#mateintership

Breezy Grenier on the USCGC Healy: Last week aboard the Healy. The science party disembarked in Unalaska and we are now enroute to Juneau. STARC is packing up for the season.

Last week we were wrapping up our science operations, this week we are wrapping up the science season. After we successfully recovered the mooring, we went into full steam back to Dutch Harbor. Within hours of wrapping up with science, the USCGC Healy was called into action and used as a refueling station for a rescue mission for one of the Coast Guard helicopters, which went late into the night. Semper Paratus, Always Ready! The hard working men and women of the Healy have definitely earned their well deserved rest after a 6+ month deployment, wrapping up 3 successful science missions in the Alaskan High Arctic.

After the science party departed in Dutch Harbor, Unalaska, it went from a busy beehive to a ghost town. The marine science technician’s office is near our work quarters, so we still see them, and we have the occasional watch stander walking thru on their rounds, but nothing like it was before. The deck team is busy with flight training operations, instead of on-deck running CTD, XCTD, and Van Veen deployments. We are not calling down to the engineers requesting pumps to be turned on; we are not out on deck observing science evolutions. We went from the science labs being full of scientists running and analyzing their water samples, to an empty compartment. We went from having minimum two STARC techs working 24/7, to only two of us onboard working 0800 to 1800, packing up and preparing for the overhaul. I have the entire science sleeping quarters to myself, since the other STARC Tech and C4IT are on the 3rddeck. I have never gotten to say I have an entire deck aboard a ship to myself! Yesterday was Thanksgiving, and what a great feast the culinary specialists put out for us. The moral is highly affected by the quality of dishes the chefs put out, and we definitely lucked out with the delicious meals produced onboard.  I am not even saying that because the CSCS (Culinary Specialist Senior Chief) was my A-school instructor. 

It is hard to make cleaning up, breaking down, organizing, and packing sound fun and exciting, but something that has to be done, and you actually learn a lot taking apart a lot of the equipment. When breaking down the CTD’s I discovered that one of the brands of hose clamps shared my name, but of course they spelt it wrong!

Tomorrow we are due to arrive in Juneau and that's when I will catch my flight and head back home. I want to thank the MATE program for the opportunity to come onboard the USCGC Healy to learn with STARC, WHOI, and the U.S. Coast Guard. I am grateful to have been given the chance to help build upon my academic background through hands on training, and add to my experience in being the support of ocean exploration. I am always striving to challenge myself and continue my education to makemyself a valuable contribution to the next generation of ocean explorers. In the near future I wish continue my education and eventually obtain PhD in Exploration Sciences and Technology. I had a great time, and it was a pleasure meeting with and working with everyone. Fair winds and following seas! Time to get some rest before my next expedition!

Breezy Grenier on the USCGC Healy: Three weeks down, three to go! Ice conditions have caused us to change our CTD transect lines a couple times, but nothing will slow down the Healy! Coming back from the waters of the Canadian Arctic around Mackenzie Bay, we have been working our way back west towards Barrow Point (and into cell phone service!).

It is funny on how many countdowns there are going on aboard the vessel. 8 Days until we arrive back in Dutch Harbor, 14 days until we arrive in Juneau, and 20 days until the ship arrives back in Seattle [15 days until I arrive back home in New England]. I can't forget to mention it's # days and a wake up. We did get a nice change of pace this week switching from CTD casts to XCTDs, at least for a day and a half. Instead of an evolution involving several deckhands, deploying a large cylinder with several pipes (niskin bottles) designed to capture water at different depths, along with an ADCP (acoustic doppler current profiler- which measures how fast water is moving across an entire water column) and a few other pieces of oceanographic equipment, we are able to test for CTD (conductivity, temperature, and depth), turbidity (clarity), and get nutrient, chemical, and salinity measurements from the water samples. So the XCTD saves a lot of time when trying to get a snapshot of an area, since it involves only three people, dropping a single probe down into the water column. It records conductivity, temperature, and pressure. So when deploying the XCTDs we stumbled across some really exciting data. We were capturing the formation of winter water and how it spreads across the Beaufort slope! So back to CTD casts for a "higher resolution" of this phenomena. 

Photo Credit: MST2 Cory Padron We did our deep CTD cast this week. This is always everyone’s favorite event, getting to decorate and shrink Styrofoam cups! The cups started at 9 cm tall and shrunk to about 3.75 cm. They were sent down to just over a mile (1.1 miles) below the surface to 1784m (5853 feet)! I got carried away making three different cups.

I also got to work on splicing cables. It’s been awhile since I did soldering, so it was a nice to get down and dirty and do some precision work with my hands. I also re-terminated some CAT5 cables; this was a first for me. The wires are organized inside the cable white and color with solid color (ex. WO/O, WB/B, WG/G, and WBr/Br). Somewhere along the lines, someone inventing the terminal end thought that it would be a good idea to switch two of the white/color cables in the terminal end (WO/O, WG/B, WB/G, WBr/Br). Tell me how that makes sense?! I ended up having to splice the cable ends twice, because of that mix up. Now I will remember the order every time I terminate CAT5 cables, and to check and double check the guide, instead of looking at the black and white picture for reference.

Breezy Grenier on the USCGC Healy: Allure of the Arctic! Its almost been a week since we entered the Realm of the Blue Nose, and things are surely turning blue! Working on a boat is one thing, working on a boat in the Arctic is a whole different story. A good majority of our work is to keep equipment from freezing.

