ORCA Field Day: Solar Panel Installation

Maintaining the Oceanic Remote Chemical Analyzer (ORCA) buoys requires semi-regular field days for UW Field Engineers.  Today, Gretchen Thuesen and Rachel Vander Giessen head out to install a solar panel on the Dabob Bay buoy.  They spend the days leading up to the field day getting supplies, instruments and electronics ready, lining up an appropriate vehicle and checking the tides and wind forecasts.  This morning they do one last wind check then meet at the Ocean Science Building to load the truck before catching an early ferry to Bremerton.  From there they drive to Belfair where the M/V Mackinaw is stored at the Pacific Northwest Salmon Center.

Hitching the M/V Mackinaw and trailer to the truck and saying good morning to PNWSC staff

The trailer is hitched to the truck and the engineers head north, towing the 20’ boat over the Hood Canal Bridge to Quilcene where they’ll carefully launch it in the narrow marina and motor out to the buoy.

The boat and buoy have to be lined up just right for transferring the heavy solar panel

Maneuvering heavy equipment from the boat to the buoy is difficult and time consuming… calm winds help by allowing the boat to be tied up on the correct side of the buoy regardless of wind direction.  The solar panel and frame housing is large and heavy and has to be carefully laid out on the boat so that it can be transferred to the buoy without incurring damage.  Rachel holds it in place on the buoy platform while Gretchen secures it with U-bolts.

Gretchen preps hardware and tools for the solar
panel installation

Dabob buoy with a newly installed solar panel

Eventually, we get the hardware installed and all of the electronics wired up.  Now Dabob is equipped with two 75 W solar panel that will recharge the battery bank, supplying predictable power to the oceanographic instrument system.

A Day at Sea

Members of the science team help the Resident Technician retrieve the CTD rosette aboard R/V Melville

My alarm goes off at 0600 and I lay in my rocking berth listening to the jingle bell sound of the Chirp Sonar.  Swinging through the main lab on the way to the mess hall I glance at the white board for updates and messages.  Coffee is enjoyed on the fantail while searching for whales with some of the crew and science team.  I do a run through of the morning's sampling supplies before heading back into the mess hall at 0730 for a quick breakfast of bacon, eggs, potatoes and fresh fruit.  We then prep the rosette and computer for the 0800 CTD cast.  We're scheduled to sample a line of stations along the coast so this will be the first of three casts today.  Radio checks between bridge, winch, lab and deck, then the rosette goes over the side and down to a predetermined depth as we watch the PAR plot for the chlorophyll max.  Then the winch brings the rosette up in increments and all niskin bottles are fired, collecting water at different depths.  

Gloves are important when taking water samples to avoid contamination

Once the rosette is recovered and secured on deck, the science team circles around it in waves, taking seawater samples to be analyzed for things like dissolved oxygen and carbon, nutrients and chlorophyll.   Once sample collection is complete, everyone gets busy at their stations in the main lab, running through their different analyses while the ship motors on to our next station.  

Maintaining the deionized water system in the analytical lab

Running water sample analyses in the main lab

The rest of the day follows this pattern: CTD cast, water collection and sample analysis in the lab with an 1130 lunch break. A day at sea revolves around mealtimes so the quality, quantity and diversity of options is important... fortunately we're well taken care of and on today's menu is chicken fajitas.  Members of the crew take their coffee breaks at 1000 and 1400 and are an endless source of stories if you're able to step away from your lab bench.  Some people are able to wrap up their work by dinner at 1700 and we all settle down in the library afterwards for a brief science meeting.  The chief scientist gives an idea of how the big picture is forming and where we're headed from here.  It also gives us the opportunity to describe our individual roles in the expedition and learn about different areas of research.

Today was a light sampling day so we take the opportunity to start a load of laundry, clean our cabins or get caught up on paperwork.  We meet on the forward deck to watch the sunset and enjoy an impromptu guitar solo.  The rest of the evening is spent playing cards in the mess hall or watching a movie in the lounge.  Working at sea is more tiring than you'd expect so everyone heads down to their berths early for a good night’s sleep.

Relaxing after a long day

Spring buoy deployment in Hood Canal

What a week in Hood Canal!  Spring is definitely making it's way through the Pacific Northwest and our team from the University of Washington's Applied Physics Lab and School of Oceanography experienced both sun and showers while deploying new ORCA (Oceanic Remote Chemical Analyzer) buoys in Twanoh and Dabob Bay.

The new buoy tied up alongside R/V Robertson

First, the original buoys had to be recovered aboard the R/V Robertson and brought to shore where our team of engineers could remove the existing platform and scientific instruments and transfer to the shiny new buoys.  We also added new housing for the carbon system from NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL) which will add to our understanding of acidification in Hood Canal.

Removing the instrument platform from the old buoy

The new Dabob buoy, populated and ready to go

The whole operation was then hoisted onto the aft deck and motored back out to the Canal.  Each buoy was returned to it's original location where new anchors were deployed and a sea lion fence was installed.

