Home Again

We arrived in Newport yesterday morning and it was a long day spent loading equipment onto the Bigelow for the next trip and then unloading the equipment from our cruise. To my surprise I was presented with a book that all the scientists and crew had signed and a large, colorful document certifying Winnacunnet High School as a "plank owner" of the ship. A plank owner was a member of the crew when the ship was commissioned and they felt that because students from the school named the ship, that the school deserved to be a plank owner. I'll frame the document and bring it to school. I got home at about 9 PM last night and already miss the life aboard the ship and all my new friends.

While I was on the ship I tried to talk to as many people as possible about their jobs and asked them for advice for my students who might be interested in working as a member of the crew, or enlisting in the NOAA corps, or working as a marine scientist. I'll list some of their comments here:

-A government job is a good job; benefits include security, retirement and health care.

-College isn't for everyone; degrees are not necessary to be a wage mariner.

-Maritime academies prepare you for engineering positions.

-A college degree in math/science is expected for NOAA corps enlistees. They run the ship.

-Life at sea can be difficult; you are away from your family more than you are with them and you must live in close quarters with a lot of people.

-For a future in science:

sign up for Marmam; a list serve with marine mammal volunteer opportunities and jobs

many think you will need a Ph.D.

take math/statistics and computer courses-lots of them

field work experience is important

write to someone in the career you want and find out what they did to get there

find a mentor

co-op programs give you a big advantage

do internships in college

be able to think for yourself, being part of the group won't get you very far

volunteer to get experience

don't give up before you try

be a hard worker-be there early, stay to clean up etc. it will pay off!

pick your fights wisely, be careful how you present yourself

smart doesn't equal special, the rules apply to everyone

no job is great every day

people want colleagues they don't have to babysit

Finally, I learned of something all college sophomores interested in a career in the marine sciences should apply for. It's called the NOAA Hollings scholarship. It involves tuition money and an internship. Be sure to check this out!

This is my last blog entry. I hope you enjoyed following along on my Bigelow adventure.

Cathy Silver

Another Great Day

Today was our last day for observing marine mammals and turtles. Again, the seas were very calm, there was no fog or rain, and there was no wind: a great day for observing animals. We saw fin, sperm, pilot, and beaked whales; common, bottlenosed, Risso's, and striped dolphins; leatherback and loggerhead turtles; manta rays, and ocean sunfish.

We'll be heading back to Newport tonight and should be there tomorrow morning.

I had a great time and would like to thank all my new friends for helping me to feel welcome and to learn as much as I could. There is a lot to learn to do this job and they were all very patient with me.

Thanks to Debi for allowing me to come along. Denise, Danielle, and Joy explained the acoustic system to me. Betsy collected plankton for me. Gordon, Melissa, Allison, Irene, Carol F., Betty, Pete, and Kalyn all helped me learn how to observe. Special thanks go to my roommate Carol R. who was especially helpful.

The crew of the Bigelow was also very helpful and friendly. Everyone was willing to answer questions. They definitely made the trip an enjoyable one.

A Wicked Awesome day

Today was a perfect day. We went up onto the observation decks at 5:45AM and the water was so calm it was like glass. There was no wind, waves or fog-all the things that make observing difficult. We could see for miles and we could see everything on the surface of the water. The amazing thing is that the perfect conditions lasted all day. We knew the conditions were very special and right away we started to see lots of animals. We were all so excited that we stayed on deck during our breaks so that we could continue to see everything.

The picture above is of bow riding bottlenosed dolphins. They had four very young babies with them and stayed with the boat for about 15 minutes.

We saw: sperm whales, fin whales, pilot whales, three types of dolphins, loggerhead turtles, manta rays, ocean sunfish, sharks, tuna fish, and Portuguese man-o-war.

At one point I overheard one of the observers say "I love my job", and I would have to say that I too love her job!

The perfect day ended with a beautiful sunset.

I went fishing!

