Two Parts Worried Scientists, One Part Forced Idle Time, Bake All Afternoon on the Quarterdeck

During my morning Jason watch, I caught the last 30 minutes and 13^th rock grab of the geology dive and the entirety of the water column. The dive site was close enough to Oahu that we could see a smattering of lights on the horizon so the water column was quite short – only 1500 m.  Once Jason was on deck, and “Jason on deck” had been properly logged, it was ‘re-racking’ time – that’s Jason team talk for going back to bed.  On the way back to my rack, I took a detour to the bow where the sea and the sky yawned in greeting to the sun.

Noon was the scheduled time for the TAAM deployment so we had to move Medea out of the way and swing the anchor back to center. Once there, Jefrey began assembling the string of chains, cables, shackles, and everything in between. Just above the anchor he attached the acoustic release that will be triggered to open when the mooring is recovered.  Cammy and I stood by with zip ties in hand.

Though all the equipment was ready for deployment, the waves did not appear to be. The swell we experienced on Wednesday that sent us south for our geology intermission had not subsided by much. While deploying a mooring, the seas have to be particularly calm because the assemblers on the quarterdeck spend a lot of time on the edge handling equipment.  In addition to human safety, the equipment’s safety must be considered.   In order to attach the inductive modem above the release, the anchor must be lowered over the stern by a few meters and held there until the connections are made. When the seas are rough, this leaves the anchor vulnerable to dangling above the surface where it can swing more violently.  This danger was the main reason for stalling the mooring deployment on the quarterdeck.

All afternoon, everyone was hoping that the weather would improve and that the taunting grey squall would pass within an hour or so. Half the ship’s company huddled around the quarterdeck, hard hats and life vests at the ready.  Several worried scientists and involuntary idle time is a recipe for nit picking.  The huddle focused its attention around the anchor, pointing at this and poking that.  Uncertainty about things that seemed to have been certain just yesterday sloshed around the huddle with the heave of the ship.  Brows furrowed down over squinting eyes, idle hands rubbed chins, arms folded across life vests. 

Though the squall never stopped taunting, the nit picking did come to a conclusion. To avoid the sticky situation of attaching the inductive modem with the anchor swinging, the huddle devised a plan.  They attached the inductive modem while the anchor was still on deck in a way that left just enough clearance under the A-frame to lift the string of modem, release and anchor. We were set for the day ahead when the weather would hopefully be better behaved.

Worried scientists and idle time struck again later that evening when the anchor sat in the spotlight on the back deck. No one looks good under florescent lighting.  The anchor’s tiny flaws were illuminated and busy hands tended to them. Namely, the bungee cords holding the neon green cable on the spools were overstretched and I employed my newfound knot skills to make new ones.

When worried scientist went to bed, I took my last chance to recline in the spool of the anchor. A few stars made it through the cloud cover. The ship hummed and jolted as the waves slapped its underbelly like a washing machine with a pair of sneakers on spin cycle inside. Within a few minutes the clouds drizzled down droplets, which, as a Seattleite, I’m programmed to find refreshing.  Given a few more minutes, the clouds supplied something I could only find inconvenient. I let my recliner enjoy the Hawaiian blessing alone as I dried off and nodded off.

Who Needs a Hard Hat When You've Got a Crown?

Matt the birthday boy, also known as the ring leader of the Jason circus or the Jason Expedition Leader, deploys Jason while sporting his birthday headgear.

Swinging Anchors and Inspecting Gadgets

With creative influence from our Backstreet Boys a cappella, Dave and I transformed these ordinary wing nuts securing battery packs in the ADCP’s into Bumblebee wing nuts with a few swipes from the sharpie. 

The dripping J-box in all its glory is given a royal welcome back to the quarter after a valiant attempt to connect to the cable termination. 

Jason’s underwater coiling job remains intact after being dragged through 5 km of the water column.

Tired of supplying the glorious lighting for these photos, the sun sets.

During its spa treatment, the titanium casing that protects the repeater and the fiber optic cable junction is carefully massaged open.

Everyone wanted a peek inside.

Inspector Gadget examines the surface of the cables through the microscope and determines that one of them could use a little attention.

Scott exfoliated the fiber’s surface by drawing figure eights on a piece of very fine sand paper.

Inspector Gadget finds that, after a little spa treatment, his gadgets are in order.  

The voltmeter is brought out to make sure that the power is, indeed, on.

Using red light and a dentist’s mirror, Inspector Gadget checks for the red light scattering from the fiber optic cables to make sure that the cables are transmitting light.

Festive colored fiberglass and lashings spruce up the anchor frame.