Leaving Pleasant Harbor to deploy the new Dabob buoy

Setting one of three anchors

Installing the sea lion fence

These new buoys will make maintenance easier and allow for more oceanographic instrumentation, adding to the efficiency and functionality of the ORCA buoy system.

Humpbacks, orcas, and sea lions, oh my!

Another amazing day! We had quite a number of visitors today, including a Cha'ba!

 

Cha'ba is the Quileute word for "whale tail", and we were graced with a humpback whale showing theirs to us earlier today! Since the buoy Cha'ba is located in waters offshore of Quileute tribal lands, the buoy was named by a Quileute tribal member before it was deployed the first time. We felt very fortunate to see an actual cha'ba during the same cruise that we deployed the buoy Cha'ba!

A pod of five orcas also cruised by us.

R/V Thompson crew, scientists, and educators checking out the orcas. From the left: Stephen (marine tech), Keegan (marine tech intern), Jan (scientist), Sue (educator), Mike (educator), Nissa (educator), Matthew (scientist), and Tom (educator).

Part of the orca pod - two females and a baby!

We also had a tag-along sea lion that was surfing along side of the ship for awhile.

Zooming right for us.

Sea lion peeking around the hull of the ship.

NANOOS educator Amy and our sea lion pal.

Since we saw the sea lion soon after the orcas passed by, we initally hypothesized that it was trying to hide from them. The orcas we saw were most likely transient orcas, which eat mammals like seals and sea lions, as opposed to the resident orcas that live mostly in Puget Sound and eat fish. However, the sea lion hung out next to the ship for quite a while, and was close up against the side of the ship, so another hypothesis that was floated is that it was surfing along side the ship to get a free ride. Either way, we had a lot of fun watching it cruise along with us!

Several folks on board have also seen albatross flying around, but we have yet to capture them on film. We have one more full day at sea tomorrow, so hopefully they will cooperate!

Krill vs. the R/V Thompson

Let me tell you a story about an inch long critter that crippled the ship last night.

 

Two of the euphausids, or krill, that shut down the ship

Meet the Euphausid. It is a relative of shrimp and is better known by its common name: krill. It is an important link in the food web. It eats phytoplankton and is eaten by many other larger animals, including fish and baleen whales. Since they are eaten by so many other animals, they have developed several behaviors to help decrease the chance of becoming dinner. One is that they form large swarms – safety in numbers! Another is that because several of their predators rely on sight to find prey, the krill travel down into deeper waters where it is dark to hide during the day, and then at night travel up to the surface where the phytoplankton are to eat in the cloak of darkness. Both of these behaviors are critical to our story.

Last night after dinner, the ship engines unexpectedly shut down and the ship lost all power. Not good. Luckily there are generators on board to power lights, but unknown engine failure equals lots of stress. The crew was stressed because they had to quickly find and fix whatever issue caused the ship to die. Scientist John Mickett and his Wave Chaser team was stressed because their instrument that the ship was towing was only 30 meters off the bottom of the ocean, and they were worried about damaging the instrument if we drifted to an area that was shallower than where we lost power. Having no power meant that they were unable to pull the instrument back up to the ship.

What the crew eventually found was that a large swarm of krill had been pulled into the ship’s seawater intake hose and had completely clogged the filter, not allowing any water into the system. Seawater is constantly pulled into the engine to cool it, like a radiator in a car, so the clog and lack of new seawater triggered the ship to shut down. Once the crew cleared out the krill, the ship was back in business.

In chatting with John Mickett earlier today, he mentioned that he was surprised that the swarm of krill did not show up on their data. Part of the equipment that the Wave Chasers are using is a sonar instrument called BioSonics that can detect fish schools and zooplankton layers. 

The BioSonics instrument is the vertical metal pole attached to the side of the ship. The BioSonics sensors are about 3 meters (9 feet) below the surface of the water.

The Wave Chasers can see internal waves with this device as it goes past a zooplankton layer, making it move up and down  just like how waves look at the surface of the ocean.

The data from BioSonics is displayed in real-time so that scientists can see if they have found an internal wave. This plot shows a cross-section of the ocean, with the surface of the ocean along the top. Some small internal waves are seen where the light blue and dark blue meet on this plot. In the lower dark blue layer, the vertically grouped dots and lines are most likely fish.

Due to the krill’s predator avoidance behaviors I mentioned earlier - forming large swarms and coming to the surface at night – they were right in line with the seawater intake valve at the bottom of the ship’s hull. Since the BioSonics instrument is deployed about 3 meters (9 feet) below the surface of the water, it is conceivable that the swarm was not detected by the sonar because they were camped out within a couple feet from the surface of the water.  

Tom, a science teacher from Bainbridge Island, checking out the krill.

Luckily everything worked out in the end. The ship was back in business quickly and there were no lasting impacts on equipment. Moral of the story – Large swarms of krill: great for fish and whales, not great for ship intake valves.