Ocean Observatory Initiative News Feed

News from Ocean Observatory Initiative

1. And It’s a Wrap!

   [video width="406" height="720" mp4="https://oceanobservatories.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Whats-the-best.mp4"][/video] The Coastal Pioneer Array MAB team completed all the objectives of Leg 1 by the end of the day April 8th and started the transit home, back to the dock at Woods Hole. Taking advantage of a day in the wet lab, Glider Lead Diana Wickman took the opportunity to interview some folks about their experiences aboard the Armstrong over the last nine days.  Hear what they have to say about the best parts of the journey.

2. Hoses Galore Hold Moorings Together

   A flexible connection between the buoy and the anchor of the Coastal Surface Moorings of the Pioneer MAB Array is created by multiple hoses with the capacity to stretch while maintaining an electrical connection (Fig 1). The stretch is necessary to account for wind, waves and currents that push and pull the buoy relative to the anchor. The hoses connect mooring components and contain coiled conductors that allow data transfer and carry power generated by wind turbines and solar panels on the buoy. The Northern Coastal Surface Mooring deployed for the first time in the MAB on April 4, 2024, illustrates the vital role these connection points play in keeping the mooring in place and operating. The mooring was deployed in 100 meters of water. The surface buoy is connected to the near surface instrument frame with a five-meter-long electromechanical chain (EM) chain. The EM Chain is flexible enough to bend to allow deployment (Fig. 2) but does not stretch. This provides support and stability at the top of the mooring.  The EM chain also contains conductors to allow transmission of power created by solar, wind, and batteries on the surface mooring to the instruments below. [media-caption path="https://oceanobservatories.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/EMChain.jpg" link="#"]Fig 2. The EM Chain connects the bottom of the surface buoy to the Near Surface Instrument Frame (NSIF) to left. Credit: DT Crist © WHOI.[/media-caption] Power moves through the EM chain to the instruments attached to the Near Surface Instrument Frame (NSIF), and then off to three stretch hoses each 30.48 meters long!   The stretch hoses do what their name implies, stretch as needed in response to environmental conditions, yet they are strong enough to keep the mooring in place. The first section of stretch hose is connected to a Hose Interface Buoyancy (HIB) module, an orange flotation device that helps keep the stretch hoses floating and upright. The second section of stretch hose connects to a second HIB. Electrical connectivity is maintained by wired connections from the end of a stretch hose, through the hollow center of the HIB, and then to the next hose. [media-caption path="https://oceanobservatories.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/HIBS.jpg" link="#"]Two Hose Interface Buoyancy (HIBs) sections are connected to each other with electromechanical stretch houses that provide flexibility and strength to the mooring and transmit power down the line. Credit: DT Crist © WHOI.[/media-caption] The third stretch hose section is connected to the Multi-Function Node (MFN), which houses instruments that need power. The MFN also contains the anchor. [media-caption path="https://oceanobservatories.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/MFN.png" link="#"]The Multi-Function Node and Anchor Assembly being deployed off the back deck of the R/V Neil Armstrong. The stretch hose, which connects it to the rest of the mooring, is at the top and to the right. Credit: DT Crist © WHOI.[/media-caption]  [media-caption path="https://oceanobservatories.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Complete-configuration.jpg" link="#"]More than 96 meters of hose keep the Coastal Pioneer Northern Array in place in its new location in the Mid-Atlantic Bight. Credit: DT Crist © WHOI.[/media-caption]  Perspective in Pounds What’s amazing about the hoses that keep the Pioneer moorings on station and operational is the scale of the equipment that makes up the mooring.  Take the top and the bottom of the mooring, for example. The Surface Buoy weighs some 8,500 pounds.  The MFN and Anchor Assembly weigh 11,000 pounds.  These weights and the scale of the equipment are not only challenging for moving around the deck and getting into the water, but thanks to the hoses these massive components are able to stay in the water, collect data, and report for up to six months.  Hats off to hoses galore!    

