Underwater Search in Huslia

I recently took a four day trip to Huslia, Alaska in an attempt to help the village locate a local man  who fell through the ice on the Koyukuk River.  For the second time this year I found myself mixing my search and rescue skills with my career as a marine geophysicist.  This time it was more like work than volunteer as TerraSond was hired by the Huslia Tribal Council to provide technical equipment and software with an operator and data processor (me).   A little more than a day after the initial call I was on my way to Fairbanks where I picked up the side scan sonar and then caught a flight with Wright Air on a Cessna Caravan to Huslia.

Huslia is an Athabascan village of about 300 people on the Koyukuk River.  When I arrived the man had fallen through the ice over a week prior.  People had come from all around and there were somewhere between 30 and 50 people helping with the search.  Within a few hours of arriving I was on the river with a team of assistants.  My assistants would lower the side scan sonar through slots in the ice and then tow the sonar along and pull a sled along side while I operated the computer.  After a few hours the sun went down and I headed back to the community hall for dinner.  I spent the evening reviewing the sonar data.

The second day was similar with temperatures hovering around freezing; we covered a lot of ground.  By the end of the second day we had surveyed a section of the river 1400ft long by 400ft wide.  That night the temperatures dropped and when I returned to the river the next morning it was 15 degrees below zero.  Maybe it was the temperature, maybe it was something else, but that morning the sonar would not power up properly.  I spent all day trying to fix it and eventually, after several conversations with a technician at the manufacturer, we determined it was not field fixable.  So, after only a day and half of searching it was done, and its not like you can get another highly specialized sonar on Thanksgiving Day in Huslia, or anywhere in Alaska for that matter.

On my last day in Huslia, I trained a few of the local guys to use a recreational grade sonar that can make similar, but lower quality, images of the river bottom.  I wish the community the best of luck in their search.

Looking out over the Koyukuk River

Pulling the sonar along slots cut in the river ice

A group helping me review the sonar data

The Huslia Community Hall

Sonar opened up for repair

Akun Island

Last week I took a quick trip to Akun Island in the Aleutians.  We chartered a plane from Anchorage and were gone for only four nights.  As usual, the Aleutians did not disappoint with spectacular views, interesting beaches, and archaeological sites.  With a little luck we had a break in the weather, and were able to perform our hydrographic survey from the little inflatable boat we brought with us.  Here are a few of my photos.

Artifacts we found lying exposed on the ground in a circle of cobles

Beach vegetation making art in the wind

Getting ready to launch the boat and go survey

Eric standing in a Aleut house pit

Beachcombing

East end of Surf Bay

Our chartered flight.  A Pilatus PC-12

More from Ketchikan

Ketchikan is known for being one of the rainiest places in Alaska, but the last couple of weeks I spent here haven't been too bad.  Maybe that's because I came prepared for rain or maybe its because I am still accustomed to the fall and winter seasons of Seattle.  I didn't see much sun while I was here but I still managed to capture a few good photos and take in some beautiful scenery.  Unfortunately the photos I took of an Orca didn't come out very well.  I was in Ketchikan over the Independence day weekend and even spent an afternoon downtown with the cruise ship tourists.  

Beach at a state park north of Ketchikan

Our survey vessel

Independence Day rubber ducky race at Creek Street.

Surveying on a nice calm day.

St. George, Alaska

I have been overdue to write a few words about working in St. George.  With the winds gusting up to 50 mph today and the rain coming down sideways I hardly have a reason to leave the hotel and thus will say a little about my new home away from home.  After three weeks here on St. George in the Pribilof Islands I am starting to feel like a local.  I probably have met half the town by now and I know at least 15 or 20 people by their first names.  Last names are harder, mostly because they are Russian and difficult for me to pronounce, although on the upside there are only a handful of last names in the whole village.

As I expected the Island of St. George has remarkable natural beauty, it is the of beauty that you find in the Aleutians.  A rugged, treeless, untamed natural landscape teaming with wildlife and beckoning to be explored.  St. George is an oasis for birds and sea mammals alike.  We are fortunate to be here while the fur seal pups are on the beaches and around the harbor.   I’m not much of a birder, but I certainly have enjoyed watching the fur seals.  The pups are very cute and I find myself smiling and laughing when I stop to watch.  There are literally hundreds if not thousands of seals in and around the harbor.  Some days we watch them surfing in the waves and other days they are hauled out high on the rocks. 

The village of St. George is as you might expect.  A bit battered from the harsh marine climate but otherwise pleasant with a nice old hotel and a classic Russian Orthodox Church.  The hotel has 10 rooms and was originally built for government employees.  It is quite a bit nicer than I expected and really and excellent place to stay.  We share a very large kitchen with the other guest, it’s a social place where guests spend time chatting with one another in the kitchen and the nicely appointed library.  Most rooms have a good view and there is plenty of space to dry our wet rain gear.

