 Day 2 – Deploying Instruments
May 11, 2010
After spending most of the previous day prepping and getting to our research site, we were very pleased to be able to begin deploying our instruments today. A few of the science party were on deck and working as early as 0500 or five o'clock in the morning. It takes a lot of time and dedication to detail to make a successful deployment. Much of the pre-deployment activities involve making sure everything is working and rigged properly so that the instrument performs correctly and is also able to be recovered sucessfully later. The first piece of instrumentation deployed was the FVGR. We finished all our last-minute preparations and had it in the water before breakfast. After a hearty meal of blueberry pancakes, the next device to go overboard was our Rover. The engineers spent a few minutes programming its mission and then into the drink it went. The final piece of equipment deployed was the respiration chamber that measures the breathing rates of deep-sea fish. Dr. Jeff Drazen had to rig each chamber with a baited hook of squid in order to catch animals and make sure all the closure mechanisms were working correctly. Regretfully, after this last piece was deployed the weather started to take a turn for the worse which is going to prevent us from doing much work until it dies down a bit. We still have our LSTs and an "elevator" (the elevator is used to bring smaller devices down to the seafloor where the ROV will then take over and place them wherever they need to go) to deploy as well as recover our moored sediment traps which were last deployed back in November 2009. Hopefully this small squall will blow itself out by morning and we'll be able to have our first ROV dive. — Jake Ellena and Stephanie Wilson
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Logbook
This morning, we recalled our free vehicle grab respirometer. The weather was a bit choppy......
The focus of today was to prepare and redeploy our long term camera and sediment trap mooring system...
Today we had another day of rough seas which prevented us from diving with the ROV or deploying any instruments...
The day started out fairly slow due to rough seas, but thankfully the weather improved substantially throughout the day...
After spending most of the previous day prepping and getting to our research site, we were very pleased to be able to begin deploying our instruments today...
Our first day out was spent steaming to our research station 320 kilometers off the coast of Point Conception, California...
Equipment
 R/V Western FlyerThe R/V Western Flyer is a small water-plane area twin hull (SWATH) oceanographic research vessel measuring 35.6 meters long and 16.2 meters wide. It was designed and constructed for MBARI to serve as the support vessel for ROV operations. Her missions include the Monterey Bay as well as extended cruises to Hawaii, Gulf of California and the Pacific Northwest.
ROV Doc Ricketts is MBARI's next generation ROV. The system breaks new ground in providing an integrated unmanned submersible research platform, with many powerful features providing efficient, reliable, and precise sampling and data collection in a wide range of missions.
Sequencing conical sediment traps, each with an effective mouth opening of 0.25 m2, are moored at 600 meters and 50 meters above the bottom at 3,500- and 4,050-meter depths, respectively (Baldwin et al. 1998). Trap sequencers are programmed with a sampling resolution of 10 days to collect sinking particulate matter in sampling cups poisoned with 3.0 mmol HgCl2. In the laboratory, the collected particulate matter is analyzed in duplicate for total and inorganic carbon, with organic carbon determined by difference following methods described by Baldwin et al. (1998).
A push-core is a clear plastic tube with a rubber handle on one end. Just as its name implies, the push core is pushed down into loose sediment using the ROV's manipulator arm. As the sediment fills up the core, water exits out the top through one-way valves. When the core is pulled up again, these valves close, which (most of the time) keeps the sediment from sliding out of the core tube. When the cores are brought back to the surface, scientists typically look for living animals and organic material in the sediments.
The Benthic Rover is a mobile physiology lab. In a series of experiments, the rover measures how much oxygen seafloor animals are using. Precise motors lower two 30-centimeter-wide (12-inch) sample chambers into the sediment, where probes record oxygen levels. Two acoustic scanners use ultrasound (in 4-MHz pulses) to look 10 centimeters (4 inches) deep into the sediment for large animals, such as worms.
This midwater toolsled contains a High Frequency Suction Sampler (HFSS). You can see one of the 12 collection buckets in this image. This sampler acts like a vacuum cleaner sucking up samples and depositing them into one of the 12 buckets.
The benthic elevator allows us to carry more than the ROV itself can carry. Loaded with sediment enrichers, it is deployed from the ship before the dive and free-falls to the bottom where the ROV pulls the equipment from the elevator for use. After the ROV is recovered, the elevator anchor's acoustic release is triggered from the ship, and the elevator freely ascends to the surface and is recovered.
