staterooms, starting to pack, getting some report-writing done, or making more headway on the marathon of The Wire, which has been the signature television event of the cruise. Most of us seem to have our heads firmly back on land already, with thoughts of ideal first foods or beverages, what we’ve missed most (significant others, pets), and what we’re dreading (dentist, taxes, all-day trainings, presentations). My head is right there with the others, looking forward to my household of husband, dogs, and cat, a carrot-celery-apple-ginger juice, and a nice grappa martini. Foods, not so much. One thing you can say for the SETTE, the stewards know what they’re doing. We were abundantly and well fed.

As the days passed on this cruise, I finally came around to the pleasures of sighting critters. Even though marine debris was the cruise’s focus, some participants are downright interested in sea life. Against my inclinations, I got to enjoy seeing the albatross hanging around and even got excited about shooting some photos of Laysan albatross with the monster camera, although this particular one may be taken by Allan once I gave it over to the pro.

Here are some black-footed albatross photos taken by Allan.

Earlier in the cruise, we saw sharks, scads of flying fish, dolphins, and some whales. Here’s a Risso’s dolphin, photo by Allan Ligon.

These Pacific white-sided dolphins are apparently unusual as far south as we saw them (about 35N). Amanda Cummins took this photo.

I’ll miss all the time to reflect on the ocean – when you’re observing, there’s a certain amount of chatting but lots of alone time too, to admire the surface of the water (at times it looks like molten metal, pahoehoe lava, Japanese watercolor waves, or Brazilian hillside favela rooftops), to ponder waves and wind, and to actually think about oceanography—circulation, productivity, Ekman transport.

This group of 19 scientists will scatter. I’ll see some of them on Oahu, though never so intensively, and others will scatter to neighbor islands or move off to other jobs or grad school. It’s been an interesting, challenging, and pleasurable cruise. In the words of Bugs Bunny, “Adios! Have a nice trip! Bon voyagee! Farewell to thee!”

The UAS, at Last

2008-04-06T23:40:00.000-07:00

I know I promised to get back to where the UAS, the unmanned aerial system, fits in to the overall at-sea detection and removal scheme—and I haven’t yet. Well, it’s high time. First of all, let me direct you once more to the UAS crew’s blog, which is in the “For More Information” box over to the right. They’re really the ones to tell about it, but since you’re here, I’ll give my version.

This whole UAS concept grew out of the GhostNet project, which began around 2001 to explore the use of remote sensing, from satellites and aircraft, to map marine debris in the North Pacific Ocean. It was a partnership of ATI, Inc., and part of NOAA Satellites, Fisheries, and Research. The satellite imagery was used to map the oceanographic conditions that would concentrate debris, and the airborne remote sensing would spot the debris. An additional component of the project involved creating tracking buoys that could be attached to debris. These buoys send a signal with their location every 12 hours to a satellite that the GhostNet team tracks. You’re familiar with each of these components from this cruise – the use of NOAA and NASA satellite imagery by NOAA Fisheries’ CoastWatch to create the DELI (debris estimated likelihood index) maps, the airborne component (the UAS), and the tracking buoys, two of which we’ve deployed on debris on this cruise. (Don’t forget, you can track their location at http://www.atiak.com/buoy_maps/; pull down to view 15FXZ—the other buoy we deployed isn’t up there yet, but it will be the one that starts on 4/3/08.)

In 2005, the GhostNet team flew a NOAA P3 aircraft around the convergence zone, as located by using satellite data on chlorophyll and sea surface temperature. They used on-board observers to locate debris (nets, floats, lines, buoys, etc.), and they found a good correlation between the oceanographic parameters and the debris sightings. While that flight used human eyes, there is also interest in developing an image-based detection method, which is basically a video feed (which might measure visible light or infrared radiation) coupled with a software program that detects anomalies. When an anomaly (say, a net) is detected, that information is saved, either by saving the video feed a few seconds before and after the anomaly or by triggering another camera to take a high-resolution photograph. That way we can go back and take a closer look at the images and, if it looks like debris, can go investigate further.