The Aloha Mars Mooring (AMM) Node gets prepped for its plunge.

It’s hauled up --

-- and tossed away.

The sun sets in Jason’s armpit.

Several people are required to tend tag lines to ensure that the anchor doesn’t dive into the sea as it is moved to the center of the quarterdeck.

Dave and Vic restrain the green behemoth from barreling into back deck equipment.

Sedated and strapped down to the deck, the anchor awaits its morning deployment. My reclining real estate now has seaside status. 

Morning breaks, and a rainbow with it, over the anchor. Unfortunately this morning brought 30-knot gusts and high swell so the anchor will have to wait another day.

Instead of deploying the TAAM mooring, we head to Ka’ena Ridge to fill in some paint strokes on the bathymetry survey. We pass by the point in 80 m of water –close enough to see the beach.  From the bridge, Cammy gives me a binocular tour of the west side of Oahu and we watch the bow in hopes that some dolphins might catch our waves.   While at the bridge, we also spend some time pushing buttons and asking questions about rudders, radar, Doppler and bow thrusters.  I even steer the ship for a minute. I hold the wheel – such a small wheel for such a chubby ship – and obey rudder angle commands until we reach the survey line, where autopilot takes over for me.  Could someone please fish out that bucket list I tossed overboard? I have something I’d like to cross off it.

The conditions are much calmer south of the ridge and Jason is allowed to jump in for a swim.  He dives to the bottom and collects rocks for the geologist. This dive was much closer to shore on a ridge that is believed to be an old section of Waianae.  The geologists can use the rock samples from this dive to compare with those from Ka’ena Ridge to determine if Ka’ena is the same as Waianae or different. 

The Spool of an Anchor is a Lovely Place to Recline

As predicted, 0400 came early than I’d hoped and I stumbled my way to the Jason van for another healthy dose of the water column.  Warm tea and a blanket were working against me so I fought to stay awake with doodling and periodic strolls to watch the development of the sunrise – from darkness with a few stars visible through the bright-as-day deck lights, to nautical twilight seeping up from the horizon, to civil twilight bright enough to see the waves, to the inching of the orange sun away from the sea, in no mood to rush the day.  At 0800 there was no use in fighting the drowsiness any longer and after breakfast I returned to bed.

When I awoke I learned that the reconfiguration of the J-box was not successful in getting a stronger optical signal to Makaha. As with before, the power was coming through just fine.  From here, the thought is that the problem may lie in the configuration of the repeaters on the seafloor between Makaha and Station Aloha.  There are over 200 possible configurations for that series of repeaters so the folks at the cable station are working their way through as many as they can.

In the afternoon, it was the anchor’s turn for a little affection. At the end of each of the neon green cables wrapped around the anchor are the same fragile connectors found throughout the equipment. They had been resting in holsters, but to protect them long term at the bottom of the ocean we installed the female end of the connector for a better seal. Lashing the fiberglass grid, on which the connector was mounted, to the anchor frame was my and John’s task. Similar to the macramé of my first day on the ship but with an improved knot-tying repertoire, I wrapped red twine this way and that until my hands were tired and stained with red dye.  That fiberglass grid has no chance of escape.

While wrapped up in lashings on the quarterdeck, I hadn’t noticed the sudden absence of normal commotion.   It wasn’t until someone said to me, “So the meeting’s already over?” that I realized there had been a meeting. I made it to the conference room in time for the last 5 minutes of it but I was assured that the first 25 minutes were too boring to merit relaying.

After dinner, it was the AMM node’s time to plunge. I watched the operation while reclining inside the spool of the anchor.  With some last minute adjustments – adding holsters for the USBL and Homer beacons that will be used to find the runaway node on the seafloor – the orange hulk was lowered into the water and released.  Within ten minutes, the beacons told us it was plowing at over 100m/min towards the seafloor.

With the bird perch out of the way, it was time to move the anchor to ready position for the Thermistor Array/Acoustic Modem (TAAM) mooring deployment scheduled for the next morning.  I tried to convince the crane operator that it would be just fine if I stayed in the spool while he swung the anchor under the A-frame but he was not so sure. The rest of the back deck was decorated in preparation for the deployment including laying out the strings of glass balls and rearranging the furniture to leave more room for dancing, I mean deploying. 

Fiber Optic Facials

Yesterday’s dive intended to send a test signal from Jason’s bellybutton to Makaha was cut short by a decision to remain on the safe side. Though the electronics from the umbilical cord were all wired through the connector in front of Jason, there was a worry that the connector itself was not suitably prepared to make the connection.  The connectors used throughout the observatory, J-box and termination frame are designed to be able to connect electronics underwater by gates and an oil-filled chamber. If the connector was not properly filled with oil, then seawater may be able to weasel its way in. The incompatibility between water and electronic equipment could have damaged the cable termination – a problem which would be bigger than any we’ve yet to face. Proceeding with caution, it was decided not use the bellybutton just bring the J-box back up for another period of pampering.

