Posts Tagged ‘Coastal Endurance’
Winches and Cranes Galore
Working smarter, not harder. A picture of many heavy objects being moved without anyone carrying anything by hand aboard the R/V Sikuliaq during the Endurance 20 expedition. Note the bear tracks on the roof in recognition of Oregon State University’s mascot, “Benny the Bear.”
Read MoreUNOLS Volunteers Pitch In
The Endurance 20 team includes two UNOLS Cruise Volunteers on each leg. These volunteers are graduate students looking for opportunities to go to sea. On this leg, Marlena Penn and Cassia Cai joined the Endurance 20 team aboard the R/V Sikuliaq.
Read MoreCrabs Galore
Image of crab pots surrounding the ship as the R/V Sikuliaq and the Endurance 20 team were adjacent to the Washington Inshore Surface Mooring. The primary purpose of this radar is to detect sea ice, but it works well on crab pot floats too. The circle’s radius is ¾ nm.
Read MoreAnchors, then Away
Two anchors were recovered — the Washington Offshore Profiling mooring anchor and the Washington Offshore surface mooring anchor — and the R/V Atltantis and the Endurance 19 team headed for Astoria and home. The team arrived in port on Saturday October 7 to begin the process of offloading the quite full ship, then loading trucks…
Read MoreA cruise with a view
The start of October found us with the sun rising over the Oregon Coast as we recovered and deployed a mooring as part of OOI’s Coastal Endurance Array. As this was their closest mooring to shore, we were rewarded with the stunning view of Yaquina Head LIghthouse glowing in the morning sun. The work on…
Read MoreThrough the fog and surf
Thursday afternoon saw the R/V Thomas G. Thompson slipping its moorings and gliding through the fog back out to sea for leg two of the Endurance 17 mission. While leg one was focused on recovering and deploying moorings along the Washington line of OOI’s Coastal Endurance Array, leg two is focused on doing the same…
Read MorePop goes the weasel
During the first leg of Endurance 17 the recovery of an inshore surface mooring did not go according to plan. The early steps of recovering this mooring (which sits in approximately 30 meters of water), connecting to the buoy and cabling that attaches it to the MFN (Multi-Function Node) went smoothly. With the buoy attached…
Read MoreRecovery
In an earlier post Trenity Ford explored a bit of what it takes to deploy a mooring and its related parts, but that is only one-half of the operation. For each mooring or profiler that gets deployed, a different one must be picked up and recovered. OOI operates the Coastal Endurance Array on a 6-month…
Read MoreEmptying the Deck
Today, Friday September 23, was another day of deployment on the Endurance’s Washington Line. The Endurance Team reported on deck at 645 to begin preparing the deck for the movement of the mooring pieces into place for their ultimate deployment. By 8 am, the deck was ready. Deck cleats had been secured, tag lines to…
Read MoreBioluminescence
Some of my colleagues and I had a very special treat last night. We witnessed an amazing swath of bioluminescence off the stern of the R/V Thomas G. Thompson (light blue in image below). According to Marnie Jo Zirbel, a biological oceanographer onboard, the bioluminescence was the result of light emitted by dinoflagellates in the…
Read More