We probably had the most sightings today of any day so far, in spite of the conditions. We started, as we always do, at 6 AM but we were only able to observe for a few minutes before it started raining. We started observing again at 10 AM and from 11-12 it was very busy. There were so many dolphins that we extended the observation time to 12:15 to allow us to identify them all. The wind picked up and we had to stop observing for the day at 2:00.

After dinner I got to go fishing on the stern of the boat. My fishing buddy Charlie let me use one of his fishing rods and we trolled for about an hour and a half. I've done a lot of fishing, and I do like the stern of the boat, but I've never fished from a 208.6' boat that cost $60 million before. We didn't catch anything, but it was really fun.

The day wasn't a total washout in the fishing department. Just a few minutes ago, Jim the friendly survey technician, called me out to the deck where they had just brought in the plankton nets. A lamprey eel was attached to the net's weight and it will soon be on display in my classroom at Winnacunnet High School in Hampton, NH.

Animals other than marine mammals

Today we observed until 2:30 when it became too rough to see well. We saw striped and Risso's dolphins and a fin whale.



A friend wrote and asked what other animals we have been seeing. Peter Duley, our resident birder, tells me that he's seen four types of shearwaters (manx, sooty, Audubon, and greater), three types of petrels (white faced, Leach's, and Wilson's), a parasitic jaeger, a yellow warbler (above), a cedar wax wing (to the right), a mourning dove, and barn swallows.






We've also seen flying fish, a mola mola or ocean sunfish, and a Portuguese Man-o-War.

Photos by Danielle Cholewiak.

A Foggy Day

We started the day on Georges Bank and it was very foggy. We tried to run out of the fog and it did get better. We saw striped and spotted dolphins today.

The pictures are of spotted dolphins. They develop the spots as they age and they lose the pink coloration on their bellies. The dorsal fin on the front dolphin was probably cut by a cookie cutter shark and the mark makes it unique and potentially identifiable in the future.

We ended the day near the Balanus seamount.



Photos by Allison Glass

A Good Sighting Day

Today was one of our best sighting days, in spite of having to stop for two rain storms. We crossed over Oceanographer Canyon and saw fin whales, sperm whales, pilot whales, Grampus whales, beaked whales, Atlantic white sided dolphins, bottle nosed dolphins, and Risso's dolphins.

While we were waiting for a rain storm to pass by, I drove the boat!

Living conditions

A friend emailed and asked me to describe the living conditions here on the Bigelow.

Two people are assigned to a stateroom that has a desk (with a computer and phone), two lockers, bunk beds with drawers underneath, a sink, and a bathroom with a toilet and shower. The rooms vary in size: some are narrower than others and some have a porthole or window. The bunks have curtains that can be drawn around them. This is necessary because people may not be on the same watch and one person may need to sleep while the other must be awake.

I sleep on the top bunk and it is very comfortable. I wish I had these curtains when I was a kid and slept in a bunk bed. The curtains make it very cozy. Each bed also has a light so we are able to read in bed.

The scientists I am working with tell me that this is the most comfortable ship they have been on. On other ships there may be four people in a room and as many as six people must share a bathroom.

Our lifejackets and survival suits are also stored in our staterooms.

Linen is provided by the ship. There is a laundry room that we can use for our personal clothing.

The food is great. There are several choices for each meal and snacks are always available. For dinner tonight there were stuffed lobster tails, Cornish game hens, and trout nuggets.

Each stateroom has a satellite receiver and the computer monitor serves as a flat screen TV. There are also 42" flat screen televisions in the scientists' lounge and on the mess deck. Movies can be received from a centrally located VCR or DVD.

It's not quite a cruise ship, but on the other hand we are hardly roughing it.

Acoustics and Plankton

Today at 5:45 AM I watched as the hydrophone array was deployed off the stern of the boat. The instrument contains four different hydrophones that are designed to record sounds of different frequencies. Sounds are recorded during the time that we do the visual observations and then the recorded sounds will be matched with the observations. The observers saw some sperm whales today and I was able to hear them as they went past the ship.

