Posted on July 9, 2010 by Andy Shepard
In 30 years of going to sea on offshore expeditions, I have never seen an expedition as complicated as FLoSEE mobilized as quickly. CIOERT’s decision to move the expedition to explore Florida’s deep reefs from May 2011 to July 2010, motivated by the Deepwater Horizon spill event, certainly began the frenzy. The RV Seward Johnson was set to sail with the research submersible Johnson-Sea-Link II, to Brazil for the ship’s next owners, CEPEMAR, who will be conducting environmental monitoring under a five-year contact with Petrobras, a leader in the Brazilian oil industry. Redirecting all the ship and submersible operations for this month-long effort was a monumental task and testimony to CIOERT partners (FAU, UNCW, the University of Miami, and SRI International), CIOERT’s funding agency NOAA, CEPEMAR, and Petrobras.
This expedition is a mission with many research objectives and teams of scientists, technicians, and students. Their patience, passion and dedication enabled us to pull together the required gear and people in weeks, versus the normal planning process of eight or more months. We owe thanks to many people who made this happen.
The expedition web site describes the varied research objectives and the daily blogs here will elaborate on the related science and technology by the scientists, technicians, and students. One element I want to describe is the data management effort that is more extensive and thorough then many expeditions. First, we are collecting a large variety of data on deep reefs. Data and samples are all logged and archived with national data repositories. A dedicated Data Manager, trained to support NOAA and the DWH spill Incident Command Center’s (a multi-agency group working together to try and coordinate the many assets working to monitor and mitigate spill impacts) data needs, creates metadata records (information on a data set that would allow a future scientist to collect the same data).
A second challenge is that each day will entail a complicated set of operations, with several pieces of major equipment besides the research submersible. The MOCNESS (Multiple Opening-Closing Net and Environmental Sampling System) can sample plankton at discrete depths in the water column. The Seabird Carousel is a rosette of water bottles and a sensor package that measures a suite of parameters. We will use 18 water bottles, including six that can be opened and closed at depth to avoid any oil contamination on the way up or down. The Phantom 300 remotely operated vehicle (ROV) will be used in areas of suspected subsurface oil to check conditions before deploying the submersible.
The CTD is craned over the side of the RV Seward Johnson to collect water samples at various depths. The CTD is an acronym for Conductivity, Temperature, and Depth and is the primary tool for determining essential physical properties of sea water.
The MOCNESS (Multiple Opening Closing Net Environmental Sampling System) has nine nets and cod ends which can be triggered to open at different depths to collect a cross-section of pelagic samples.
The Phantom 300 Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) can provide researches with a camera eye underwater to a depth of 300 feet. ROV’s are tethered to their operating platform with a cable which routes power, navigation control and video.
In other words, we are “armed for bear!” First submersible dive tomorrow on the Miami Terrace deep reef ecosystem.
