Full steam ahead team

Meet our two fantastic deployment teams! The day team operates from noon to midnight, while the night team operates from midnight to noon. The day team members are:

• Jake Perez (OBEM technician, Scripps Institution of Oceanography)
• Alan Gardner (OBS technician, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
• Grace Atkisson (student, Northern Arizona University)
• Nnamdi Ajah (student, Baylor University)
• Hayden Branch (student, Northern Arizona University)
• Amilcar Cabrera (researcher, Instituto Nicaragüense de Estudios Territoriales)
• Natalia Montoya (student, Universidad de Costa Rica)
• Jim Gaherty (co-chief scientist, Northern Arizona University)

The night team members are:

• Chris Armerding (OBEM technician, Scripps Institution of Oceanography)
• Hannah Brewer (OBS technician, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
• Nahomy Campos (student, Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica)
• Abhinav Singh (student, Georgia Institute of Technology)
• Raquel Barrientos (student, Universidad de Costa Rica)
• Luis Salas (student, Universidad de Costa Rica)
• Quincey Nielson (student, recent graduate of Georgia Institute of Technology)
• Ryan Porter (co-chief scientist, Northern Arizona University)

We have had a productive last 24 hours, having now deployed 13 OBEM and 2 OBS stations! Things started off slower than expected, as it took us nearly 60 hours to transit from Puntarenas to our first station. The ship had to push through a significant surface current, which slowed us down to a speed of 8 knots for about a day, when we were expecting 9.5–10 knots (one knot is equivalent to 1.852 kph, or 1.15 mph). During the transit, I gave a presentation on recent scientific results that motivated this project (more on the science goals in a future post), while Jake and Chris presented on the OBEM instrument components and safety protocols.

Since we operate around the clock (24 hours a day, seven days a week!), our science party started adjusting their sleep/meal cycles to prepare for their 12 hour shifts, which can be tiring work. We all took it easy on the first day while getting our sea legs, doing our best to avoid sea sickness (this is the first time at sea for all the students in the science party). On the second day, Chris and Jake gave us a walkthrough on OBEM instrument setup for deployments. This doubled as training for OBS deployments, since they share some design elements and procedures.

At 1 am on October 14, the night crew successfully deployed the first OBEM instrument of the project. The video below shows what a typical deployment looks like, but what’s not shown is the process of putting together an instrument, which is the majority of the work.

Thanks to the hard work of our techs and students, we are already making up some of the lost time from the slow transit.