Inside: Outside - You’re OK to Launch

Just say when! From nearest to farthest wearing hard hats, the “outside” half of the Nereus team (Chris – Mr Green hat; Andy - Mr Yellow; Daniel - with the pull-pin, Mr Red; Casey – Mr Orange; and last but not least, Mr Versatillity, Mike: he not only handles the lines for Nereus launches & recoveries but is also the 4th member of our AUV brains-trust. In 2004, he taught an AUV to think the same way that I do (such cruelty to a robot!) but today he’s just been busy making “phone calls” to the seafloor to interrupt Nereus and upload new mission programs on-the-fly. Night fishing. Under the cover of darkness, Nereus PI Andy Bowen (yellow hard hat) leads the deck crew getting ready to snag Nereus and crane her back aboard ship.

Position at Midday EST (Nereus Dive 17)
Lat: 18° 24’N Long: 081° 49’W
Water depth: 2150m

In yesterday’s blog you met James, Louis and Dana: three of the core team who run Nereus’ software (hence, “brain” when it is decoupled from the ship). So now its high time I introduced you to the rest of our 8-strong team of engineers. Photo 1, here, was taken just at the moment when those working “Inside” (in the lab) had given the signal to Andy and the rest of the team “Outside” (on deck) that it was OK to go ahead and launch Nereus.

We’ve had a great day with the vehicle today which has us all set for the rest of the science program. After launching around 10:30am, Nereus descended to the seafloor (the guys don’t like it when the Captain says”sinks”!) over about 2 hours and then spent about 6-7 hours going through a series of maneuvers to test out all the different systems we might want to use for science in the next week and a half.

First it did a series of speed runs so we can calculate what its full endurance is likely to be and what will be the most efficient survey speeds for different kinds of operations. After that Nereus went through some bottom following mode operations at around 40m off the seafloor (ideal for making detailed sonar maps of areas of interest), then it ran a series of yo’yos where it will undulate up and down as it swims through the ocean – e.g. if we want to send Nereus down sniffing out new hydrothermal plumes for us. Finally, Nereus did some low-level runs, driving around just 3-3.5m above the seafloor in the mode used for taking photographs from the seafloor.

But perhaps the most interesting part of the day for me was how the mission kept getting longer! When we launched Nereus, I definitely knew that the seafloor mission was for 5.5 hours of operation on the seabed. But the little piece of masking tape across the top of the main computer that had “end of mission time” written on it kept getting updated by 20-30 minutes at a time. How do you make a mission last longer, when everything is uploaded into the vehicle’s computers before you launch it? Turns out that our engineers have found a very cool way to cheat. If they come up with better ideas while Nereus is on its way to the seafloor, or just decide they’ve seen it do enough of any one activity and want it to do something else, they just call it up and re-program it. Seriously!

They have found a new way of doing things that I have never seen done before where the vehicle can be “interrogated” via underwater acoustics and, when prompted, it sends a series of information back telling us aboard ship what is it up to: where it is, where it’s headed, how fast its moving and what its busy measuring at the moment: stuff like that. Then – and this is really VERY cool – if they have any new programs they want to send down, they can do that too! Turns out, there is only one completely untouchable “home time” sub-routine in the mission program that they can’t over-write and that cut in around 7pm. If it wasn’t for that, I think they would still have Nereus down there now. And by the twinkle in his eye, I don’t think Louis was joking when, as Nereus was finally rising back up to the seabed, he suggested that maybe they’ll be wanting to fix that, soon, too.

Tonight, our CTD system is back in action as we head further south along the ridge-crest continuing our search for stronger hydrothermal plume signals. We plan another day and a half of that so that tomorrow, while I am on CTD watch, I can also start planning our first Nereus science mission. I’m sure we haven’t even begun to think through all the ways we can make use of our acoustic communications with Nereus, but the best way to find out is to get stuck in and start working.

If you want to make Chicken Soup…

Dana showing off his birthday present, featuring a robot he really admires (clue – he was made in Mexico, smokes cigars, and likes bending things). Looking on are two more members of our AUV brains-trust: James Kinsey & Louis Whitcomb.