I also helped collect plankton today at noon and again at 6PM. The two large nets are called bongos and they are pulled behind the boat. The nets have different sized mesh and collect different types of plankton. I will be bringing samples back to Winnacunnet for my students to observe.

After the 6PM plankton tow, the Video Plankton Recorder was launched. This large, yellow instrument that looks like a glider is pulled at a depth of 2000 meters and the plankton is photographed. I will also be able to bring some of these pictures back to school.

I know the pictures are small, just click on them and they'll get bigger.

We're in the Gulf Stream

This was the view at 5:50 this morning. It was a very pleasant and warm day until about 3:30 when it started to rain. We spent most of the day in the Gulf Stream and saw lots of sperm whales and dolphins.

We also saw several balloons, including at least five groups of balloons. The Bigelow altered its course to inspect a large group of orange and white balloons that were floating on the ocean surface. Because the balloons were similar in color to life rafts, the Bigelow was obligated to check them out. Balloons are a real menace to marine animals. Turtles mistake balloons for jellyfish and when they ingest them they may die. The strings on balloons frequently entangle birds, fish, and mammals. Balloons take a very long to degrade and releasing helium balloons is illegal in many areas.

Waterspouts

Today the observers saw sperm whales and several types of dolphins. I only saw one dolphin and I was not able to identify it. It was a very hot day standing behind the Big Eyes and scanning the ocean surface for animal life. We went off the continental shelf and it is now more than two miles deep. At the end of the day we noticed that there were more birds and Sargassum weed so we know that we are getting close to the Gulf Stream.

As we were returning to our observation positions after lunch, we saw several waterspouts on the horizon. A waterspout is a funnel shaped cloud that occurs over a body of water and brings the water upward to the cloud. They are weaker than land tornadoes. If you click on the picture (or any of the pictures for that matter) it will enlarge.

I saw a sperm whale!

Today was a windy, sunny day. We saw a lot of dolphins: Atlantic white sided, common, striped, and bottlenosed. We also saw pilot whales and sperm whales.

The highlight of the day came for me at 2:25. I was on the port Big Eye and I saw a blow about two miles away. I called out the required information that I could at that time: distance, bearing, behavior, and number. I thought it must be a sperm whale and hoped that I would be able to see it. It blew again and its head came out of the water. The head was large and rounded and I thought it was a sperm whale. The other observers asked me all the appropriate questions to help me decide if it was indeed a sperm whale. I said it was and it was recorded. A short time later the scientists who were recording the whale sounds said that they had recorded a sperm whale in the location of my sighting.

Here's a way to follow the ship

Go to "shiptracker.NOAA.gov" and you can see the ship's location and where it has been on this cruise.

I saw some marine mammals!

I went to the top deck at 5:45 AM and helped set up the Big Eyes and the computer. It took awhile for everything to get ready and we finally started to look for whales and dolphins. A watch lasts for 90 minutes and the observer spends 30 minutes on each Big Eye and 30 minutes on the computer. There are five members on an observing team. At the beginning of the day three team members are assigned to the three positions: port Big Eye, computer, and starboard Big Eye. Every 30 minutes the observers rotate a position to the right, so if you started at the port Big Eye (like I did) then you would rotate to the computer and 30 minutes later rotate to the starboard Big Eye. When you finish with the starboard Big Eye, you rotate out for 60 minutes and then return an hour later at the port Big Eye.

My first watch was shortened because we were setting up, but on the second watch I saw a Risso's dolphin. Right near the end of my watch I saw a whale breach and then the big splash.
Other people saw the splash, so they're pretty sure it was too big to be a tunafish. They think it might have been a sperm whale, so maybe I saw a sperm whale.

It rained a lot today. It seems like all we did was cover and uncover the Big Eyes. From 4:30-5:00 I saw what I thought were dolphins but they turned out to be a small inflatable raft-yellow on one side and black on the other. The black side when it was rolling in the wind, almost four miles away, looked very dolphin-like so I'm calling it a "lifeboat dolphin". The Bigelow had to pick up the lifeboat and check it out to make sure there wasn't a name on it from a ship. It didn't look like a regulation lifeboat, it was more like a child's toy boat. So that's what the picture is: my lifeboat dolphin.