3. A Post Doc Project with Ten Years of Ready-made Data

   Katie Bigham has been around OOI for nearly a decade.  Her involvement began in 2014 when she was an undergraduate at the University of Washington (UW) and took part in the marathon 83-day OOI Regional Cabled Array’s (RCA) final construction cruise that installed over 100 instruments, 9 moorings, 18 junction boxes and thousands of meters of extension cables. At the time, she was onboard as part of UW’s VISIONS program, an at-sea education program designed for students to experience all aspects of seagoing research and life aboard a global class oceanographic research vessel hosting a remotely operated vehicle (ROV). With a taste of Axial Seamount and hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor provided by her first sea-going experience, Katie landed on a direct career path to where she is today -- a benthic ecologist post-doc at UW, using OOI data. It’s a repeat pattern for Katie. She first used RCA OOI data to write her senior thesis focused on life thriving at Southern Hydrate Ridge methane seeps before graduating with a degree in Oceanography from UW in 2017. [media-caption path="https://oceanobservatories.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/2Katie_Studenst_sm-20230908_200403_startL4_ME-copy-scaled-1.jpg" link="#"]Chief Scientist Katie Bigham (back row, second from left) and VISIONS’23 students on the R/V Thompson during Leg 4 of the OOI-RCA operations and maintenance cruise. Credit: M.Elend, University of Washington. [/media-caption] After graduation, Katie took a couple of gap years, where she worked as a research associate for the OOI RCA and continued to go out on RCA’s annual recovery and deployment expeditions.  She then decided to go for a PhD, relocating to Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand during the height of COVID.  While other colleagues’ research was stymied by the effects of the worldwide lockdown, Katie, luckily, had access to years of data on benthic communities in Kaikōura Canyon, a highly productive submarine canyon.  As a benthic ecologist, she is interested in how and why biological communities change over time. Her dissertation focused on the impact of the magnitude 7.8 Kaikōura Earthquake in 2016 on the benthic community and it’s recovery. To assess this, she used co-registered detailed bathymetric and multicore data, as well as repeat photographic surveys from both before and after the disturbance. “For a lot of these deep communities, we don't really know what the baseline is for them. We don't know what normal is,” Katie said. “I'm really interested in how to get the most out of  multiscale, complex data sets to answer these important questions. Ship time is expensive. It’s hard to work in the deep sea and conditions there are really tough on instruments and equipment. That’s why projects like OOI are a great way to provide critical data over the long haul.” During her PhD, Katie applied for and was awarded a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellowshipwithin the Ocean Sciences Division. “Funny, but my original thought was to try to Pandemic-proof my post-doc. I wanted to formulate a project that would advance our knowledge of benthic communities thriving in dynamic environments and be achievable in a 2-year time period. I was looking for something that would be cohesive and with readily available data that wouldn’t be at risk from COVID impacts, such as requiring laboratory studies. After considering available datasets, from my senior thesis work, I remembered the tens of thousands of images and terabytes of video collected at Southern Hydrate Ridge (SHR) since 2008 during the early days of the RCA and follow-on annual cruises, as well as the now nearly decade of data provided by the cabled instrumentation. Using these data, I was able to immediately start asking questions about long term temporal changes in biological communities associated with methane seeps. The wealth of high quality imagery collected at SHR, is nearly unparalleled for these environments.” Katie is using imagery from the SHR digital still camera and  ROV imagery for her research project. The cabled camera located at the Einsteins’ Grotto methane seep turns on its lights every half hour, takes three pictures, and then turns off. “It's a highly dynamic environment where we've seen significant changes since the camera and the other equipment was first put in place there. This site hosts ‘vagrants’ or non-endemic megafauna, along with chemosynthetic bacteria that form extensive mats and clams with symbiotic bacteria. But, we also see rockfish, flounders, hagfish, eelpouts, and other visitors that come into the area, as well as soft corals and Neptunea nurseries because we think the seep is acting as a kind of an oasis for these organisms.” [media-caption path="https://oceanobservatories.