August 25, 2010 On board with MBARI: The inside scoop on fascinating tools, people, and ocean research

Have you ever wondered what’s in the ocean?
Have you ever gazed out over the water, surfed, boated, or swam in the water, and thought about what sorts of creatures and things inhabit that mysterious undersea world?
Have you thought about what machines, tools, and contraptions people are using to study the creatures in the waters?

On probably the most beautiful day of the year, I had the spectacular opportunity to get a little, and most amazing glimpse of what’s all in the water. Not only did I get to see some of the animals and tools in our very own Monterey Bay, but I got an in-depth view of a remarkable group of deckhands, scientists, engineers, and technicians who devote their life to studying the ocean and developing tools and machines to help them study the ocean.

It all started with DJ Osborne and MBARI. DJ, our chief engineer for ICE AGED, has a regular though most extraordinary job at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI). MBARI is a private, non-profit research center in Moss Landing that was founded by David Packard in 1987 as his dream hobby. About 220 scientists, engineers, and operations and administrative staff work here on studies in ocean sciences. On the edge of one of the deepest underwater canyons in the US and right by one of the most biologically diverse bodies of water, the Monterey Bay, MBARI is situated in the ideal location. In addition to laboratories, research and maintenance facilities, MBARI has three research ships and two Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs), as well as several autonomous underwater vehicles which allow scientists to study everything from ocean chemistry to undiscovered animals.

DJ is a technician and a pilot for both of the ROVs at MBARI. In some ways he has his dream job. DJ, and his team, fix and outfit these underwater robots with science gear and then they get to go out with a group of scientists and help them use the robots to study what’s in the ocean. In order to learn more about ROVs and ocean research, I joined DJ’s team for a day on the job.

My day started bright and early at sunrise on the deck of one of the research ships, The Point Lobos.

Eric Fitzgerald, one of the kind deckhands, gave me a safety orientation and a tour of the 33-meter Point Lobos. The Point Lobos is from Louisiana and was originally an oil field supply ship. Now, 29 years later, she is a sturdy and strong oceanographic research vessel that has been specially outfitted with things such as a second, enclosed steering cabin so the captain can maneuver the boat while watching the crew deploy the ROV.

As we pushed off from shore and headed out to sea, the chief ROV pilot, Knute Brekke, gave me a most informative overview of ROVs and the ROV associated with the Point Lobos, Ventana. ROVs, or remotely controlled submarines, can be as big as buses or as small as our 5-foot cylindrical SCINI and are used mainly in the oil industry but also in ocean sciences. Every ROV has at least five major components or systems: a tether, a floatation device, ballasts, thrusters, cameras and lights. Tethers connect the underwater robot to a type of control room on a ship or on land. They supply electricity to the ROV through cables and relay information through hair-thin fiber optic cables, which enables the pilot to drive or “fly” the ROV. Deep-water flotation devices are made of syntactic foam (special high density foam that will not crush at its designated depth) to provide flotation to the ROV.  Ballast is adjusted at the surface to allow the ROV to be nearly weightless in the water so the thrusters get the ROV down to deep depths. Thrusters are propellers that move the ROV forward and backward, up and down, or to the left or right, similar to how a helicopter pilot flies a helicopter. Cameras and lights help the pilots see what the ROV sees.

Vetana is a one-of-a-kind ROV that is uniquely adapted for science missions. Her floatation device is full of millions of tiny, glass beads, the size of a pinhead that can withstand the pressure in deep waters up to 1850 meters, about 1 mile deep. Her cameras were the first high definition ones, first used about 11 years ago, which allowed scientists to more clearly see and observe the organisms in the water. Her lights are specially made so that the colors of the animals are correct as in natural sunlight. The creatures they see at the bottom of the ocean look the same as the creatures would if they were out in bright daylight. The ballasts, however, are simple lead bricks that you could buy at the hardware or furniture landscape store. Lastly, Ventana has five different “science sleds” that technicians, under the guidance of scientists and the ROV pilots, outfit with any combination of arms, drawers, cores, collection tools, and a sundry of devices or instruments, which the ROV will use deep in the water for whatever particular science mission the scientists dream up.

Most impressive to me were the two manipulator arms. Having seven degrees of movement in order to mimic human arm motion, the manipulator arms allow the pilots, upon the scientists’ request, to grab and move all kinds of things deep under the water. A master arm is located in the control room of the ship so the ROV pilot can control the slave arm on Ventana. Strong and precise enough to pick up and bend a penny, the arm could be lethal if something goes wrong and the technology goes haywire.

Fortunately, Ventana has not hurt anyone and, in fact, she is the most successful ROV in the world! She enjoys a 97% success rate for MBARI! She has helped scientists not only at MBARI but scientists from all over the world study all kinds of things in the ocean. She is about 22 years old and, while she came from International Submarine Engineering, ISE, in Vancouver, she’s been upgraded so many times that she’s about twice as big as she was originally and as only about two original parts.