As with tasks in the past, what sounded like a simple motion – J-box up – sprouted difficulties left and right.  Firstly, Jason needed to coil up the cable that had extended from the J-box to the termination frame and place it securely on the J-box frame. We all watched from the lab television as Scott, Jason’s puppeteer on watch, coaxed the stiff orange cable into figure eights.  It was like watching Jason try to line up her kindergartners after recess. Each loop was constantly avoiding Jason’s grip and once he did get control of them, he had to keep a hand on them an all times or they’d duck under his arms and escape. Once he had the kindergartners remarkably well behaved, Scott had to strap them in with bungees attached to the frame by carabineers.   As you could imagine, the kindergartners wanted none of that. Difficulties ensued with carabineers clipping themselves where they’re not suppose to and handles breaking until the biggest battle of the watch: closing the shackle. Jason has no problem unscrewing a shackle with the extended handle. Perfectly lining the bolt up with the shackle’s holes is a different story that took about 20 minutes to tell.  As with Jason’s successes grabbing rocks, his fans in the lab cheered when the winding bolt came out the other side.

While Jason and the J-box were on their way up, there was work to be done in the staging bay to prepare for the AMM, or the orange bird perch, deployment late the next evening.  The weights, which will assist the AMM in its free fall to almost 5000 m, were at risk of harming the oxygen sensors mounted above them when Jason removed their bungees. To give a safe distance between ultra sensitive sensors and insensate metal hulks, Cammy, Jefrey and I relocated the instruments a foot higher. After unscrewing and retightening of bolts, clipping and re-zipping of ties and a bit of pampering, the bird perch is ready to take the plunge.

Jason just missed dinner, arriving on deck at 0700 or so.  Now it was the J-box’s turn for a bit of pampering. The treatment began with a freshwater bath – lemon and cucumber scented, of course, – followed by a towel pat down.  Then one of the metal cylinders resting on the bottom of the frame was carefully unbolted and slid open to reveal the colorful cables and foreign shapes that make up the fiber optic communications junction.  For a while, we all stood peering over Bruce’s shoulder as Bruce peered into the dark tunnel. Over the course of the night, this mysterious tunnel of wires became clearer to me but I will not be accepting questions at this time for my comprehension hangs by delicate strings.  Any prolonged pondering many detach me entirely.

What needed to be done was check the quality of the fiber optic cables in the tunnel and then reconfigure the cables.  For the first task, Scott looked at the end of the cable through a microscope shaped like a hiking flask.  The first cable looked fine, he said. The second showed signs of minor damage, which they let me look at through the microscope.  The fiber in the cable that communicates signal is no wider than a human hair so in the microscope I saw a thick exterior surrounding a tiny dark circle with streak marks across the screen -- scratches or residue to be removed.  To continue the spa treatment was a fiber optic facial. Scott brought out a sheet of very fine sand paper and drew figure eights on it with the cable tip. He repeated this exfoliation with three other sheets until both he and Bruce seemed satisfied with the result.

With the facial complete, the cables were reconnected to new pins. There are six pins in the tunnel from which to choose because the repeater on the J-box has the capability to send signals through six cables. The AT&T cable that extends from Station Aloha to Makaha has the capability to transmit on only four, narrowing down the pin choice in the tunnel by two.  This leaves two cables – one to receive and one to transmit – and four pins forming twelve possible configurations of how to connect the cables. Two have already been tried by the first and second J-box installments. The pin configuration chosen this time is the same one that had been successful in the hydrophone installation in 2007. 

At the same time that I was glued to Bruce’s shoulder watching him test the loss of attenuators and wipe the surface of cables, Grant and Roger were preparing Jason’s bellybutton for testing. They dissected the whole connector and laid out each part on the bench, looking for which pockets contained oil and which contained water. I was too sleepy to wait up for the tests once they closed back up the connector but I knew that I would find out soon – too soon as 0400 was approaching and my sleep window narrowing. 

Cracking Open the Mysteries

When I stepped into the Jason control van at 0400 David informed me that I had just missed an albino octopus moseying across the screen. My hopes of the eight legged fellow returning were never realized. In the trail of the octopus were never-ending flat plains of the geologists’ least favorite rocks. Even void of dazzling biology and geology, the bottom of the ocean is still a rarely experienced scene so I was consumed by Channel Jason for 4 hours wrapped in my blanket like a crepe – which we had later that morning for breakfast.