Oxygen consumption (a measure of biological activity) of the organisms living in the sediment is measured using a free vehicle grab respirometer (FVGR) with grabs that retrieve the sediments for faunal examination and chemical analyses.
The Lagrangian Sediment Traps or LSTs are used to collect sinking material at specific depths. Once they are deployed they will sink to a programmed depth and float along with the current. After a few days the sample cups will close and the LST will activate its variable ballast system to rise to the surface to be recovered.
The time-lapse camera consists of a Benthos 377 camera mounted on a titanium frame at an angle of 31º from horizontal with the lens approximately two meters above the seafloor. The camera is equipped with a 28-mm Nikonos lens, providing angular coverage of 50º in the horizontal and 35º in the vertical plane, and holds 400 feet of 35-mm color-negative film (Fuji, Type 8514, 500 ASA). Up to 3500 images can be collected in 4.6 months. Two 400-W-s strobes, one mounted on either side of the camera housing, illuminate approximately 20 square meters of the seafloor beginning at a distance of 1.8 meters from the camera frame and extending approximately 6.5 meters from the base of the camera frame (see Smith et al. 1993 for a more complete description of the time-lapse camera). In June 2007 a high-resolution digital camera was added to the frame. The camera is housed with a PC104 processor and external memory drive. These components are used to control the camera and store images. Additionally, in the same housing are a low power controller and an electronic interface board to control power to the PC104 stack, camera, and strobes. Research Team
Ken is an open-ocean ecologist with 40 years experience going to sea and studying extreme ecosystems ranging from the deep ocean to Antarctic icebergs. The main thrust of his research is to understand the impact of a changing climate on deep sea and polar ecosystems. On this cruise, he will be coordinating the deployments of autonomous instruments to continue long time-series studies at Station M on the Monterey Deep-Sea Fan at 4,000 meters depth.
As lab technician, Jake's responsibility is to make sure everything runs smoothly so samples can be collected at sea and analyzed in the laboratory. He'll handle much of the organizing of the equipment being taken to sea, and will ensure everything works during the cruise. Once ashore he'll take all the samples and analyze them in a variety of ways with the goal of achieving a better understanding of how the ocean works.
Rich has been at MBARI since 2000. Rich has spent time on many types of projects, but mostly writing software for MBARI's autonomous vehicles. On this cruise Rich is responsible for the control system on the Benthic Rover. The Rover will be tasked to run a four-to-five day mission to test new equipment and capabilities at a fairly extreme depth in preparation for a six-month deployment scheduled for November.
Paul specializies in underwater vehicles and instrumentation. On this cruise he'll help prepare, deploy, and recover the drifters, crawlers, and landers being used to study the deep ocean at Station M.
Alana specializes in instrumentation. On this cruise she will be deploying three instruments: the Benthic Rover, the time-lapse camera tripod, and Lagrangian sediment traps.
Stephanie works on the ecology of deep-sea zooplankton and their effects on particle repackaging and contribution to the biological pump. Her current research includes investigating relationships between zooplankton and sinking particles at the Station M time-series site and seeking to better understand how zooplankton and particle flux may be affected by climate variation. On this cruise Stephanie will be helping to process sediment trap samples, counting zooplankton fecal pellets, and collecting deep-sea zooplankton.
Jeff is an associate professor of oceanography at the University of Hawaii. He received his Ph.D. from Scripps Institution of Oceanography and was an MBARI postdoctoral fellow before moving to Hawaii. Jeff studies the ecology and physiology of deep-sea animals, principally fishes. Currently he is focusing on the pace of life in deep-sea fishes, which will be important in understanding the effects of ocean acidification and fishing on their populations.
Annekatrin's research is focused on the diversity and ecology of benthic foraminifera and their role within deep-sea carbon cycling. She is investigating the response of foraminifera to simulated phytodetrital pulses to the deep seafloor in the abyssal northeast Pacific as well as within the oxygen minimium zone of the Indian continental margin (Arabian Sea). Elizabeth Ross
Researching the links between climate variation and deep-sea ecology has been a primary focus for Henry. In particular he's interested in understanding how changes in climate are related to the role of the deep ocean as a carbon sink. During the cruise he will be researching the abundance and distribution of animals on the seafloor, as well as their respiration rates using specialized chamber systems. Respiration is a good indicator of carbon utilization and provides key input into estimates of carbon flow and the importance of biodiversity at the seafloor. |