We're on our way.

We finally left Newport at 10 AM. It was a little hazy but we were still able to see the beautiful homes and lighthouses that Newport is famous for.

We had an "abandon ship" drill after we had been out at sea a few hours. We had to carry our survival suits, life jacket, hat, and long sleeved shirt to the aft deck and quickly put the survival suit on. It's called a Gumby suit because it's so bulky and rubbery and after I realized that I should take my sneakers off, I was able to get into it. We had to zipper it all the way up and be checked and then we had to take it off, roll it up and put it back into the carrying bag.

We had just lugged everything back to our room when we had a "fire drill". This time we had to carry everything to our muster area (the conference room) and be checked off again.

After all that excitement, I practiced using the Big Eyes and the computer program that is used to log the sightings. It was too foggy to do distance tests that we had planned to do.

Tomorrow I hope to see some marine mammals.

We haven't left yet.

We will finally be leaving Newport tomorrow. Our departure was delayed because the rescue boat needed repairs.

We spent today getting ready for the trip. We set up the "Big Eyes' which are four very large binoculars. Two are very high up on the boat on the flying bridge which is on top of the bridge, and the other two are one deck lower. We learned how to use the computer program for the plankton tows and how to wash the plankton nets and store the plankton. The lead scientist explained the procedure for observing and recording the observations of the whales and dolphins and we learned the key visual points to watch for.

It's all a bit overwhelming for me. Everyone on the ship has done this before and knows the procedures. I'm sure I'll understand it all better when I actually have to do it, but right now, it seems like a lot to remember! It's very interesting to see all the "real science" in action.

Tomorrow is my last chance to sleep late. Starting on Thursday we'll be collecting plankton before 6 AM and whale/dolphin watching starts at 6 AM and goes to 6 PM.

The Ship Will Be Leaving Soon!

The ship will be leaving Newport, Rhode Island on Tuesday August 4. We’ll be going to the US Exclusive Economic Zone North of 37⁰ N latitude, to the southern portions of Georges Bank, 41⁰N. The study area is between approximately the 100M depth contour and the Gulf Stream.

The primary objective is to prepare for the 60 day June/July 2010 abundance line transect survey. The primary objective is, during daylight hours, train observers on the species identifications of warm water cetaceans and test and trial the following: 1) passive acoustic hydrophone arrays, 2) new data entry computers and programs, 3) new equipment to electronically record the distance between the ship and animal, and 4) data collection procedures for the visual cetacean line transect survey. The secondary objective is, during nighttime hours, to examine the distribution of zooplankton in the survey area.

The cruise will be 15 days long.

I’ll be going on board on Monday, August 3 and hope to be able to update this blog frequently.

Please email me at csilver@winnacunnet.org if you have any questions.

Why the name "Henry B. Bigelow"?

In 2004, NOAA sent out a request to high school science teachers to have their students enter the "Name the Research Boat" contest. New Hampshire senator John Sununu also sent a letter asking New Hampshire teachers to enter the contest. John was my student a few years ago in Salem, NH so I thought I'd give it a try and had my students work on the very difficult group project. To my surprise, several of my students' entries were selected for the "Top Ten" and the group who had selected "Henry B. Bigelow" as a name actually won the contest. Henry B. Bigelow (1879-1967) was a Harvard professor and the first director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. He extensively studied the Gulf of Maine and the area off the New Hampshire coast is now called the Bigelow Bight in his honor.

Welcome!

Welcome!

I've created this blog to chronicle my trip this August on the Research Vessel Henry B. Bigelow. My students at Winnacunnet High School won the "Name the Research Vessel" contest a few years ago and I christened the ship in July, 2005. I'll try to record my daily experiences. I hope you'll enjoy following along with me! If you want to write to me, my email address is csilver@winnacunnet.org.