Of course, when you’re in an airplane, you can just map what’s there at that time. And since debris tends to move, that map may not be useful for very long. That’s where the UAS comes in. By launching from a ship an unmanned aircraft that has some of these same sensors onboard, we think we’ll be able to combine the detection and removal of debris. As you’ve learned, we’re not there yet, but we have come a long way on this cruise. Evan told me that it’s not a piece of cake to find the biological transition zone—he felt we were pretty lucky finding it on this cruise. Having the DELI maps and an aircraft survey just prior to a cruise would make our efforts much more efficient. The UAS has proven itself able to be launched from a ship, fly in 20+ knot winds, and be recovered at sea. We never really had the opportunity to test the autonomous flight or the anomaly detection software, so more work has to go into those aspects. But the UAS seems to be the part that will bring the detection and removal components together onto the same expedition, by expanding our ability to see debris from the air throughout a cruise, not just when long-range airplanes are available.

I hope we’ll be able to see progress continue on the UAS development and put it into operation soon. There are a lot of folks on this ship itching to get out there and pick up the debris—we just need to find it. Now, I need to post this and turn off the computer or I’ll lose my dinner – the ship is pitching like mad!

Reflections on Our Progress

2008-04-06T00:22:00.000-07:00

We’re coming down to the final days of the guts of this cruise – after tomorrow or early Monday, we’ll be getting south of where the UAS is authorized to fly, and we’re already south of where we expect to find debris accumulations. After that, we’ll keep the Big Eyes crew going (just in case, and because we love it so), but otherwise we’ll just be steaming back to Oahu, which is going to take a few days.

I’m going to start with the good news. The marine debris folks even got on this cruise. That was huge! This cruise “belonged” to the Ecosystems and Oceanography Division of the NOAA Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center, and they let the marine debris component piggyback on their cruise. Thank you! Evan and Hide were the oceanographers out here, and their part of the cruise went great. The CTD casts were a success, and with the convergence zone farther north than expected, we were even able to go back and cover another degree of latitude yesterday. The small boat crew helped out and the CTD operations were able to go 24 hours a day. That’s a big success, and that’s where this cruise, OES-08-02 started. (If you want to read a comprehensive and funny summary of the CTD operations, you can find it on the NOAA Sanctuaries mission page.)

So, where are we with the piggyback part—the marine debris component? What have we learned? How have we done on accomplishing our objectives? I could go cheat and look at the official cruise objectives, but since I’m not the chief scientist, that’s not what I’m held to. I think of myself as an observer, an interested but not yet invested partner, and someone who’s paying attention to the vibes of the scientific party.

If you Google in search of quotations about expectations, you’ll find a lot of cheerleadery stuff from sports figures and Mary Kay about self-fulfilling expectations, but I’d like to think Benjamin Disraeli got closer to this cruise’s outcomes: “What we anticipate seldom occurs, what we least expected generally happens.” I’ve talked to some of the other warm bodies, as we lovingly refer to ourselves, and to some of the Big Cheeses. Over all, a lot of us expected to find—and remove—more debris. The Big Eyes crew had a contingency for when the debris sightings came in so fast and furious we’d get behind on entering them into the computer. We even had a drill planned to train us—we never needed it. We never got to the part of the cruise that was going to bring back tons of debris and save the corals and monk seals. You better believe that’s a disappointment.

We thought going up to the convergence zone was a dead cert at this time of year. Apparently it wasn’t. I can think of a number of reasons. 1) It only apparently wasn’t. There’s plenty of debris, but we didn’t find it—for any number of reasons. The debris is patchy or the fog and high seas impeded our ability to spot it, or both. Our observing methods were in a testing, not operational mode, and the tests were not completed in time to move into operations. 2) It’s a La Niña year, and the convergence was weaker, so the amount of debris concentration was low this year. 3) Our understanding of how debris moves is incomplete. The Pichel et al (2007) paper gives a good idea of correlation between debris sightings and oceanographic parameters (sea surface temperature and chlorophyll content and gradient), but perhaps the year they flew, 2005, was an atypical year, or maybe 2008 was. (You can find the reference to that paper at the NOAA Marine Debris Program website.) 4) We need to work on our observing methods. Whether there was or wasn’t a lot of debris up there, we weren’t prepared to find it.

My mood? I’m a little let down, perhaps because my own expectations were too high. We all hoped that everything would work out just ideally, and maybe it could have. It’s dispiriting that not one component did, other than the CTDs that were the core of the cruise. We’ve tagged just 2 smallish pieces of debris, with 13 more satellite buoys on board. We’ve picked up less than 10 pounds of debris. The Big Eyes have been plagued by poor visibility, high seas, and lack of debris. The UAS flights have been few and not productive in terms of spotting debris.