There is a whole crew of people working together to deploy this miraculous machine and I was fortunate to be able to talk to many of them during our day at sea. As Knute said, it’s a “dance” between the ship crew, the ROV pilots, the scientists, the engineers, and the technicians to get the underwater submarine working, to have the science equipment needed to do the research, and to safely get to the dive site.

The ship crew get the scientists and ROV pilots safe on site and they keep the boat steady for the sub mission. One of the ship’s captains said his job is harder than the ROV pilots. Once on site in the spot where the ROV deploys, he’s constantly checking the waves, wind, swell and trying to keep the boat steady and the tether safe. If the boat drifts away, then the tether which connects the sub to the boat, could pull the ROV and interfere with the work for the ROV pilots.

The ROV pilot’s job is to get the ROV safely on site either somewhere in the middle of the water column or down at the bottom of the ocean and then accomplish the scientific tasks of the day. They collect samples with the “arms” on the ROV, get push cores, or deploy, fix, or retrieve various science instruments. In addition to the actual mission, there’s always something that needs to be done or fixed on Ventana and the pilots, some of whom are engineers, really need to prioritize as their time is so limited. They have to get a science package ready for each dive and then fix what needs fixing on their beloved Ventana.

The scientists devise the missions in coordination with the pilots. Peter Wells, the science tech on board with us, gave me some insights about MBARI and gave me a background to the science part of the mission that I was on. He said that MBARI is unique in that it has private funding and scientists don’t have to apply for grants. Furthermore, scientists at MBARI are not steered by corporations, the government, or the publication of their work. They are motivated purely by the desire to do real research. The scientists can have experiments that don't work as well as intended. Management encourages the asking of hard questions and even says that if everything were to work, then the scientists are not asking hard enough questions. Peter emphasized that many lessons can be learned from things that don’t work or from mistakes. Peter advises kids to ask questions. “If you have a question, there’s probably 5 other kids with the same question. Don’t be afraid to ask.”

The mission of today’s dive was concerned with a study on the effects of carbon dioxide on the ocean and on organisms in the ocean. The rising levels of carbon dioxide in the air is causing ocean acidification, or a lowering of the pH in the oceans. Peter says that the lowering pH could be considered the “silent killer”. “We don’t see it like we see smog. We don’t smell it like we do sulfur dioxide. If we did then we’d probably do something about it.” Peter explained how the pH levels have remained constant over the last millennia but that now they’re changing and, though humans are ingenious and can adapt, some animals cannot adapt. The carbon dioxide affects coral reefs, plankton, and shells. The carbonate shell will dissolve in more acidic water. It would be like the walls of your house becoming smaller and smaller. Peter explained how corals are one of the animals that are most affected by the changes of not only pH but climate change. “Corals are being dissolved by the pH change in the water, burned by the increased temperature, and drowned by the raising sea levels. If you want to see healthy coral, go see it now.” Sadly the carbon dioxide that’s in the ocean and in the air will  continue to climb and we can only hope they will stabilize in about 60 years.

What can you do to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide going into the air?
Join, your local 4-H and learn more about it, this October 6 as part of the 4-H Youth National Science Day.
So how exactly does Peter and his team study the effects of CO2 on the world’s ocean?

Peter Walz and his team of scientists and tech engineers had devised a unique contraption to simulate the effects of carbon dioxide on the world’s oceans. Though researchers have aquariums and tanks with water with elevated levels of carbon dioxide there is no experiment that observes it in the real habitat with high pressure because of the deep depths. Peter’s contraption, which they called FOCE (Free Ocean CO2 Enrichment), is the only one that is in the real habitat, deep in the waters of our very own Monterey Bay.

Jim Scholfield, one of the science technicians working with Peter, took some time out to not only emphasize the beautiful relationship between the science techs and the ROV pilots but to explain this contraption which he had helped build. FOCE is a giant 30 by 8-foot rectangle with a box in the middle that is meant to hold water with a controlled increased level of carbon dioxide over what is in the surrounding water, therby lowering the pH a light amount. Two years in the making, it was dropped over the side of the ship a few months earlier and simply sank to the bottom of the ocean, 800 meters below. Ventana situated it on the bottom, unfolded it, got it ready, and then pumped carbon dioxide into its chambers. One chamber, situated in the middle of the contraption, was meant to resemble the ocean in the year 2100, an ocean acidified by the lowering pH levels due to the increased carbon dioxide. Once working, this chamber could become the laboratory for scientists to study how animals will react to the future acidified ocean in their very real environment. A work in progress, this contraption was loosing carbon dioxide somehow and today’s mission was actually to figure out where and how it was leaking.

