CTD | Deep Sea News

How to recover when something goes very, very wrong at sea

Dr. Martini — Sat, 11 Mar 2017 16:59:29 +0000

No shit, Sherlock. A staggering achievement – fishing for a 2m thing in 5000m water with a 10,000m line … very, very well done. https://t.co/gvKiU23H9B

— Sheldon Bacon (@sheldonbacon) March 10, 2017

I could not have said it better myself. Last weekend the wire cable from which the CTD is suspended on the RRS James Cook snapped, sending the entire thing to the bottom of the sea. Even worse, the crew had strapped 32 additional instruments onto the cage to calibrate them for the upcoming mooring deployment! I have no doubt the language onboard was extraordinary in that moment. Fortunately cooler heads prevailed in the 55 hours that followed and the entire cage was recovered. THE ENTIRE THING.

This is just an incredible story that demonstrates the resourcefulness of the people who work on oceanographic research ships. Read the whole story (and more about the RAPID expedition) at https://rapidexpedition2017.blogspot.co.uk/

Thumbs up and HELL YEAH are certainly appropriate after recovering a lot of equipment at the bottom of the sea.

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Five ways conductivity data met an untimely demise

Dr. Martini — Tue, 23 Feb 2016 11:58:45 +0000

I’ve been looking at a lot of data lately. Visions of data are dancing in my head. Why? Because often, an oceanographic sensor will just crap out. And I must find that bad data and banish them from my analysis.

Every sensor has the potential for a problem. Water velocity, temperature, oxygen, nitrate and conductivity have all been known to rebel. THE STRUGGLE IS REAL. Even though they are super useful for computing seawater salinity and density when combined with a with temperature-sensing thermistor, conductivity cells were the worst offenders. Maybe it’s because they are delicate glass tubes that are just trying to measure how well electricity conducts through seawater? Or maybe it’s because they are just jerks. Nonetheless, after looking at literally 1000’s of data records I’ve gone ahead and categorized some of the most common ways I saw conductivity go wild so you don’t have to. YOU’RE WELCOME SCIENCE.

THE DAILY GRIND.

Just ignore that my plots look like unicorn barf, this is what healthy conductivity data looks like. Wiggles at many depths that show water moving up and down. It truly is magical.

THE FLATLINE.

Sometimes your conductivity cells just choose to never sample at all. There never was, nor shall there ever be, conductivity.

GONE BINARY.

Your choices for conductivity are now 1 and 0. You have been assimilated by the BORG.

DESCENT INTO MADNESS.

Sometimes conductivity goes off the metaphorical deep end.

THAT SINKING FEELING.

And at other times, your conductivity sensor ends up in the physical deep end.

ATTACK OF THE CNIDARIA.

Jellyfish can be small. Jellyfish are squishy. Jellyfish are conductive. Jellyfish can get sucked into your conductivity cell. Jellyfish suck at measuring conductivity.

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A Research Cruise in 12 Animated Gifs

Dr. Martini — Sat, 07 Jun 2014 10:02:40 +0000

Hey everyone I went out on a research cruise in the Bering Sea!

Ship tracks!

We threw a lot of expensive shit in the ocean. Starting with this mooring. It was called Peggy.

Peggy was married to Oscar Dyson, whom our ship was named after. This is truly a case of “if you love someone set it free.”

Then we threw this drifter and its drogue into the sea. It follows all the currents.

Oceanographers prefer their drogues to be off-colored holey socks procured from slovenly giants.

And for good measure, we chucked in this ARGO float. OK I lied, we gently placed it in.

Immediately after filming this I proceeded to have a mini heart attack because I didn’t know it was programmed to sink before it turns on. DAMN YOU CLEVER INVENTORS PRESSURE SWITCH!

And then it was SUR-SUR-SURVEY time. And we were all like….

At each stop in the survey, we had definite plan of sampling attack.

Step 1: Get your water from the Niskin bottles on the Rosette.

1…2…3…4…get your samples from the pour.

Step 2: FILTER ALL THE CHLOROPHYLLS!

The phytoplankton were lovingly extracted from the sea water via suction.

STEP 3: Capture the ~~sea beasties~~ zooplankton with our bongo nets.

All the hippies were jealous of our double bongos.

STEP 4: Process the ensnared sea beasties.

Some poor soul will go through this entire jar and identify everything in it.

STEP 5: Examine the rest under the embiggening machine (biologists call this a microscope).

SQUEE! Tiny Sea Beasties.

STEP 6: Mandatory dance party.

10 days in. Everyone gets loopy.

But eventually it had to end. And we headed back into shore.

Dutch Harbor here we come!

Because nothing is quite as nice after a two week cruise as having a beer and watching the trash eagles of Dutch Harbor.

Is this a metaphor?

I might have created this post because I love animated gifs. I might have created this post in response to this curmudgeonly post. In any case hope you enjoyed it.

This cruise was part of the EcoFOCI program, a joint program between NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory and NOAA Alaska Fisheries Science Center to study the physical and biological relationships in the marine ecosystem and the survival of commercial valuable fish in the eastern Bering Sea.

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