Updates
Remotely operated vehicle operations
April 8, 2022
Weather conditions and time constraints during the Pioneer 17 cruise precluded complete recovery of the Offshore and Upstream Offshore Profiler Moorings. If time and conditions permit, Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) lead Jared Schwartz will used an ROV to complete the recovery of these two moorings, as well as several anchor recoveries.
Two-leg expedition
April 8, 2022
The Pioneer 18 Recovery and Deployment mission will be conducted in two legs. The back deck of the R/V Armstrong will be filled with equipment on both legs as the team recovers ten moorings and deploys eight moorings and three gliders. Shown here are three coastal surface moorings.
Port day
March 29, 2022
The Endurance 16 team deploys enough equipment on the Endurance mooring cruises that they have a port stop to unload the gear deployed on leg 1 and load the leg 2 gear. It goes pretty fast. Within 24 hrs, the team has the leg 1 gear unloaded and the leg 2 gear loaded and tested. Here, Sikuliaq crew member Langston and OOI science party member Kristin Politano work together to…
Crane castle
March 29, 2022
For OOI Endurance mooring operations, the team relies on the excellent lifting equipment offered by the R/V Sikuliaq. Here a recovered surface buoy (about 20 ft tall and 10,000 lbs) is being repositioned using the red starboard crane while science party and deck crew keep things under control with tag lines controlled by air tuggers. You can see why the crane’s home is nicknamed the castle.
Wet Lab view
March 25, 2022
On this cruise, most of the work occurs on deck as the team deploys and recovers oceanographic moorings. However, at each site, the team takes water samples to compare to the deployed mooring instruments. Here , Marnie Jo Zirbel caps a sample bottle in the wet lab while Jonathan Whitefield goes to draw another seawater sample. As implied by the name, the wet lab is where seawater samples are taken…
Pre-deployment checkout
March 24, 2022
Each OOI oceanographic mooring carries more than 20 sensors and takes months to prepare for deployment. To make sure everything is working and ready to deploy, Akhil Salim and Kristin Politano review the checklist at the mooring’s bottom lander. In the foreground (red disks), is the top of an acoustic Doppler current profiler. It looks upward and measures water velocity every two meters through the water column. The black hose…
Working to the weather
March 23, 2022
Spring in the North Pacific can bring pretty high winds and seas. When the Endurance 16 team gets good weather, they press on through long days. Here Alex Wick and Kristin Politano get a subsurface float into position on the R/V Sikuliaq during an evening mooring deployment on the OOI Spring Endurance cruise.
First mooring deployment completed
March 23, 2022
The Endurance 16 OOI science party and R/V Sikuliaq crew deploy the Washington shelf mooring. The new mooring will sit side-by-side for a few days with the mooring deployed in September to cross-validate the data.
Gliders are in the water
March 22, 2022
The Endurance 16 team completed its first operation of the Spring 2022 OOI Endurance cruise. Here Linus Stoltz (left) and Jonathan Whitefield (right) prepare a couple of ocean gliders for deployment off Oregon. These gliders are designed to operate for three months at a time and range to about 200 miles offshore during their deployment. After deploying the gliders, the team collected a profile of water properties from the…
Putting it all together
March 21, 2022
From left to right Stuart Pearce, Steve Lambert, and Kristin Politano connect the electrical-mechanical (EM) chain at the base of the Washington shelf buoy. Before deployment, the mooring is connected from top to bottom, and instruments are turned on and tested.