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/For-Katies-piece-good.camdsr1767_02826.sm_-scaled-2.jpg" link="#"]The SHR digital camera located at the Einsteins Grotto methane seep provides Katies with imagery for her research. Credit: OOI/UW/CSSF; Dive R1767; V14. [/media-caption] The visual imagery available is helping Katie better understand cold seeps and how and why they are attracting other species. “Better understanding of methane seeps is important because of the potential interest in mining them, and because places like SHR are deemed “essential fish habitats.” Hence, we need to understand their relevance to fish stocks, including that perhaps they may be serving as nursery areas. Over 1,000 sites along the Cascade Margin are known to venting methane, but less than ~five have been studied in any detail.” The imagery allows researchers like Katie to begin to look at the temporal dynamics of these communities and determine whether they respond to particular cycles, such as tides, changes in the chemosynthetic concentrations, or pulses of macroalgae from the surface, as well as the long term impacts of ocean warming. “The images are helping us understand the colonization of specific organism types and how benthic communities are using these sites over time.  Because the datasets are so high-resolution with data every half hour, we can look at larger annual cycles and changes from season to season and year to year,” Katie added. Other SHR co-located cabled instrumentation also allows for investigation of changing conditions due to seismic events, for example. The Challenges of Big Data Katie’s task over the next two years is not an easy one. The digital still camera alone produces over 50,000 images a year. These data, coupled with terabytes of 4K and HD imagery, as well as thousands of images taken during ROV dives in the area, creates a huge amount of imagery to process. She’s tackling this effort in two stages: The first is to bring in machine learning and computer vision techniques to aggregate the datasets.  Once that is accomplished, there’s the bigger task of looking at the imagery and classification output to determine what can be learned about the inhabitants of the seep area. The first task to incorporate AI into helping sort the imagery is to label various features. “Obviously, the holy grail would be, the computer just does it for you. But because this still camera is looking at generally the same scene all the time, it’s ripe for putting an event detector or machine assisted annotation, where the computer can help differentiate today's picture from yesterday's picture,” she added. With such computerized assistance, researchers like Katie can then spend their time looking at the animals and observing their behavior rather than having to annotate each image. She gave an example: sometimes a crab will find a home on the camera and hang out there, blocking images of the area.  A computer “trained to identify when this happens,” could allow researchers to avoid this occurrence when they can’t see behind the crab. “I'm super stoked about this project. It's been an exciting thing to be working on and it's been really cool to bring together my scientific background and access to RCA-OOI data,” Katie said. “I'm developing automated digital analyses techniques that when I worked on my undergraduate thesis thought it'd be so cool to do and I'm doing it now.” With a powerful computer and multiple monitors in hand, in two years when her post doc ends (December 2025), Katie will have moved the world of AI forward to analyze an unprecedented amount of data within this marine ecosystem, resulting in one or more scientific papers about the temporal dynamics of benthic communities and how and why they change over time–in her words “a nice, cohesive, achievable effort!”        

