What am I doing here?

I have asked myself this question many times during the last 10 days - and I have had many answers depending on the day! My main role aboard the ship is to pick up and deploy hydrophones or underwater microphones that sit in the ocean for a year, record the sounds they detect and then write those acoustic data to a hard drive.  The deploying end of this involves a kind of scavenger hunt aboard the vessel - I had to find all of the equipment that was shipped to the Healy six months ago by two different labs, then get all the pieces for each style of mooring (2 different types) then get each mooring put together as best I could in the lab, then we do the final assembly on deck and THEN we get to put the mooring in the water.


We have an amazing assortment of people on board, including two men (one from Woods Hole and one from UAF) that have almost 75 years of mooring experience between them. In contrast, I have never put a mooring together in my life and had little prep before I left because my colleagues for whom I am doing this were both out to sea. So this has been the proverbial pressure cooker which has involved on the job training and lots of patience from those around me. I can now say I am quite fond of cotter pins whereas a few days ago I was cursing them! And luckily I brought chocolate for those helping me! Once things are assembled the floats and a railroad wheel (yes an old heavy > 700 lb wheel) is attached as an anchor and the entire "string" is carefully deployed from the stern. We then wave goodbye, hope the instrument works as designed and have to come back next year to pick it up.

Deck crew and CG MSTs (Marine Science Technicians)

My array ready and waiting for deployment.

Hydrophone mooring is lifted....

Instruments lowered into water.....

Anchor then lifted from deck....

Anchor lowered in water and rope removed. Anchor goes to bottom and instrument floats in water column.

CG RHIB - grabbing string of floats that are attached to the hydrophone.

 The second part of moored instruments is getting them back. These recorders  have an acoustic link in the string - you send a certain pattern of sounds at a particular frequency and this opens the acoustic link which releases the wheel, leaving it on the bottom. The flotation then sends the string of instruments to the surface. Isn't that amazing? Yes it is....when it works. Lots of times you'll get to the study site, send the code and there is no answer. OR the release answers, you send the release code, and the instrument never comes up. One then begins to wonder if you have the right code, or we try turning the ship or we move the transducer a bit deeper when we are sending the code. Or you release the instrument and the fog rolls in and you can't find it. This is all very stressful....everyone usually comes out on deck to help spot because out of desperation you send the release code many times and there is a small chance the instrument did release and it's bobbing around out there not talking.

Reeling in our hydrophone and floats. Fish on!

We've had one instrument (from Scripps) talk back and never come up. We think it's buried in the mud (this is a very dynamic area). When we finally spot the floats the CG RIB comes to the ship, grabs a line, takes it to the floats, attaches it and then gets out of the way. We slowly reel everything in with our giant winch. My moorings are quite small compared to some of the WHOI ones that weigh >2,000 lbs. The instruments then come on board for cleaning, we let them warm up (the water is 4 degrees C) and we hopefully get the data off the hard drives.

Every step of this has to be correct or you lose a year of data - YIPES! So that's what I'm doing here.......wish me luck - I have four of these hydrophones to get back. Last year they had three that never made it to the surface :( ......