After crepes, Roger explained to me the obstacles that this project has dashed in the past, which was more tiring than I had thought. The ACO project started over a decade ago with the first plans to set up this observatory using a copper telecommunications cable – the predecessor to the current fiber optics technology.  The company that was going to donate this cable went bankrupt so could no longer give them the cable.  It wasn’t until AT&T donated a fiber optic cable that the project regained momentum. The next obstacle appeared immediately when the programming prepared for communication with the observatory through a copper cable was not compatible with the code of AT&T’s cable. Someone cleverer than the cable tricked it into speaking ACO’s language and the project took another step forward.  To prove that the cable system to Station Aloha worked, the project installed the predecessor to the observatory, the proof module. Mounted on the proof module was a hydrophone, which remained down there for over a year eavesdropping on whale songs and ships passing by.  Roger let recordings of the whale sounds squeak and moo across the lab for a while. Because Jason wasn’t in the water, the pounding winch noises were absent and you could hear subtle clicks and whooshes from the sea.  To replace the proof module came the first try at a installing an observatory with more instruments than just the one hydrophone.  Faulty connectors prohibited this installation and bad weather cut the time for reinstallation of the hydrophone. The cable termination has been waiting patiently at Station Aloha since then for another try. 

The news from Makaha, where troubleshooting abounds, is that there is nothing wrong with the cable itself between the termination frame and the AT&T station.   This is good news – we don’t have to send someone swimming done to the bottom of the ocean to regenerate a regenerator or patch a fish bite in the cable.  It does, however, mean that the problem lies elsewhere. We’ve yet to figure out where that elsewhere is.  Working at Makaha alongside people from the ACO group is the original engineer of the fiber optic cable who flew into Honolulu to assist in tracking down the rascal errors.

Later in the day I pretended I was a geologist while the ones with degrees in Geology were describing their specimens. John said, “Let’s crack open those rinds,” and handed me a small metal object on a string. Thinking “crack open” meant something like The Mud Slinging Show of the previous day, I swung it around a couple of times trying to figure out how to I was going to exert force with this tiny weapon. “No, no, it’s a hand lens,” John said as he took it from me and opened it to reveal a magnifying glass. Crack open the scientific mysteries, he meant. They held rocks up close to their faces and crouched under the heating lamps with one eye squinting. “20% Olivine,” one says. “There are many vesicles in this one,” says another. If you can use these words in a scientifically accurate sentence, you are further than I. I know that vesicles are different than vessels and Olivine is shiny and green. My own observations – “This one looks like pâté,” – I kept to myself.

Yesterday was the day intended to be Jason’s launch of the signal test to Makaha. Over the past day, Jason’s umbilical cord had been reconfigured to extend out in front of him with a connector the same as those used throughout the observatory and J-box. Jason could then plug his bellybutton into the cable termination, connecting the lab on the KM up to the control van, down the winch wire, in one side of Medea and out the other, passing right through Jason and 100 km of fiber optic cable to Makaha.  A regenerator in the lab would then produce an optical signal that anxious observers on land could receive.  Like the whale songs, this signal would prove that communication is possible between land and sea.  If the signal is not received, this is not necessarily an indication of the impossibility of communication – it just means we need to try something else.  In the event of light seen at the end of the cable or not, the J-box would be retrieved on this dive for reconfiguration and redeployment.

Unfortunately, 0400 brought swell taller than four of my groggy selves standing on each other’s sleepy shoulders – conditions unsuitable for tossing Jason in, even with his remarkable swimming ability.  When I woke for a second time at 0600, the swell was just as tall but now I could see it’s peaks and troughs fluctuate.  The swell hung around for the rest of the day, as did the high 20-knot winds.  Jason with his new protruding bellybutton rocked on the quarterdeck for the rest of the day.

Without Jason, there was little ACO work to be done.  Instead, we prepared equipment for the next cruise. Already experts at switching batteries and cleaning o-rings, David and I flew through prepping a couple ADCP’s and their auxiliary battery packs.   Of course, we couldn't have done it with the help of the Backstreet Boys and a little a cappella. These instruments will be attached to the WHOTS mooring in July. Though we had little to do on the ship to further the observatory installation, the folks at Makaha continued to tinker with their end, finding small errors here and there to correct.