Position at Midday EST (Dana’s Birthday)
Lat: 18° 31.6’N Long: 081° 40.0’W
Water depth: 4950m

First, get a chicken”. So said Dana Yoerger today and we had to listen: it was his birthday! Dana has plenty of tales to tell, the sign of a true Grandpa, I reckon – and I should know: for this trip he is Grandpa Senior and I’m Grandpa Junior. Anyway, Dana’s more pertinent point is that we can’t use Nereus to find a vent-site until we use the CTD to first find some tell-tale signs that there is something nearby to chase after.

So this morning, Dana announced that this year, for his birthday, what he would like would be for the CTD team to find us a plume signal to chase after. And right toward the end of the afternoon, in fact just around dinner time, I think that may well be just what we found.

So while most of the team were enjoying their evening meal – complete with birthday cake, a few of us were almost completely distracted looking at traces on a computer screen from Ko-ichi’s in situ sensor that showed us a layer of water, down below 4000m, that is chemically different from everything else we had seen in our previous 10 casts. Lying that deep, just a few hundreds of meters above the seafloor and in a layer a few hundred meters deep, is exactly the kind of setting we might expect to find the effluent from a hydrothermal field. That’s not proof positive, but it is a start. And we certainly know this is something that we have not seen anywhere to the North or East of us – so now we need to continue South and West (we are only about 1/3rd of the way through our survey) to see what the rest of our exploring brings. But after 10 sets of results that showed absolutely nothing at the bottom of the ocean, this new profile is certainly encouraging. Or, to quote Tina (and returning to the message of the day): Sweet, Sweet, Chicken-Feet!

Silent Running…

A typical view of the CTD these days: all you can see is the wire descending into the depths. Because we are using it round the clock, the instrument is never going to be on deck for more than an hour at a time until Nereus is good to go again.

Position at 23h00 EST (Launch of CTD 09)
Lat: 18° 36.3’N Long: 081° 41.4’W
Water depth: 5087m

Not much to report today. With Nereus on deck our small but perfectly formed science team is running flat out running CTD casts round the clock. With only 5 miles between stations we get from one sampling site to the next faster than we can draw the samples and get ready to put the CTD back in the water, so we grab moments for things like food, drink etc when we can during the 12 hour shifts when we are on watch. Doug, Ko-ichi and Cara are doing the heroes’ watch from 8pm to 8am local (midnight to midday on Greenwich Mean Time, which we use as our time standard for recording all our science data at sea) and Tina, Sean and I are doing the day-time shift, 8am to 8pm.

We started this late Sunday and will keep going until Wednesday morning by which time we’ll be at least a third of the way down the ridge and ready for our next Nereus dive: repeating the engineering tests we first started on Sunday. That seems like a long time ago already!

We’ve only just begun…

Up at dawn. The Nereus team were up and prepping the vehicle today long before the sun came up. Over the side. One quick pull of the slip pin and Nereus was off to the bottom of the ocean. Deployments 1, Recoveries 1 = the sign of a good day with any AUV. Nereus is snared and then lifted back on board using the ship’s crane.

Position at 11h00 EST (Launch of Nereus Dive 16)
Lat: 19° 17.6’N Long: 081° 37.9’W
Water depth: ~1000m

Busy day for Nereus today. By the time I got on deck, just before 7am, the entire Nereus team were already up and prepping the vehicle. So while I helped out with Louis and Andy, working with our Chief Mate Bobby and Captain Dale to run echo-sounding surveys to find ourselves a sweet (flat) spot for our trials – about 15 miles West of Grand Cayman, the rest of the team continued working through all the various vehicle subsystems until it was time to launch. Just after 11am we were good to go and Nereus was lifted outboard, lowered into the water from the ship’s crane and then, with a quick tug of the pull-pin it was off and down to the seabed.

Right around midday the data coming back acoustically from the sub confirmed that Nereus had completed its descent and was sitting tethered to its anchor line just a few meters above the seabed at around 1080m. So far so good and time for lunch.