In spite of the lack of resounding success, should we try this again? In the words of the Magic Eight Ball, my sources say yes. Not only that, but I say yes. Research is a funny thing. You don’t often get to publish the negative findings, but they’re data too. We’ve found at least one area of expected debris concentration that really didn’t live up to its reputation. When we’re getting giddy on the Big Eyes, we joke about that Texas-sized garbage patch, where it is, whether it exists, if we should plant a Texas flag on a buoy and call it good… Is it good news that we didn’t find debris? Well, it’s not bad news, but we do know that derelict fishing gear is making its way into the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands at a rate of over 50 metric tons per year. No one has estimated how much debris lands on the main islands, but we’ve all seen it and quite a few of us have hauled our share of it. We also identified a number of gaps in our understanding and places we need to hone our techniques.

What preparations should we make for the next try? Here’s my wish list.

- I’d like to have aircraft support; maybe have a NOAA, Coast Guard, or military airplane run up to the area of interest just before the ship arrives. They could observe quickly over a large area and point us to areas they see the most debris. That would save us a lot of time steaming back and forth.

- Additional ground-truthing of the satellite data the DELI (debris estimated likelihood index) maps rely on, like the shipboard measurements and CTD casts from this cruise, would be valuable. I’d also like a few more tests of the DELI maps with overflights.

- It would be ideal to go in an El Niño year, when convergence is strong and the zone is closer to Hawaii. Or at least not during another La Niña.

- If we continue to use shipboard observers, we should use the data from this cruise to develop some protocols, and then test them in a variety of sea and light conditions with abundant debris to sight. We’ve discussed doing a blind test comparing the sighting efficiency and distance covered by Big Eyes, hand-held binoculars, and the naked eye.

- The UAS testing did not always proceed smoothly. More work needs to be done on making the wing tougher, to take on the wind and sea conditions that are inherent in the convergence zone. The wing has not yet flown autonomously on this cruise, but in order to survey greater distances, it needs to be able to do so. Creating an algorithm to detect anomalies (like debris) in the video feed is a big challenge, particularly if there are a lot of whitecaps. We haven’t seen yet how that will work.

So I close this entry with hopes that we’ll come away from this cruise a lot better prepared to tackle this goal of at-sea detection and removal of marine debris. We’ve learned a lot, figured out some places we still need to learn more, and have gained a huge amount of on-the-water experience, even if it doesn’t feel so much like it tonight. And hey, there are still a few days left before we pull into Pearl Harbor on Wednesday. We could spot Texas after all!

About that Axe outside Your Stateroom Door

2008-04-04T22:39:00.000-07:00

Funny thing about living on a ship. There are lots of weird things that you notice at first and gradually become normal. I thought about this because Amanda sent around an email list of ways you know you’re on a ship and not in a dormitory. One entry states “In the event of a fire, for your safety and convenience, gas masks are located in your room and outside the galley are racks of firefighting gear.” It’s true! Here’s our gas masks and some more elaborate versions from down the passageway. There’s much more outside the galley.

Then there’s the axe directly outside our stateroom door. It hasn’t yet featured in a dream, but I figure it’s only a matter of time. One would presume it’s for firefighting, but since most everything’s made of steel, I’m not quite sure what one would axe. Not a bunkmate, I hope, even to keep her from burning.

And the labels and warning signs. Many more things are labeled than you’d expect. The extra warning labels on this door to a stairway (aka ladder) make it clear that this is NOT the one for us. The door for general use just has the standard four labels: a descriptor, instructions, a single warning, and the direction.

This arcane device, on the door to the electronics lab area, looks like it’s from a 19^th century chemistry lab. The instructions, largely unreadable when the device is in place and rather lengthy for reading in the event of an emergency, suggest it’s for grounding live surfaces, but my guess is it’s being stored pending delivery to a museum.

You probably know from movies and books (or even your own seagoing experience) that many ship parts have different names than their dry-land counterparts. Stairs are called ladders, fairly appropriately, given their steep gradient.

The mess is where we eat—apparently from some Latin meaning table or that which is put on the table. Left is port, right is starboard. Found this explanation online: The name is a very old one, derived from the Anglo-Saxon term Steorbord, or Steering-board. Ancient vessels were steered not by a rudder amidships, but by a long oar or Steering-board extended over the vessel's right side aft. This became known, in time, as the Steering-board side or starboard. The term “stern” also comes from steering, this time the Norse version. Much more interesting story for the toilet, which is called the head on a ship. Googled this one, although I’ve also read it in Tony Horwitz’s excellent book “Blue Latitudes,” which Robyn read on this cruise. “Head” in a nautical sense referring to the bow or fore part of a ship dates to 1485. The ship's toilet was typically placed at the head of the ship near the base of the bowsprit, where splashing water served to naturally clean the toilet area. In our toilet area, the cleaning methods fall to the four users.