At 0400 this morning, the swells were quiet and the wind cut in half.  Jason jumped in as I rubbed my eyes and drank my tea at the event logging station. The events were few on my 4-hour shift – limited to “Jason in water” and “Jason on bottom” with 3 hours of travel through the water column between.  The rest of the dive will bring more information – and fish.  In order to view a bit more biology at the sediment covered flat bottom, Jason brought with him fish carcasses.  John hopes to find scavengers flocking to the smell -- possibly getting video footage of some for the first time. By 0800, when I was relieved, there was already a thin spattering of white in front of Jason – amphipods looking for their meal. 

The Robot Dances and the Mud Slings

Toss the bucket list overboard; I’ve no need for it anymore. I’m fairly certain that nothing on that list could match manipulating Jason’s left arm. As of 0630 this morning that experience has been checked off the list. While passing over a particularly bland patch of seafloor on the geology survey Akel, the pilot, asked if anyone one would like to try their hand at running Jason’s hand.  A little shocked that this was even an option, I didn’t respond so Deb, a geologist who shares my watch, went first.  Anxiously, I waited at my DVD labeling station until it was my turn.  “Does anyone else want to try?” Yes. The controller for the arm is a mini replica of the arm itself that the pilot holds with two hands. One hand operates the shoulders and elbow, the other controls the wrists – that’s right, Jason has not one but two wrists – the claw, and the on/off switch.  It was harder than I had thought – possibly because of the two wrists but more likely because of the millions of M&M’s worth of titanium resting in my hand.  At first I just swung the arm back and forth out in front of Jason, trying to stay away from anything I could break. I attempted to make him dance but the disco takes more coordination than I could muster and doing the robot meant, well, just being himself.   Then I tried the more daring move of picking something up from the basket. I went for the color palette, which Akel assured me was already broken so I couldn’t harm it further.  Like a blind contour drawing, you have to trust that your hand is doing the right thing as you stare at three different camera angles trying to calculate the depth field. My first try: a swing and a miss.  My second try: a success. I inched the palette out of basket and quickly put it back down.  Having performed this task without breaking Jason’s arm, I decided to quit before I did.  I stowed the arm in defensive position and handed it back over the guys who rip rocks out of the seafloor, stow them in labeled baskets, unscrew shackles and plug in connectors, grasp small loops of twine with expensive equipment dangling from them all while controlling the rest of the vehicle too. Maybe someday they’ll learn to disco.  

After my stint at the helm of Jason’s left arm, the seafloor became rocky again and the geologists became excited. From standing watch with them, I have come to understand why geologists are so picky.  To me, all the lumpy mounds at the bottom of the ocean appear the same. Why not just pick one up every few hundred meters and call it a survey? Because picking up any old rock and analyzing it doesn’t guarantee that those rock characteristics originated in that location. Rocks can be relocated by current or come tumbling down the side of the ridge by gravity. So the geologists look for outcroppings on the ridge of rock solidly connected to the topography. Of course, this makes it harder for Jason to collect these unwilling rock samples but it guarantees for the geologists the original location of the rock. We picked up several rocks and almost got a spiny pair of crabs as the ridge became shallower.  The dive ended at 0730 and Jason and Medea arrived on deck shortly after. With several pounds of rocks to unload from Jason’s baskets, the geologists employed my assistance again, and again rewarded me for my efforts. This time I received two pieces of sponge from the side of Ka’ena Ridge.

In the rock lab, once the rocks were all laid out and drying under heat lamps, the rock team began their processing.  This started with measuring and describing the samples, then came “The Slinging Mud Show” in which Doug sawed the rocks in half to reveal their insides.  Water and rock particles abounded so he wore an apron. During the many years that these rocks have spent at the bottom of the ocean, manganese has built up on their exterior making each rock look like the same coarse black blob in different shapes and sizes.  In reality, each rock is slightly, or in some cases wildly, different.  “Like truffles,” Doug says, slicing them in half shows you the true flavor of the rock. In most cases you can see a difference in color immediately from the black manganese to the green or brown or grey insides.  What the geologists hope to find on the inside of the rock are glass chards because they offer a quick form of analysis. Analyzing the samples that they collect on this cruise in full will last them a couple years.

Over lunch, John was explaining to me his hypothesis for Ka’ena Ridge’s formation and the purpose for his research on this cruise. Ka’ena Ridge juts off of the northwest point of Oahu about 1000 m under the sea at its peak. Many have considered it to be a distal extension of the Waianae volcano on Oahu but John says that there are reasons to believe otherwise – to believe that it was a volcano all of its own.  From the research conducted on this cruise John and his team hope to find evidence pointing one way or the other. When I asked him if it was too early to tell, he said it would take a lot more age and composition analysis of the rocks to determine whether they’re related to Waianae or not.   So the geology dives will continue while things are straightened out for ACO at Makaha.