31st March 2010
28th March 2010
"Well things have turned bad again here. Right at the end of the last dive yesterday, at 4 pm, we had a huge ground fault and Jason went black. We did another dead vehicle recovery which wasn't too bad. The electical engineers did some tests and discovered that the transformer on Jason that steps down our 3000 volts through the wire to a usable 240v had burnt out. The transformer box is buried deep inside Jason and very hard to get at. They pulled it out with a lot of hassle and discovered the toroid partially fried. They unwound part of it and cut away the bad parts, wound it back up and... it appears that it may still work. We just reinstalled it by me pretty much climbing inside the vehicle to tighten some bolts down! We have to do all sorts of high voltage tests before diving again though. We don't know what caused it to short in the first place so it could happen again or worse (like burning out the main cable). Its pretty risky diving again but it looks like we may go in at 4 am... only one dive left too. "
25th March 2010
"Well things have gotten a little better out here. Two dives ago we looked for a mooring that had been deployed on a previous survey. The release was giving replies to our signal so they had some hope that we could recover it. We were pinging it from Medea when we went looking and basically manoeuvered right over it - but we couldn't see it. It was buried and we had no way to dig it out! Last night they did find one of the four missing moorings though and it was recovered today. The scientists were very happy to get at least one of their moorings back with a recording of the landslide. "
23rd March 2010
"Tomorrow we are going to look for a mooring that was swept about 500 metres downslope by a big landslide. Should be somewhat fun."
22nd March 2010
"We are on hold due to the weather - it's not too rough but rough enough to not go with out a bow thruster. We have all been at a bit of a loose end today. I've watched two movies and a few episodes of Dr Who, and Dara and I also gave the control vans a good clean - it was pretty mucky in there! "
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21st March 2010
"Still no bow thruster! Not sure what the latest is; things have been going OK without it though. There is a typhoon predicted to form to the south of us, so we are watching the charts intently. Other than that not too much news work wise."
20th March 2010
"The bow thruster is still down, but the Jason dive at the north-west Rota-1 volcano site went well yesterday even so. We can't do an SM2000 multibeam survey without it however, and launch and recovery is very difficult. The weather is supposed to pick up tomorrow and with the high seas and bow thruster issues I think we'll be down on weather."
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18th March 2010
"Well things have changed for the worse here again, unfortunately. We had a successful dive with Jason yesterday and came out of the water at 4pm. The plan was to then recover a couple of moorings that had been left in situ at the volcano last year, but they couldn't get any replies from the acoustic releases on the bottom of the instrument packages. There have been a lot of changes in the volcano since last year, and possibly some landslides. So they gave up on trying to release the moorings. The Jason plan was to do an SM2000 multibeam survey tonight, but as one of the moorings is 150 metres tall and right in the survey area we planned to look for the mooring first.
After trying to communicate with the moorings the next operation was a Kilo Moana (KM) multibeam survey, which went well, and then a CTD (Conductivity, Temperature, Depth) measurement. The KM has a brand new, super-fancy CTD crane but there were problems with it yesterday, and today they were worse. I was in bed when at about 11pm power for the whole ship went down. Apparently something failed on the CTD winch and triggered some sort of power surge through the rest of the ships systems, including the bow thruster - which is now dead. They had to bring the CTD onboard with a different winch, which took a long time and the bow thruster is still down. We aren't doing anything for at least 24 hours and we may need to go to Guam for parts.
Guess what I'm doing now? Watching live text of the Liverpool Europa league match! We are up 1-0 so far, need to win by at least 1 goal to advance unless they score, then we need to win by two. I tried to get it on internet radio but can't seem to manage it!"
17th March 2010
"Just woke up and got myself a cup of coffee - it's 3am. We didn't manage to get Jason back in yesterday - the EEs repaired a thruster motor controller when we got Jason back on deck; we did a pre-dive check and another motor burned out straight away. So something else was the culprit, and they chased it for a while. Eventually we had to abandon the first dive site and move to the next seamount, North West Rota which is the highest priority site because it is the one that is actively erupting. We are supposed to dive in an hour and hopefully everything will go smoothly - all of us are just desperate to get onto a regular schedule with the vehicle working."
16th March 2010
"We managed to dive for about 20 minutes this morning, but developed a ground fault on Medea and had to do a dead vehicle recovery. Hopefully the electrical engineers can fix things up pretty quickly and then we can get back in the water - and I can go and get some sleep! I have the 4-8am watch but we have to be around a couple hours before it goes in and also be around for launch and recovery. Overall not bad, but it's just a little tricky to try and get into a sleep routine, especially if things don't work and we have to recover early."
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15th March 2010
Akel is sailing to the NW Rota-1 volcano which is located 37 miles (64 km) NW of the island of Rota and 60 miles (100 km) north of Guam. The volcano lies along the Mariana Volcanic Arc, a chain of active volcanoes associated with subduction along the Mariana trench. A website has been set up to follow the science generated from the survey, and can be found here.
See the NOAA VENTS program pages for a description of the area that Akel will be surveying with the Woods Hole Oceaongraphic Institution (WHOI) owned Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) Jason.
10th March 2010
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Akel is currently en route from England to Guam in the west Pacific, where he will meet the University of Hawaii's research ship, the R/V Kilo Moana, for mobilisation. KiMo is due to sail on 16th March for the Mariana Volcanic Arc; the scientists onboard will be investigating Strombolian volcanism, magma degassing, and hydrothermal discharge at an active submarine arc volcano with Chief Scientist Professor Bill Chadwick.
The R/V Kilo Moana, built in 2001,was designed as a dedicated oceanographic research vessel. It is a Small WAterplane area, Twin-Hulled (SWATH) ship owned by the US Navy and operated by the University of Hawaii as a part of the University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System (UNOLS) fleet. Her SWATH hull form was designed to provide a comfortable, stable platform in high sea conditions.
With a length of 56.7 metres and a width of 26.8 metres, she is approximately half the length and twice the width of a regular single-hulled research ship. She has a service speed of 12 knots and can go for up to 50 days at sea without needing to dock for supplies (or up to 10,000 nautical miles!). She can accomodate up to 20 ship's crew and 28 scientists. See this website for more information.
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Last modified March 2010.