Finally, a source of endless fascination in Kelly’s and my otherwise faultless stateroom (that’s sea for bedroom) is the desk lamp. It was clearly designed and installed by a sadist. Note the sharp edges. Note the handy location of said edges, directly adjacent to where one’s head is while working at the desk. Swivel in chair to say hello to someone and presto! A new knot on your head. After 12 days at sea, I still catch it frequently. Actually, I whack my head on metal parts everywhere on the ship pretty regularly—not sure why hard hats aren’t required at all times.

Oceanography (Part II), with Debris Musings

2008-04-03T23:47:00.000-07:00

If you read the last oceanography post and are back for the stunning finale, I just have this to say to you: Are you kidding me? No, I mean, thanks. I hope I’m making sense and not telling a pack of lies. If you happen to be an oceanographer, please let me know how to fix this. I’ve been thinking so hard by brain’s about to pop, and I really do want to understand it and be able to communicate it. Thanks in advance for your help.

The Transition (and convergent) Zone: As you head north from the subtropical gyre (characterized by chlorophyll under 0.15 mg/m3) to the subarctic gyre (chlorophyll over 0.25 mg/m3), you go through a transition zone between them. The transition zone moves by roughly 1000 kilometers north and south throughout the year, from about 30-35 to about 40-45 degrees north. In the summer months, it moves to the north (as the sun heats up the water). Right now, at the end of winter, it should be near its farthest south position, or maybe heading north already. There’s a chlorophyll front at the boundary between the two gyres, which scientists have called about 0.2 mg/m3 of chlorophyll. This generally occurs near the 18 degrees C isotherm (line of temperature). (Exception to the “generally” rule: on this cruise, we’ve actually been seeing the chlorophyll front to the north of the 18 degree isotherm.) The chlorophyll front is generally a convergent zone as well. The easterly trade winds we experience in Hawaii result in surface water moving north (a rule of thumb is that the Coriolis effect makes the top ~100 meters of water move 90 degrees to the right of the wind direction, at least in the Northern Hemisphere). To the north, westerly winds result in surface water moving south. Where these waters come together, that’s convergence. A number of scientific papers have hypothesized and in some cases seen that marine debris is concentrated by this convergence.

We’re comparing the DELI (debris estimated likelihood index) maps, which have been prepared based on satellite-derived data on chlorophyll, sea surface temperature, and wind stress, with on-the-ground measurements of chlorophyll and sea surface temperature, as well as our debris sightings.

If I haven’t lost you yet, congratulations! You’ve pretty much reached the end of my understanding (or ignorance!) of oceanography. Two more thoughts. Variations from year to year can make a very big difference. In El Nino years, the chlorophyll front and the associated convergence move much further southward. A number of papers have been published showing a correlation between El Nino years and increased marine debris deposition or seal entanglements in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. Conversely, in La Nina years, the convergence is likely weaker and the convergence zone doesn’t move as far south. We seem to be in a La Nina right now, and we had to go quite a lot farther north than we’d anticipated to find the chlorophyll front. We weren’t quite as successful (so far!) in finding large concentrations of debris.

OK, that’s one thought. The other? It’s a biiiiggg ocean. Let’s say a DELI map shows one pixel covering about 6 square kilometers. Our ship is 68.3 m long by 13.1 m wide. That makes us 895 m2. That means 7,000 ships the size of the SETTE could fit inside just one of the pixels on a DELI map. The map I’m looking at shows moderately high likelihood of encountering debris across 2 degrees latitude by 13 degrees longitude, roughly 228,000 km2, or about 40,000 pixels. If the DELI map (which is just giving us an estimate anyway) is off by a few pixels because the data are a few days old, we can be driving almost blind. That’s our challenge. By improving our understanding of the oceanography of this transition zone between the two gyres, by improving our protocols to observe debris from ships, by testing and improving the technology to use other observing platforms, like the UAS: these are the ways this cruise has helped get us a bit closer to our goal of finding and removing the debris before it gets into sensitive areas like the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.