I won’t pretend I know exactly what happened next – that’s for our engineers to decipher, and also why we have so many of the smartest on the planet out here (they out-number “mere-mortal scientists” like me nearly 2 to 1). Suffice it to say that things didn’t go 100% as planned but at the end of the afternoon we had Nereus safely back at the surface where our radio beacons helped us track it down in short order and lift it back aboard.

Tonight, Nereus is safely back in its cradle and our engineers are busy downloading its data and setting to work on the forensics of what happened when: CSI Cayman Islands? To paraphrase James: in real life it may take longer than a one-hour show to find out the truth - but they’ll be ready to get Nereus back in the water before long, I don’t doubt.

And in the meantime, it is time for the CTD team to roll back into action: talk about coiled springs! This evening we have a 35 mile steam to get to the top end of the Mid-Cayman Rise but by midnight the systematic search for hydrothermal vents will finally have begun.

P.S. Captain’s Dale’s saying for the day (He seems to have plenty but we’re going to be checking for repeats between now and the end of the cruise): “Robots are like dogs: they’ll do their best, but neither one is any better than the person who trained them.”

Close… but no cigars

Close, but no rum either! This was our clearest view, approx 12 nautical miles (22km) off the western-most coastline, of Cuba. Happiness is a wet (and working!) CTD. We’ve carried out two 1000-meter test deployments on our transit South. Each of the numbered bottles goes down open with their spring loaded caps pulled back, top and bottom. At depth these springs are released, one bottle at a time, to collect seawater samples from whatever depths we want them. Doug (left) and Sean drawing samples for dissolved methane analysis through the taps at the bottom of each CTD sampling bottle, following the first test deployment. A pair of spare syringes for taking methane samples can be seen, bottom left, resting on our all-important park bench. Sean getting ready to do battle with his Gas Chromoatgraph. This is the instrument that we will use for all our shipboard methane measurements so getting practise in early is an important part of our preparations for when we get on station. It’s big, its blue, and if it isn’t deeper than 3000m then it isn’t important. More than half our planet is covered by water of at least this depth – so how come so few people spend their lives studying it? There’s still so much more to be explored.

Position at 14h00 EST
Lat: 20° 16.3’N Long: 083° 39.1’W
Water depth: 4450m

Yesterday and today we have mostly been driving past Cuba. I think everybody on ship knows exactly what time we changed course and left the sheltered waters of the Florida Keys (2:30am Friday, thanks for asking) because that was the first time this trip when just staying in bed became something of a challenge! The higher you are in the ship, the more the swing, so the four of us in the upper cabins, along with the Captain and Chief Mate are the ones who notice this the most – and the absolute short straws go to James and Doug who are in the upper bunks in our cabins, above Andy & me, respectively.

Apart from pounding along through the waves, the other main “achievement” for the past two days has been to test out the CTD-rosette with all its new sensors to make sure everything is working properly. We had a first trial on Friday morning that went pretty well and then a second dip, also to 1000m water depth, right after lunch on Saturday. Not only has that given us the chance to “shake down” the electronics of the system completely, it has also given us the chance to flush through the water bottles with clean un-contaminated ocean water, far from land and collect first seawater samples for practicing our shipboard analyses with. As I’ve been writing this, Sean, Doug and Carla have been actively running analyses for dissolved methane – not only an important greenhouse gas but also a key diagnostic tracer of hydrothermal plumes in the deep ocean.

Yesterday was when we reached our point of closest approach, just a hair’s breadth over the 12 mile minimum necessary, rounding the Western end of Cuba (if you look closely you can just see mountains on the horizon). But today we are out in the wide blue yonder – and that’s a good place to be if you just spent two hours in your cabin working on your laptop and have made yourself queasy!

Too much information? Its an interesting point to remember – so don’t be surprised if you hear it more than once from me – that more than half our planet is covered by oceans more than 3000m deep (that’s about two miles down for those of you reading in old fashioned units). Perhaps that’s why there is still so much to explore.