So back to my day. After two hours of steaming out on the ship, we were out in the open ocean. We were past the Monterey Bay, about 25 miles out at sea where the weather is highly variable but where today it was clear, warm, and sunny! My seasick prone tummy was relieved! Once we got “on site”, the ROV pilots came together with the ship crew to deploy the submarine. The captain sat in his second cabin and held the boat steady. The ship crew helped spool out about 1100 meters of tether, about 20% more than needed to get to bottom. One ROV pilot was on deck flying the ROV with a belly pack until it was submerged. The second ROV pilot was down below in the dark control room in the forward part of the ship ready to take over once the sub was submerged.

The dive to bottom lasted a good 45 minutes or so and I was glued to the monitors in the control room that displayed the view from the sub while thrusting to bottom. It was like flying through space. I was hypnotized by the white specks of organisms, “the detritus”, “the snow”, which flew over the computer screen almost like stars in outer space. Little fish, lots of jellies, thin strands of Siphonophorae, the world’s longest animal, came flying by too. The highlight was something that neither the pilots nor the technicians had ever seen before: A Humboldt squid squirted its dye at us. Over and over, puffs of yellow ink came flying towards us. We were mesmerized. While other squids ink relatively frequently, the Humboldt has almost never been caught on film inking.

Once Ventana reached bottom, we watched the ROV pilots skillfully use Ventana’s manipulator arm to remove and reinsert a plug smaller than the size of a soda can into the FOCE contraption. He then used the arm to pick up a tube, the size of a pencil, and insert it into the plug to deliver shots of carbon dioxide and a dye.

Watching for a leak, the pilots alternated between flying around the FOCE contraption and delivering shots of green dye. A crab looked on with keen interests and stayed right by the FOCE contraption while a slimy hagfish, various crabs, and sea stars came visiting. On the sonar we saw the destructive trawling lines from fishermen and at one point a bright red shrimp floated by.

 

It was amazing to watch the arms of the sub at work 800 meters below us. The ROV pilots skillfully maneuvered and opened and closed the grabbers with the aid of the “master” arm situated in the control room. Watching on the computer monitors, I thought it was eerie to see these arms come up from the edge of the screen and grab something. I was more than impressed by the precise work the ROV pilots did so deep underneath us.

Further in awe, I realized that these pilots only had a couple of hours of time to work on problem solving and gathering information. Much too soon, for me at least, the call came for the team to retrieve the sub. We had been on bottom for maybe 2 and a half hours and the scientists and technicians had prepared for this dive for weeks, the ship crew had spent a good two hours getting out to this remote spot far out in the ocean, and the pilots had maneuvered the sub for another 45 minutes getting down to the bottom. Fortunately, much had gotten accomplished in this short period of work time. The scientists had found what was leaking, and could now return to their labs onshore to analyze the videos and data and try to figure out how to fix the box or to build a new one.

On our return trip back to the harbor at Moss Landing, I talked to Farley Shane, another engineer who gave a good summary of MBARI from the engineering perspective. He said there were “lots of positives, lots of neat things” at MBARI. There are “smart people working on neat projects.” He talked about how the engineers have the resources to try new things and that everything is done on site at MBARI. He explained how the technicians can start with a blank piece of paper, design something, build it in the machine shop at MBARI, test it in their tank and take it out to sea on one of the boats to try it. He also spoke of the freedom and of how the engineers share their technology. They show other people and institutions what they’ve developed. One measure of their success is that one of their technologies is being used for Homeland Security.

While watching humpback whales gently float by and dolphins frolic off the side of the boat, I spoke once more to Peter, the science tech. He shed some more light on another amazing underwater contraption, an undersea cabled observatory. Deep in the water, close to where we had been, 25 miles out at sea, was an observatory called the MARS cabled observatory that has a cable that runs electricity and information from the shore all the way out to the deep sea. This observatory can connect to up to eight experiments at a time so that scientists can get real data right then and there. Though there are other cabled observatories, one on the East Coast and one being developed further north in Canada, none are as deep or as far out at sea as the MARS node and none have proven to be as versatile and reliable as the MARS.
With that, Peter also clarified where oceanography is these days. “Oceanography used to be go out at sea take samples and analyze them. Three months later we would be able to explain something… MBARI and modern oceanography is moving much more towards real time information. With the floats like buoys there are satellite links, with the cabled observatory you can upload streaming video and you can have electricity to run experiments”

Coming back to the dock at MBARI, the crew, the scientists, the ROV pilots, and the technicians were happy that they had accomplished another mission successfully and, some with ice cream in hand, exclaimed to their teammates greeting them on shore that it had been warm, sunny, and calm, the nicest day of the year. I was overwhelmed by the amazing tools I had heard about and seen in action and by the kindness, devotion, and intelligence I had seen in the group of people that not only had allowed me to share their day with them but had taken time out of their precious day to explain and show so much to me. Thank you guys! You are awesome beyond words.