Living aboard a ship is nothing new to me, being a Coast Guard Veteran, having steamed around the Antarctic Peninsula and Scotia Arc with the Geological Society of America, sailed around New Zealand, with SEA Semester's Global Ocean Program, I even have served as expedition staff aboard a Russian Nuclear Ice Breaker to the Geographic North Pole.  As a licensed captain, having worked on charters, boat deliveries, and even fishing, diving, and service support vessels, I have put on many miles at sea (almost four years documented sea time last time I checked). I have spent time out on the Okeanos Explorer as a mapping watch stander with the Explorer-in-Training program out in the Western Pacific before, but the experience of living and working aboard a research vessel always feels new to me. Having a “9-5 schedule” let alone while at sea, is completely the opposite of what I am use to. From working several seasonal jobs and employment contracts, my land schedule is always changing day to day. While at sea, I am use to rotating watch schedules, on top of a daily work schedule. Serving as a captain of vessel you are always on call, but here I worked every day from 0600 to1800 (6am to 6pm) ships time. Meals are always served at the same time. The daily duties change, but the repetition does not. The closest thing to standard routine I am use to is when my animals (puppy, dog, cat, and parrot) wake me up each morning. It's a nice change of pace (aside from missing my fur balls). When your schedule is predictable, you can get a lot more accomplished when you are smart with your time, so I am quickly knocking out tasks (such as updating SOPs and work manuals) and working on new projects to keep busy. If you haven't been following, I am serving my internship with STARC (Ship-based Technical Support in the Arctic) as a Tech Watch stander, and WHOI (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute) is our science team aboard the Coast Guard Cutter Healy, a polar icebreaker. The primary focus of our work is moorings and CTD casts. CTD stands for conductivity, temperature, and depth (pressure) of seawater. To paint a picture, we are around 72° North, in the Arctic Ocean. Our current area is off Prudhoe Bay, North Slope in Alaska, in November. So ice is forming all around us, day is turning to night, and temperatures are dropping. Right now we have about 5 hours of daylight. Sun rises at lunch and sets at dinner. We are limited to recovering and deploying moorings during daylight hours (obvious safety reasons), so that does put some restrictions on our CTD cast transects (we have to sometimes break away to go recover a mooring).

The portable heater in our CTD compartment is broken, and so is the back up. The space is still heated, but pulling equipment out from the water, even just a minute, below freezing temperatures with wet equipment, is not good. We have been getting around the lack of heat by flushing the pumps with room temperature salt water, then slowly adding warmer saltwater, to bring them up from below freezing every time the CTD cast comes back aboard, so it is ready for redeployment. We also use a heat gun (much like a hair dryer) on some of the equipment parts to unfreeze them, being extremely careful, not to damage any of the sensors. Our saltwater flow system on the ship was even getting clogged with ice chunks. We've been busy.

Photo Credit: Brandon D'Andrea Still nothing is better than stepping outside, in the clean, crisp, Arctic Air and watching jaw-dropping icescapes. We have been lucky enough to catch a glimpse of an Arctic fox out on the ice, ring seals sunning, and even a polar bear mother with her two [one year old] cubs, not to mention seabirds. We also got a glimpse of the Aurora, peeking between the clouds one night. We are entering a high-pressure system, and with a waning moon, it will give us more optimal conditions for viewing, fingers crossed! The sunset on Halloween blessed us with a sight of perihelia sun arcs! Also known as sundogs and ice halos. Think of a rainbow, but the arcs are reversed. When you see sundogs, it’s a sailor’s weather prediction that snow is coming, and lo and behold, it started to snow an hour later. We are continuing to push east, as far as the ice allows us. Stay warm!

Breezy Grenier on the USCGC Healy: Departing for the High ArcticAfter 23 hours of travel time turns into 32 hours and finally arriving in Dutch Harbor, the internship begins! The next day the science party arrived, and we are finally underway heading towards the waters around Point Barrow.

The flights to Dutch Harbor are always a hit or miss, but with 4 legs of flights, the flight to Dutch was the only flight NOT delayed. The previously flight delays, just happened to cause me to miss that flight, luckily there was a flight later in the day. It feels good to be back in Alaska. I cannot believe how much has changed over the past 12 years.

It is funny, after previously serving in the Coast Guard, you forget how small of a world it really is. Upon arriving I immediately ran into the Commanding Officer of the Healy, whom happened to be my previous CO when I served on the USCGC Hickory as a non-rate. I also ran into my old roommate from TranCen Petaluma and another whom was my A-School instructor. It's a large ship, with about 120 souls on board, so I can only imagine whom else I might run into. After a good nights sleep, I hopped right in, learning the ship and where everything was, and what my duties and responsibilities would be. I am working with STARC (Shipbased Technical Support in the Arctic) as a Tech Watch stander, and WHOI (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute) is our science team aboard the Coast Guard Polar Ice Breaker Healy. We will be doing mooring work on the continental shelf of the Alaska Beaufort Sea, along with CTD work spanning the Chukchi and Canadian Beaufort Sea. Immediately getting to work I got to fabricate a bracket to hold an instrument, the scientist wanted to add to the CTD. Loving puzzles, I got quickly figured out how we would attach the instrument close enough to their other sensor, but far enough to not cause interference.  

Photo Credit: Matt Hirsch The other issue was creating a structure strong enough where it would not cause vibrations. A saw, dremel, and some scrap metal did the job! We are deploying two test casts later today, fingers crossed the fabrication works out.

Once getting underway we booted up all the systems that would be running over the course of our voyage such as the multibeam, knudsen echosounder, EM122, ADCP, Hypack, QINSy, seawater flow through, pCO2, along with calibrating the instruments. Setting up, double, and triple checking the data flow, serial servers, and syncing the systems to ensure all the data is collected and it is being filed in an organized manor. Upon departing we had a good test to make sure all of our gear was secured for sea, heading straight into 6-8m seas. It looks like there is a high-pressure system on the horizon, so it’s forecasted to have smooth sailing as we go through the Bering Straight this weekend.