Marine Debris UAS Survey

Big day today, we had a man overboard and a man over 50.  The man overboard happened this morning at 0930.  The CDT crew had just finished up on the back deck when the call came over the intercom.  The man turned out to be a couple of life rings that the safety officer "happened" to throw overboard and we were informed in short order that it was a drill.  Everyone on-board still has to report to their assigned station and help look for the person in the water.  This morning, it ended up being a nice break for the scientists on board (except for the few that had just gone to bed after being up all night on duty) and a good training exercise for the ships crew.

The "man over 50" turned out to be Mike Boze from the UAS crew.  It was his birthday today and we enjoyed celebrating together in the middle of the N. Pacific.   Mike's brother informed us via email so we would be able to help make it a bit festive.  We sang Happy Birthday to him during dinner.

The Big Eyes crew is starting to see more debris as we get closer to the convergence area.  We are currently at 32 N and plan on heading up to 36 N before we stop CTD operations.  After that, we will concentrate on finding debris zones and flying the UAS.

The UAS crew continued to fine tune the airframes.  We will have two aircraft ready to fly, Malolo 1 and Malolo 2.  Malolo is Hawaiian for "flying fish".  Both aircraft will be operator controlled the first day as we test shipboard operations and the launcher.  If everything goes well, Malolo 2 will then become the primary aircraft and will start autonomous flight.  Cameras are installed in both aircraft.

Another beautiful day, another beautiful sunrise and sunset.  We are enjoying the good weather.  Tonight was a bit cooler on deck, evidence of our movement north.

We continue to steam straight north along 158 W.  Every 15 miles we have been stopping for about 45 minutes while they do a CTD drop.  Average speed while under way has been 10-11 kts.  We are making good enough time that we might gain an extra day for UAS work.  Of course, that could change with the weather.

The UAS team continued to work on the two aircraft.  Mike concentrated on airframe work, Tim on electronics and Curt on software.  Tomorrow, we will assemble both airframes and prepare them for flight.  Check the pictures to see progress.  It has been great working conditions with the seas being pretty benign.  We like to think we have gained our sea legs but it is more the fact that the rolling and rocking has slowed down considerably.  Looking at the weather, we might be enjoying this a bit longer.

The ocean and winds calmed down today and allowed some of our scientists to use the "Big Eyes" binoculars for marine debris and mammal surveys. We also began stopping every 15 miles for CTD. The ATI team spent most of the day prepping our new airframe. We also learned that it will be 3-4 days before we actually fly due to the fact that we cannot overlap the CTD ops with the UAS ops (NOAA folks like acronyms, can you tell?). That's fine, for we have plenty of work to do to make certain we have everything just right for our turn at finding sea debris.

The deep blue of the ocean is indeed breathtaking—and we've been treated to some spectacular sunsets already.

We departed Pearl Harbor at 0900 hrs and headed north along the west side of Oahu.  Late morning, we ran thru a pod of dolphins and were treated to an aerial display of jumps and synchronized swimming.  The winds were fair and the seas were down from yesterday.  Once past the the northwest corner of the island, the swell began to hit us from the starboard side.  Winds picked up to 25 kts with force 4-5 conditions.

A crew of observers is on-board for the purpose of logging debris sightings as well as sea-mammals.  They are set up on the flying bridge with "big eye" binoculars that are mounted on a swivel base.  With the sea conditions as they were, the observers quickly succumbed to sea-sickness and had to forgo the use of the binoculars.  Despite the poor survey conditions, they managed to log their first piece of marine debris as well as occasional whale sightings.

This evening, another science crew will perform their first of many CTD tests.  Once we get closer to the convergence zone, they will perform a CTD test every 15 NM.  It takes about an hour to do this test, at which time the vessel has to come to a complete stop.

The UAS team was able to spend the day doing more unpacking and performing some initial tests of the autopilot systems.  Curt decided to make a "sea-sickness" predictive tool by utilizing the IMU of the UAS guidance system and observing the accelerometer data.  He was able to graph the vertical acceleration of the ship as it moved up and down in the ocean.  Watching the real-time graph display what our heads were feeling was weird.

The sun set over a beautiful ocean with no sight of land at 1844 hrs. 

A short shake-down cruise on day 1 brought us out of Pearl Harbor at 0830 hrs, returning around 1300 hrs.  The scientists on board tested instruments and unpacked equipment.  Tomorrow morning we depart at 0900 hrs.  Weather today was partly cloudy with a 15 kt trade wind blowing.

The UAS team did an EMI (electrical magnetic interference) test with all ship communication and electronic equipment running.  This was done to ensure that communication with the UAS in flight will not be affected by shipboard equipment that is transmitting or running.

After the testing we had some time to explore historic Ford Island.