Like I say, I’m sure I’ll return to this theme again in the weeks ahead but for now let’s end with a thought that turns Astrobiology on its head: if a civilization no more intelligent than ours were to send a probe from some other solar system to visit our planet, there’s at least a 50:50 chance that this is the kind of view they would first report back.

Driving South (and West)

Clearing the harbor wall at Port Canaveral, Wednesday morning. Casey donning his immersion suit during safety training. Sunset over West Palm Beach on Wednesday. Nothing but blue skies and sparkling seas as we continue South

Position at 20h00 EST
Lat 24° 23.4’N, Long 082° 04.2’W
68m water depth

After leaving port on Wednesday we sailed out past the harbor wall with the Kennedy Space Center launch site in the distance. Sadly, the only NASA mission launching today was ours, so no fireworks to see us off but on the upside, we headed out into beautifully calm waters and immediately turned south to follow down the east coast of Florida, passing West Palm Beach around sunset.

Other than our continuing science preparations, the main order of the day was a briefing on safety at sea, including a refresher course on what to do in the event of a fire or an abandon ship alarm – a basic safety requirement for any cruise, and a good thing to be acutely aware of, at the outset of every research cruise. Casey was our volunteer to don one of the immersion suits that we all have, as well as standard life-vests, for just the kinds of emergency that we’re all prepared for, but hope we’ll never see.

But of course, no first day at sea is complete without… …watching yourself on TV!? As luck would have it, Weds.7th saw the first airing on the Science Channel of a new documentary made during Nereus’ dives to >10,000m in Challenger Deep, Mariana Trench last May-June. So, thanks to the miracles of satellite television, at 9pm we were all able to gather in the ship’s mess lounge and watch a show starring many of our colleagues out here putting Nereus through its paces.

Right after supper I had given the ship’s officers and crew a quick run-down on what we wanted to be doing, scientifically, on the current trip so it was great that, on the same night, we could all sit down together and watch exactly how we would be planning to use Nereus to do it! You can’t ask for much better visuals than that – so thanks, Science Channel!

Today we continued south, wiring up the CTD-rosette with all the added sensors we have brought with us – Koichi’s Eh sensor that can detect for freshly emitted chemical signals from hydrothermal plumes and two new optical sensors provided by the ship to detect for fine particulate material erupting from any black smokers.

Tonight we had rounded the southern end of Florida and were headed due West, passing the Florida keys by sunset with dolphins playing around the bow. These are the kinds of “bonus prize” you can’t predict will happen on any research cruise but strive to savor when they do. Sadly, I was in my cabin, working, right after dinner this evening and nearly missed the lot! (Note to self: must try and get out more!)

Later tonight we’ll be past the Tortuga islands and at that point, around 2am, we’ll be heading out into deep water, veering southwest until we are past the western end of Cuba and then back to the south-east towards the Mid Cayman Rise and action. But before that, we need to test our gear out. First up, tomorrow after breakfast, will be a test of the CTD system down to around 1000m depth.

Houston, we have left the harbor

Nereus’ tool sled with manipulator arm being craned aboard. We brought everything but the kitchen sink! Lifting the gang-plank ashore. Tina secures the CTD while Steve—who will be rejoining us for Leg 2, and our local agent Malcolm (right) watch on from dry land.

Lat 28° 24.5’N, Long 080° 36.3’W

We were all up early again today ready to set off, but first we had to load a few last items.

First aboard was the underside of Nereus – the tool sled with its manipulator arm that we will use on Leg 2 of the cruise. That is when we expect to convert Nereus from its free-swimming AUV (autonomous underwater vehicle) mode into a tethered remotely operated vehicle (ROV) for detailed seafloor investigations and sampling. Next (almost as important to some minds?), came… the garden bench - because even the smallest creature comforts at sea can make a difference.

With that on board it was time to roll the gangplank ashore and sever our links to dry land. Then and only then did we have space to lift our CTD-rosette aboard ship and land it right where the gangplank had been. A definite case of last but not least, because we will rely on this CTDs enormously to start our search for new hydrothermal vents. As that slogan from a certain credit card famously says: Don’t leave home without it!