Another Day, Another Tracking Buoy Deployed

2008-04-03T23:34:00.001-07:00

Say, I just learned that you can follow us online at http://shiptracker.noaa.gov/. You just click to enter NOAA’s Ship Tracker, then select the ship SE (Oscar Elton Sette) and let it show “current cruise.” It’ll show you where we’ve been, where we are, and which way we’re headed. I wish I’d known about this from the beginning! Here’s an image from earlier today.

We were in for more crazy pitching seas overnight. We reached the northernmost point of our cruise, and the coldest temperature (10 degrees C, which is about 50F—plenty cold for locals). We stopped again for CTD casts four times today. There was a whole lotta nothing spotted by the observers for hours. Then Robyn spotted it—she was completely baffled by what she saw through the Big Eyes. “Is it two flags?” Sounded weird enough to investigate, so we asked the bridge to drive the ship closer to investigate. Still looked interesting, though we didn’t get very close for fear of fouling the ship’s screws on any line that might be attached to the flagged buoy. Here’s Doug getting the SAFE boat ready to launch. They use a winch to pick it up and drop it down into the water.

Kyle, Frank, and Lester went out and took what felt like forever to investigate and attach a tracking buoy to the buoy. It turned out to be an old and very heavily fouled buoy with a roughly 4-foot flagpole and two orange pennants on it. Not the enormous net bundle we’d hoped to tag, but definitely better than going home with all our trackers!

Robyn is now officially the Big Eyes rock star. She’s generally very modest about it but agreed to pose for the paparazzi just this once.

The weather improved by the hour today. By the last shift of the day, gloves were options. We’re looking for even milder weather tomorrow, perfect for Big Eyes, UAS flights, and small boat operations. Wish us luck!

In Which I Attempt to Demonstrate an Understanding of Oceanography (Part I)

2008-04-03T22:59:00.000-07:00

You may not have noticed that I’ve stayed an arm’s length from discussing how oceanic circulation in the Pacific affects the movement and accumulation of marine debris. Believe me, it’s been intentional. We hear a lot of terms bandied about, and as someone whose sole graduate course in physical oceanography happened in roughly 1981, I’m no expert. However, I’ve been hanging around with some of these oceanographers for over a week, and I’m ready to tackle it.

First some basics. The sun warming the air, combined with the earth’s rotation, creates general wind patterns. Winds, again combined with the earth’s rotation, generally drive surface currents. So in the northern hemisphere, we have two major gyres, or circular circulation patterns. The first (if you’re from Hawaii, that is) is the clockwise North Pacific Subtropical Gyre; it’s made up of the Kuroshio Current, which flows north past Japan on the western side of the basin, the North Pacific Drift, which flows eastward along the northern part of the basin, the California Current, which flows southward past—you guessed it—California, and the Pacific Equatorial Current, which flows westward just north of the equator. To the north, there’s a smaller, counterclockwise pattern called the North Pacific Subarctic Gyre. OK, that’s the basic circulation pattern.

Now for a tiny bit of biology. You know how plants have chlorophyll—the green pigment? Well, in the ocean they do too. And chlorophyll is one of our big indicators of the boundary between the two gyres. Here’s why. The North Pacific Subtropical Gyre is closer to the equator, so the surface water is warm. Farther north, in the subarctic gyre, the water is colder at the surface (and on this cruise, we’ve experienced that cold water and the weather it creates!). Deeper water, no matter where you are, is cold and generally has lots of nutrients that allow water to be productive. We call the subtropical gyre “oligotrophic,” which means there’s relatively little productivity. One of the reasons? Stratification, by which I mean layering. The surface layer is warm, the deeper waters are cold, and not much mixing between the two happens between the warm and cold water, across the thermocline. By contrast, the waters to the north, in the subarctic gyre, are cold and rich in nutrients. That richness in nutrients is due to good mixing – when the surface water is cold, there’s little impediment to mixing of nutrient-rich (and cold) bottom water. As a result, the northern water mass sustains all kinds of life, particularly phytoplankton (tiny floating plants), which contain chlorophyll, the green stuff of plant life. Very productive waters have more chlorophyll and look a little greener. Those beautiful blue waters offshore of Hawaii don’t have much chlorophyll. So: subtropical gyre = warm, stratified water, low nutrients, low chlorophyll; subarctic gyre = cold, well-mixed water, higher nutrients, higher chlorophyll. Got it? OK, now take a break. I intend to—maybe some of that German chocolate cake from dinner is still down in the mess…

We Tag a Big One!

