The ALOHA Cabled Observatory (ACO), the deepest operating ocean observatory on the planet that provides power and internet communications to scientific instruments on the seafloor, recently celebrated 10 years of operations. The development and deployment of the nearly 3-mile deep observatory was led by the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) and supported […]
From Flour and Sugar and Eggs Comes Data
Though the ACO cruise is over, the work on land is ongoing. I have taken a brief interlude from ACO to practice my Matlab plotting skills but will be returning to the ACO project in the coming weeks. With most of the instruments at the observatory supplying us with data, it is now time to […]
Come Down From the Jungle Gym, It’s Time to Deploy
I will take the opportunity, now that I am not clogging the bandwidth of the ship’s Internet with my many kilobytes of photographs, to catch you up visually on the happenings of the KM from TAAM deployment, Act 1, to the final connection, the curtain’s closing.
Baskets Hanging From the Beaks of Cranes
At 0700 I woke to shipping containers and cranes passing by the window. After breakfast, the ship was tied up to the pier at Snug Harbor. Equipment had been eagerly waiting in the staging bay since the night before to be unloaded. Within fifteen minutes of the ship’s halt, cranes were swinging back and forth. […]
A Warning to the Whales: We Are Now Listening
And watching from the camera tripod. We now know the temperature of the water from which your blubber insulates you, and its dissolved oxygen concentration too. We know how the currents will softly push you – in fact we know the whole profile of 100’s of meters of current starting at the bottom and working […]
A Brief Visit From the J-Box
Sunday morning before my 0400 Jason watch, I took my hot cocoa up to the bridge to see the stars. Up there, I’d heard, you sit above the reach of the bright deck lights so nothing gets between you and the stars. It was true. Between the twinkling and many up there, you could even […]
When Lord Kelvin Was Napping
I woke up to find more water column. I was under the impression that at 0400 I would awake to watch the connectors being plugged in and the puzzle pieces being put together. Jason had descended the evening prior and would have had plenty of bottom time by then. Apparently, though, as I was sleeping […]
Perhaps a Game of Tug of War Is All the Cable Needs
I woke up in a remarkably still bunk. I came out to the staging bay to find it bustling with hard hats and life vests. Behind them was a noticeable dearth of white caps and sinusoidal forms. Overnight, the squall had apparently found somebody else to harass and left us to deploy the TAAM in […]