At this point we have only a few days of work remaining although the final duration will depend largely on the weather.  We have successfully mapped the harbor bathymetry and deployed acoustic devices on the seafloor that will measure the currents and waves over the next few months.  At some point in couple months from now I will return to St. George to recover our equipment.

Puffins (photo courtesy of Karl Woods)

Fur Seals (photo courtesy of Karl Woods)

View from the hotel including Russian Orthodox Church

Village of St. George

Collecting Sediment Samples

Waves breaking into the harbor

Looking for survey monuments

Fur Seals

Library in the hotel

One day survey in Valdez

I'm not sure there such a thing as a one day survey in marine geophysics but we tried to pull it off in Valdez this week.  The reality was three very long days.  It's over 250 miles from Palmer to Valdez so a good portion of that time was spent driving there and back.

Driving to Valdez is one of the most scenic drives in Alaska but towing 10,000 lbs of boat and trailer doesn't always allow you to take in the views.  Fortunately two of us were able to trade off driving.  Surveying in Valdez would have been equally scenic if we had been able to see past the fog.  Most of our time in the water was spent driving around with virtual no visibility.  We relied heavily on the GPS and electronic charts for navigation.  The up side to the fog was the flat calm water.  We certainly appreciated the lack of wind while towing the side scan sonar.

The sonar was towed nearly 400 ft below us, fairly impressive when working from a 28 foot boat.  We had our fair share of normal equipment problems but in the end we were able to find what we were looking for on the sea floor and position it within about 10 feet.

Now it's onto the next job which will be in St. George in the remote Pribilof Islands!

Truck and boat (Latent Sea) at a rest area west of Glennallen.

Working in Cook Inlet

Anchorage is a coastal city but you would hardly know it by talking to the people.  There are over 300,000 people living in Anchorage yet there isn't even have a small boat harbor.  You won't find people out sailing, sport fishing or wakeboarding in the late night summer sun. I suspect that only a very small number of people who live in Anchorage will ever go out on a boat from the city.  And until last week, I was one of those people.

Cook Inlet is no playground; as I try to explain to people who don't live here, "It's nice to look at but best not to touch." The tides in Cook Inlet near Anchorage can fluctuate as much as 30 ft and the currents run as fast as 10 knots in some places!  In the winter large pieces of ice slosh back and forth with the tide grinding along the shoreline and coating the beaches.  But like most rugged places in Alaska, Cook Inlet is beautiful.  Sure the water is the color of mud and cold as ice, but its beauty is in the wild untamed nature.

Cook Inlet couldn't be much different from Puget Sound with all the mansions lining the shores and white sail boats plying the water.  You won't see those in cook Inlet but you will be see hundreds of miles of undeveloped shorelines, with a backdrop of dramatic mountains and maybe even a beluga whale.

While I will miss the casual nature of heading out on Puget Sound I think I will enjoy working on Cook Inlet.

Panoramic view from our survey boat with the Anchorage skyline to the right

Fire Island with Anchorage in the background

Sea trial on the Aquila

I spent the last couple days preparing survey equipment and assisting with sea trails in Elliot Bay. Tetra Tech and Williamson and Associates are partnering for an upcoming survey aboard the F/V Aquila. The boat was mobilized on Lake Union so on Friday we cast off and sailed through the locks and into Puget Sound. It was exciting to be aboard the vessel with so many different survey systems in use. I won't be aboard for the survey so it was great to see the equipment in action.

My friend Ransom with the PS-60

Aft deck of the Aquila in the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks in Ballard

Preparing the side pole mounted multibeam sonar for deployment

 
Of particular interest is Williamson and Associates PROSAS SURVEYOR PS-60.  This amazing synthetic aperture sonar system is a cutting-edge towfish that is setting new standards for towed system capability. It is also the size of a Volkswagen Bus. Fortunately the Aquila is an old crab fishing vessel with plenty of handling capability. I was impressed at how easily the PS-60 was lifted overboard and positioned aft of the vessel for towing. Soon we were collecting high resolution imagery of Ellite Bay including the Alki Beach outfall. Not only does the PS-60 collect high resolution synthetic aperture sonar it was also equipped with a mulitbeam sonar and a sub-bottom profiler. All this equipment operates simultaneously along with and additional multibeam sonar mounted on the vessel. I was very impressed and inspired.

Launching the PS - 60

Bringing aboard the PS-60 at night.