4. A Remarkable Underwater Robot

   Two REMUS 600 autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) are components of the Coastal Pioneer Array at its new location in the Mid-Atlantic Bight (MAB). Their mission is to collect data through the water column and in between moorings, serving as an additional data source and validating data collected at the stationary moorings. The two AUVs at the Mid-Atlantic site will be collecting data at the site 4-6 times/year. They will travel across the shelf and along the shelf on a prescribed route within the footprint of the moored array. [media-caption path="https://oceanobservatories.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/MAB_VIP_AUV.jpg" link="#"]The AUV sampling route at the Coastal Pioneer Array in the MId-Atlantic Bight.[/media-caption] Prior to being loaded onto the R/V Neil Armstrong for the initial deployment at the MAB site, the OOI Coastal and Global Scale Nodes (CGSN) vehicle team at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) put them through a rigorous series of checks to make certain they will operate without incident in this new location. “We run the vehicle through a whole bunch of lab and bench tests, so we are confident that all major systems are working, and it is capable of executing a pre-programmed route when in the water,” explained CGSN Vehicle Lead Diana Wickman. Once the AUVs passed inspection, they were loaded on the R/V Neil Armstrong to make their way to the MAB. The onboard vehicle team of Wickman and Andy Robinson still had tasks to accomplish before setting them on their journey. The team mapped a detailed route with waypoints related to the configuration of the Pioneer Array in this new location. These AUVs will survey the array at three knots (as opposed to gliders, which travel at 0.3 knots). This faster AUV speed through the water makes it possible to capture dynamic flows and currents, which is especially important in the more complex area of the MAB. Once programmed, the vehicle team maintains control of the AUV from the ship via a Vehicle Interface Program (VIP)—a specialized program designed to communicate with the deployed AUV. The VIP gives the AUV team the ability to monitor health and performance of the vehicle and change parameters or alter the mission, when and if needed. An ability to track the AUVs while they are underway is especially important for the way they are used at the Pioneer Array. "Our vehicles’ configuration makes it possible to cover more ground and complete longer surveys than more traditional AUVs could achieve,” said Robinson, CGSN Vehicle Technician. They were designed with efficiency in mind, carrying a streamlined sensor payload rather than the power-hungry sonar or mapping equipment that many REMUS AUVs operate. This allows the vehicles to stay deployed for at least 24 hours, each set to cover 110 km (68 mi) in a typical mission at the MAB. [media-caption path="https://oceanobservatories.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/IMG_1378-copy.jpg" link="#"]These two AUVs will "fly" through water at the new location of the Coastal Pioneer Array in the MId-Atlantic Bight on April 6, 2024. Credit:DT Crist © WHOI.[/media-caption] AUVs are equipped with the same sensors as the four gliders that will be deployed in this new array location. The AUVs will supplement and validate the data being collected by the gliders as well as the moorings.  In contrast to the AUVs’ intermittent surveys, gliders will stay onsite and capture data for the six months the array will be in the water. The AUVs’ data collection trips serve to validate the data collected by the gliders as well as providing additional data to promote understanding of conditions in the region. The AUVs will make their first reports from the MAB this Saturday, April 6, 2024.    

5. Historic, Continuing Collaboration

   The U.S. National Science Foundation Ocean Observatories Initiative (NSF-OOI) and the Northeast U.S. Shelf (NES) Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) project have been collaborating since 2017, when the original OOI Coastal Pioneer Array was deployed 75 nautical miles off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard.  Representatives from the NES-LTER projectwould join the Pioneer Deployment and Recovery expeditions in this region for their spring and fall seasonal cruise. Their work includes deploying an Imaging FlowCytobot (IFCB) to sample continuously from the ship’s underway science seawater while OOI cruises were underway. An IFCB is an in-situ automated submersible flow cytometer that generates images of particles taken from the aquatic environment. Designed and built by researchers at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), the IFCB has since become commercially available through McLane Research Laboratories. “IFCB enables us to study the phytoplankton and microzooplankton inhabitants of a given region.  We can see what plankton are present over time and how the community structure adjusts to changes in the ecosystem,” explained Taylor Crockford, a WHOI researcher who regularly deploys IFCBs. “NES-LTER conducts four seasonal cross-shelf surveys per year studying the food web and physical properties of the surface waters and water column from near shore to the shelf-slope break, which includes the location of the original Pioneer Array.  Now that the Pioneer Array is moving south, we are excited to have the opportunity to continue this collaboration and build upon our understanding of the planktonic communities in the region.” [media-caption path="https://oceanobservatories.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Cytobot-image.png" link="#"]A glimpse at the diverse plankton community IFCB is currently seeing today (April 2, 2024) during the transit south to the new MAB Pioneer location. Credit: Taylor Crockford © WHOI. [/media-caption] During the initial deployment of the Coastal Pioneer Array at the Mid-Atlantic Bight (MAB), this collaboration continues.  Crockford is aboard the R/V Neil Armstrong and using an IFCB to collect data as part of the project’s broadscale study region (ongoing since 2013) while the ship transits to and from the new deployment site off the coast of Cape Hatteras, NC. When the ship and team arrive at Pioneer’s new location, she will be lending her expertise to the deployment team for it is the first time a Plankton Imaging System (PLIMS) is being deployed on one of Pioneer’s Central Surface Moorings.  This new deployment is an outcome of community input during an NSF and Ocean Observatories Initiative Facility Board sponsored workshopin 2021.