R/V Neil Armstrong

R/V Neil Armstrong getting ready to receive a fresh coat of paint in Detyen’s Shipyard.

Lots of folks start a new year hoping to lose some weight. R/V Neil Armstrong, however, rang in 2017 waiting to take on a few pounds—almost 700,000, in fact. Read More →

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By David Yuknat

As a board member of the Grayce B. Kerr Fund I’ve been peripherally involved with WHOI for years now, watching various research projects come to life and helping scientists advance their important work. A little while back, some colleagues and I were offered an incredible opportunity to travel aboard the R/V Neil Armstrong on a four-night transit from St. John’s, Newfoundland, to Woods Hole, Mass. The ship had just finished up its first international research trips off the coast of Greenland and was heading home.

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After departing Woods Hole in July, R/V Neil Armstrong made its first trip to service the moorings at the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) Global Array in the Irminger Sea and then made its first foreign port stop on a scientific mission. Reykjavik, Iceland, was a frequent port-of-call for the ship’s predecessor, R/V Knorr, and it looks like Neil Armstrong will continue the practice. Read More →

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40.22N, 70.11W

It’s the first day of summer, but strangely it’s the first cool, foggy day we’ve experienced on this otherwise pleasant cruise. We can see evidence of rain that fell overnight and lightning-inflected patches of storms all around us as we steam over the continental shelf.

Yesterday, the ship transformed into a fishing vessel, outfitted with a small mid-water trawl that took some effort from the science party and crew to set up. A test trawl at about 40 meters (120 feet) netted a dozen starfish. But by following the zooplankton on the EK-80, then turning around to capture them, much more came in from three times that depth. As National Marine Fisheries Service biologist Mike Jech explained, the net opening is too small and was dragged too slow to catch fish. But that wasn’t our intention—we’re looking for what the fish eat.

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We’ve reached the southernmost point of the Pioneer Array, a milestone that’s not at all obvious to the naked eye. Aside from the occasional cruiser, the only people who purposely venture out to 70N 39W are fishermen (whose gear dots the endless blue) and scientists on research ships like these.

We’re doing a transect down the middle of the array area to track the movement of the front, or the interface at the continental shelf where relatively fresh water mixes with saltier water. Though we’re “in” the array, we’re still miles away from the moorings that make up this outpost in the global Ocean Observatories Initiative. After making our southernmost CTD cast, chief scientist Gareth Lawson kindly allowed us to go slightly off course to get a glimpse of the actual moorings.
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Lat: 39.48 Long: 70.47

It’s weekend on land, but it’s a busy workday on board the R/V Neil Armstrong. I’ve joined the science party and crew on the vessel’s sixth science verification cruise intended to test its capabilities and capacity to handle various science objectives. Now on day two of six, we’re settling into a comfortable rhythm of sampling, assessing, and troubleshooting.

The ship aside, we’ve got a real cross-section of talent on board, including acousticians, biologists, and chemical and physical oceanographers all working toward a common goal: to characterize the waters along the continental shelf. Though very different from one another, each of the disciplines represented on board is complementary on this cruise. Physical oceanographers are following the interface between the water on the continental shelf (relatively warm and fresh “onshore” water) and offshore water, which is dotted with eddies spinning off from the Gulf Stream.
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“All right, Mr. Brickley, the show begins at 2:00,” John Kemp announced as he entered the ship’s main lab on Saturday afternoon. Kemp is the Deck Operations Leader for our expedition aboard R/V Neil Armstrong and he was addressing Peter Brickley, one of the engineers on the trip. The promised “show” would be a deployment of an Inshore Surface-Piercing Profiler Mooring, a frame containing scientific instruments and a winch that is tethered to the seafloor. As the winch pays out its line, the frame moves up through the water column, collecting scientific data along the way, and rises until it pierces the surface, as the name suggests, to transmit its data back to scientists onshore.

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After completing Science Verification Cruise 4 on May 9, 2016, R/V Neil Armstrong sailed into Woods Hole on a bright spring morning. Look for R/V Atlantis tied up at the dock (in Armstrong’s usual berth) and the post-cruise photo with all of the science party and ship’s crew assembling on the aft deck.

The ROV van, where we will be spending many hours on the cruise, is loaded onto Neil Armstrong. (Photo by Ken Kostel, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

NUI goes through a test deployment at the WHOI dock prior to science verification cruise #4. (Photo by Ken Kostel, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

Every cruise begins with a safety briefing—Neil Armstrong chief mate Dee Emrich does the honors. (Photo by Ken Kostel, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

WHOI engineer John Bailey prepares a tag line on the Nereid Under Ice (NUI) vehicle before a test deployment. (Photo by Ken Kostel, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

WHOI physical oceanographer Al Plueddemann makes an entry in his event log inside the ROV control van during the first dive. (Photo by Ken Kostel, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

Science Verification Cruise #4 began yesterday at about 8:00 a.m. when the Neil Armstrong left the WHOI dock—and immediately returned. That was intentional, as we wanted to test deployment procedures for the two vehicles on board: WHOI-built Nereid Under Ice (NUI), which will operate in autonomous mode, and the Univ. of Connecticut’s remotely operated Kraken 2. To do so, we needed to turn the ship and tie up with the port side to the dock so that the main crane could put the vehicles into the water on the starboard side.

Once that was completed at 1:00, we pulled our lines and sailed off into the fog and drizzle. Nine hours later, we arrived on station—too late to begin work with the ROV, so we opted for some launch and recovery tests with NUI from a moving deck. By midnight, and with a list of improvements to make before their next opportunity to go in the water tomorrow evening, the ship’s crew and NUI team decided to call it a night.

This morning began like many mornings at sea: with a meeting. Today will address the first primary objective of the cruise—to use the ROV to recover an autonomous underwater vehicle docking station at one of the mooring sites of the Pioneer Array, which is one of several coastal, regional and global components of the NSF-funded Ocean Observatories Initiative. The array is a collection of 10 moorings spread across seven sites about 100 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard collecting a wide range of meteorological and oceanographic data and transmitting these to shore. One mooring also includes a seafloor docking station for a REMUS 600 autonomous underwater vehicle that, once installed, will allow scientists on shore to fly pre-programmed, standardized missions as well as “missions of opportunity” to investigate unexpected events. When the AUV returns to the dock, a wind turbine on a buoy at the surface will supply power to recharge it; it can also send its data back to shore via a satellite antenna on the same buoy.

Because it is part of a complex configuration, recovering the dock is not straightforward. First, the ROV has to disconnect a power and data line between the dock and the anchor at the base of the mooring. Then, the ROV has to maneuver 300 meters or so over to the dock and connect a line from the ship so that we can haul the dock to the surface. It may sound simple, but launching the ROV and maneuvering it into place to disconnect the cable took up the first half of the day. Then the ROV and the ship engaged in a delicate dance of first one and then the other moving in short hops to the location where they hoped to – and ultimately did – find the docking station.

There is also another dance taking place between operators of the ship and ROV: both are learning how the other team works and how their systems can integrate with each other. This is important because the Kraken 2 ROV team may have to conduct similar missions in the future. That makes the human systems just as much a part of this verification cruise as the vehicles.