News from The Gulf of Thailand

The ROV inside the tether management system

 

The captain maneuvering the vessel near one of the platforms

Sunset from the gas fields of the Gulf of Thailand

One of the central processing platforms

Video from the ROV showing the Van Veen grab sampler on the seabed

Sediment Profile Imaging camera

September 9^th 2012

Today is our 6^th day of survey in the Gulf of Thailand and the work continues to progress relatively smoothly. There is a large crew of Thai Scientists this year so there is often very little work for me to do when we are not using the Vibrocorer. I help out when I can but mostly I just read and wait for the times when I am needed.

The first few days we had some fairly marginal weather conditions. The sea-state was certainly not unsafe for a vessel of this size but rough enough to make launching and recovering our equipment difficult. With the swells and short period waves combined the seas were up to three meters. When the vessel was oriented with its stern to the seas the deck would go awash and we would often get wet. For the last 24 hours it has been quite calm with seas less than 1 meter, now it hardly feels like the vessel is moving. The downside to nice weather is that it’s also sunny and blazingly hot during the afternoon.

We have been sampling very close to some of the central processing platforms and using the ROV to verify the location of pipelines and observe the sampling equipment. The live video that the ROV provides has been very interesting. With the ROV we have observed many kinds of fish including parrot fish and a sting ray. The fish are often found hiding around the pipelines as this is the only place where corals grow. The ROV has also been able to observe the sampling equipment and determine if the sample is good before we bring it back to the surface. When the ROV operator is observing the vibrocorer he has been able to inform me over the radio the penetration depth of the core barrel so I know when to stop and recover the sample.

I have been working from noon to midnight so I am been enjoying nice sunsets, despite the fact that there is almost always a well platform or supply ship on the horizon. This oil and gas field continues to be developed quickly and I have noticed new structures this year that were not hear last. When I see a big thirst for oil and gas like this developing I am always wondering how long it will last. And what will we do when it is gone?  And when I say “we” I don’t mean the United States I mean the world.  Oil and gas exploration/exploitation is a global issue, I don’t want to sound too down trodden but I just can’t fathom how we will meet our future energy needs as oil and gas become less and less abundant. I suppose we will adapt and find alternatives as we will have no other choice, after all we are humans and that’s what we are good at - using our big brains to survive for millions of years and populate just about every corner of this planet.

September 10^th

We are headed into Songkla to offload the ROV and the ROV operators. Also departing will be the two operators of the sediment profile imaging (SPI) camera along with their equipment.  I haven’t talked about this piece of equipment yet but it is worth mentioning because I am very impressed with its design and performance. The SPI can be described as an upside down parascope.  The main components of the SPI are a downward looking digital camera mounted inside a pressure housing with a mirror and a glass plate. The SPI captures a photo of the sediment profile by probing down 8 to 10 inches into the seabed. Of course there is a lot more to the equipment to make it all possible but I won’t get into the details. The image the SPI captures can then be studied to learn about the sediment and the animals that live in it. Very cool!

It has continued to be clear, calm, and HOT! I have yet to find a thermometer on this vessel but some of the surveyors estimated it was 40C today. For me 40C might be just as bad as -40C especially when you are required to wear so much PPE. It feels like standing in a banya with all your closes on.  It doesn’t take long to become soaking wet from your own sweat. I am looking forward to the mild temperatures of fall in Seattle.

September 11^th

We are in port today. I was able to call Molly and check my email but other than that it is just another day on the boat. I won’t be going ashore as there is really no reason to do so and I don’t have a vehicle to get out of the port. By tonight we should be headed out again for the last few days of work. I am hoping we take on a little bit of fresh food but mostly I am hoping for some ice cream. The request was made to the “camp boss” in charge of the food orders so I will cross my fingers and check the freezer tonight.  Either way these last few days should go by quickly.

New TEMA Achievements

The TEMA

Working on the TEMA

New LED lights and camera with laser scaller in the center.

Rich and myself removing one the central access cover

TEMA survey at the acquisition station with live video on the upper right screen

TEMA being lowered onto the boat using a dock crane.

The Towed Electromagnetic Array (TEMA) was an important component of the recent survey we performed in Southeast Alaska.  The TEMA is the sensor that Rich and myself designed and built over the last couple of years.  We were fairly impressed by how the TEMA performed on this survey. We operated the TEMA in over 100 meters of water and were able to collect data that no other towfish in the world could collect.

We are always trying to think of new ways to improve the TEMA.  In the days before this survey Rich and I worked long hours installing lights, a laser scaler and a camera on the TEMA.  While the video quality was not very good, having a camera on board allowed us to fly the TEMA with a new level of precision.  Rather than relying on the altimeter and tilt sensor alone now we could see the bottom and achieve very very low flight heights without dragging along.

With the TEMA back in the warehouse I have a few days worth or repair and I will focusing on how to make some of the structural components stronger or less vulnerable to damage. Our next survey job for the TEMA will be much shallower water and in someways will seem easy compared to working in Southeast Alaska.