2008-04-02T23:22:00.000-07:00

Well, let’s just say last night was a challenge. I didn’t hear of anyone actually falling out of their bunk, but I was definitely wedged in. Not that I slept many minutes in a row, since the crash of the bow on a rising swell every 10 or so minutes sent the anchor that was apparently stowed right under my pillow clanging around its cubbyhole. The desk chair swiveled all night long, thankfully without noise. Others reported their pet peeve noises – a drawer that disengaged just a little with every roll, a chain on deck clanking, a curtain opening and closing. And no, the seas didn’t miraculously calm down when we awoke. In a continuing effort to convey the ship's movement, I give you this pair of photos that show the light mast position relative to the horizon as the ship moves up and over a swell. I tried to get a shot of the spray going over the bow, but my patience was not as great as the chill in my fingers.

In an earlier post, before we really got going, I said we’d be on the Big Eyes for 12 hours a day. In reality, given the greenness of most of the crew, seasickness, and sea conditions, we’ve really been working 8am to 4pm with a break for lunch. Now, though, since the seas are too rough and the winds too high for aircraft or small boat operations, there’s nothing to do but look for trash from the flying bridge. These rough seas, as you may have guessed, are not ideal for observing either, but in these conditions, the observations are the most “real” output of the cruise, and this Big Eyes crew is not about to let down our chief scientist! Not to be outdone in the gung-ho contest, Kyle’s small boat crew wanted in on the glory of observing in gale-force winds, so Allan and Kelly pulled together a human puzzle of Big Eye observers, recorders, independent observers, and so on. We implemented it beautifully starting shortly after sunrise this morning—we wondered if this little sunbeam was shining on the mother of all ghostnets.

The morning went well – here a buoy, there a plastic fragment, there a shoe sole. Then, at 9:45am, Robyn spotted it. Would you have? (Hint, it’s in the far left of the photo. To be fair, the resolution on this Web page may render it even more challenging.) I came up 5 or 10 minutes later, and the ship was turning around to get a closer look. At that time we still weren’t sure what it was – netting? tarp? big sheet of plastic? As we got closer, we were able to see that it was a hawser (a thick, strong rope used for mooring, anchoring, or towing a boat). An announcement came across the speakers for all parties involved in small boat operations to meet somewhere. We looked at one another in wonder – were they going to launch a small boat in this maelstrom? (OK, not really a maelstrom, but we did have 25-knot winds and swells of 6-8 feet pretty much all day.) Turns out they were planning to snag the hawser and winch it in to a point where they could attach a satellite drifter buoy to it. The unanimous feeling was that this particular piece of debris would be more valuable staying in the water and telling us where it moves than on board in the pink container. A tracking buoy can communicate its location for an indefinite period of time; it’s powered by solar panels. Some of the buoys that have been deployed have been communicating over two years. We hope to learn a lot from this one. You can track it at http://www.atiak.com/buoy_maps/; pull down the list of satellites and go to the bottom to 15FXZ, with a starting date of 4/02/08.

All observing stopped at 10:30, or rather, the effort changed from the water to the deck. Here are a small sampling of the zillions of shots I took (can you sense the excitement?). First up, the mass of hawser in the water as we got closer to it.

Next up, a piece being winched onto the deck.

On the deck in this closeup, you may be able to distinguish barnacles and algae "fouling" the line. The amount of fouling can indicate how long a piece of debris has been in the water. This was actually fairly light fouling. Here's a shot of Frank and Doug attaching the buoy. At one point, a wave washed up to Doug's knees; he didn't even flinch. The lightweights on the Big Eyes crew were suitably impressed.

Finally, after being winched back in the water, the hawser drifted away with its buoy intact. Hooray!

We saw more debris throughout the day, but nothing to compare with this one. At the end of the day, with our days at sea dwindling, we decided to start heading back west toward 158 longitude and north a bit more to about 36 degrees. Tomorrow the CTD folks will do more casts, between 36 and 35 degrees, finishing off their long line of measurements along 158 degrees. We’ll be observing along with them, hoping to find some debris to tag as well. After tomorrow, we may head south to better weather to allow more testing and operations with the UAS. As for the Big Eyes crew, we may trade off higher likelihood of debris against a better chance of actually spotting it and having a chance to reach it in calmer seas. And as much as we’ve risen to the challenge of pitching and rolling on the flying bridge, we probably won’t complain about milder seas and milder temperatures.

In Which the Big Eyes Crew Faces a Challenge, and I Visit the Gym

2008-04-01T21:52:00.000-07:00

The POD (plan of the day) called for one small boat in the water during the Malolo II flights, with a possibility of another being launched if debris sighting warranted it. The Big Eyes crew started up at 8, the SAFE boat got in the water around 9, and the Malolo had some technical difficulties. Tim’s holding the UAS with its top off. Curtis and Mike are similarly dismayed.

While they were waiting to see whether the Malolo II would be able to fly, the SAFE boat came back in, allowing Joe a chance to rest. As it turned out, the weather didn’t really cooperate for flights or small boat operations.

After my first shift, I decided to brave the exercise room. It’s been 8 days of using only the muscles to keep myself upright and hold the Big Eyes handles. The exercise room is down two levels from the scientists’ staterooms, so presumably the roll of the ship is less pronounced. It’s a great gym, in a tiny space. From left to right is an elliptical trainer, exercise bicycle, treadmill, rowing machine, bench, and Bowflex machine.

There’s a fan mounted on the wall – hardly needed as the chill in the gym would keep most folks from sweating. The interesting thing about the fan is that its electrical cord dangles, with no outlet box in reach. And that’s interesting because it acts as a plumb bob or ship-roll-o-meter. Without the sway of the cord, it would be hard to know why you’re suddenly at the very back or front of the treadmill.

I spent 45 minutes on the extractor (at our household we call the elliptical trainer the extractor because of its high efficiency at extracting sweat—it’s not nearly as effective in a chilled room). I admire those who brave the treadmill and allow their feet to lose contact with a machine. I’ll stick with the extractor and bicycle.

Feeling pleased with my workout, I indulged in dessert at both lunch and dinner. If I had planned better, I could easily have blogged just the food on this cruise. It’s transcendent, and I’m not just saying that because we spend so much time in the open air. Robyn is particularly smitten with the bread puddings.

Back to the flying bridge after lunch, I was impressed at the change in weather. Wind was picking up, clouds were lowering, fog was creeping in from the horizon. In fact, over the next two hours, it just got better and better (or worse and worse, depending on your feelings about extreme weather). Here's Allan struggling to tally sightings on paper before we switched to waterproof paper.

There was no question of flights or small boats, as I mentioned earlier, and our ability to detect buoys was hampered by the limited visibility and abundant whitecaps. As we witnessed the weather and finally retreated to simply looking with the naked eye for plastic fragments and other debris within about 100 meters of the ship, I tried to think of ways to convey the noise and motion to you. These photos probably don’t look like much, although the way the wind flattened the waves and left these lines of foam impressed the heck out of us.

This little movie clip isn’t very high quality, but it has some rudimentary sound and at the end you can see Andrea’s rain gear whipping in the wind. (If there's a big space here, the video clip may be slowly loading.)

For about a half-hour we retreated to the bridge (where the ship’s captain stands), but the restricted view didn’t make up for the warmth and good company, so we crawled back up to the flying bridge for the 40 knot winds. Kelly’s hair whipping around may give some idea of what the wind was like.

We extended our viewing by an hour today, in hopes of hitting the chlorophyll front that Evan promised was imminent. I guess we hit it about 15 minutes after the last of the observing crew headed down to dinner. The flow-through fluorometer jumped from readings of 0.08 to 0.2 and even 0.4. We have a new plan for tomorrow – we’ll zigzag back and forth across the front, probably between 35’30” and 36’ north latitude. The Big Eyes team decided at tonight’s meeting to increase our viewing time by 90 minutes tomorrow, cutting our mealtimes in half. As these high winds continue to blow, the swells are expected to get bigger. In tough weather, ours is the only debris data being gathered, so we want to maximize our effort. Again, we hope we find some pay dirt, in the form of big clumps of debris we can attach ghostnet buoys to. We brought 16 of them along and would hate to take them back home with us.

A Big Success for Malolo II, and We Take Stock

2008-03-31T22:36:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-30T22:47:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-29T22:28:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-28T00:41:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-26T22:48:00.001-07:00

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

2008-03-26T20:35:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-26T17:22:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-25T11:06:00.000-07:00

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)

2008-03-24T17:31:00.001-07:00

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

2008-03-10T20:15:00.000-07:00

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.)