station unreachable in October 2013

[This post is a copy of an email update from Steven Johnson, and is back-dated to the date of that email on October 31st, 2013.]

Background:  when this email was written the last monthly maintenance visit to the station had taken place on August 2nd, 2013, at which time the PacIOOS CTD and FLNTUS had been removed.  On October 31st Steven writes:

We still have not made a station visit since then because of inclement weather over the past two months. We are finally in some nice weather and are hoping to make it back out to the station in the next two weeks. We have also recently acquired two new biologists at CRM. They will be learning all about the station and station maintenance. I've sent off the FLNTUS to Gordon (hopefully he received it). I will keep everyone posted when we get out there.

station unreachable in September 2013

[This post is a copy of an email update from Steven Johnson, and is back-dated to the date of that email on September 25th, 2013.]

Steven writes:

We haven't been able to make any successful trips to Laolao due to the weather systems that have been in our area. If you remember, Naftan Point is hard to make it around, even on its calmest days. We've had Tropical Disturbances for 2-3 weeks straight. On top of that, we've had some 'emergency' work to respond to during these past two weeks as well: coral bleaching around Saipan and a vessel grounding on Tinian. We're hoping to see some kind of normalcy in the coming week.

Diagnosis of problems with Turbidity/Chlorophyll sensor

[This post includes a slightly edited copy of an email update from David Benavente, and is back-dated to the date of that email on August 20th, 2013.]

Background:  the PacIOOS CTD had been redeployed with the rest of the station electronics on April 30th, 2013, but its turbidity and chlorophyll sensors (part of an integrated SeaBird unit collectively known as a FLNTUS) did not appear to be working properly.  PacIOOS had requested that the Saipan team remove the FLNTUS on their next monthly maintenance visit, but on August 2nd as described in this update they ended up removing the entire CTD/FLNTUS package instead.

A few weeks later David Benavente provided the following update:

I got a hold of a multimeter and checked the continuity of the the FLNTUS cable. and 2 out of the 4 wires have continuity. port 2 and 4 didnt have continuity while port 1 and 3 were fine. So I guess we we could send you the FLNTUS cable and redeploy the CTD. If thats okay.

PacIOOS CTD removed from station

[This post is a copy of an email update from Steven Johnson, and is back-dated to the date of that email on August 7th, 2013.]

Background:  an analysis of the station's data reveals that the PacIOOS CTD was disconnected at about noon on August 2nd, 2013, Chamorro time.  On August 7th, Steven writes:

We retrieved the entire CTD. Conditions were tricky that day with lots of wind and rain so that was a quicker fix for the guys. More detailed report to come shortly.

June Modem Outages, both long and short

As we are finishing up our second month since the Saipan CREWS station was brought back online, some patterns are emerging with the cellular modem outages.  Two patterns in particular.

The first pattern is comprised of shorter-term outages that do not appear to require any manual intervention by PacIOOS or Docomo for resolution.  These include six outages of 1 - 3 hours described in this blog update and an additional 3-h outage mentioned at the end of this blog update.  It also includes the following outages that have not yet been mentioned in these blog updates (with all dates and times expressed in local Saipan time):

• 3 hours, Wed June 5th from 7:30pm to 10:30pm
• 3 hours, Mon June 10th from 5pm to 8pm
• 3 hours, Thurs June 13th from 5am to 8am
• 3 hours, Fri June 14th from 2pm to 5pm

Here there is a longer outage from June 15th - 17th that will be described below, but the intermittent outages continue with the following:

• 1.5 hours, Thurs June 20th from 2am to 3:30am
• 3 hours, Fri June 21st from 4am to 7am
• 3 hours, Sat June 22nd from 1am to 4am

And again this pattern is broken by a longer outage, from midnight on the 22nd/23rd until the present.

The two longer outages mentioned above both began at about midnight on a Saturday/Sunday.  The first began Sat/Sun June 15th/16th and lasted until Docomo could be contacted for another purge at noon on Tuesday the 18th.  The second outage began at midnight Sat/Jun June 22nd/23rd and as of the writing of this update the station remains offline (it is now about 6am on Thursday morning, June 27th, in Saipan).

It would also be possible to pick out a third pattern from the above accounts, that of certain period of perfect or near-perfect communications.  There was one such period from May 25th to May 30th and another from June 5th to June 10th.

The status at present is that Docomo has not yet been contacted by phone concerning the present outage, since Gordon has been busy with fieldwork.  My latest information suggests that Docomo may be contacted later today (Thursday morning in Saipan) to request another purge, so hopefully communications will resume shortly.

Mike J+

Troubleshooting the PacIOOS Turbidity Sensor

The SeaBird CTD contributed to the Saipan CREWS station operations by PacIOOS has two add-on sensors for measuring chlorophyll and turbidity.  Since deployment on April 30th, the turbidity readings have been zero.  Gordon Walker of PacIOOS/Hawai`i has been making plans with Steven Johnson of DEQ/Saipan to troubleshoot and fix this problem.

On June 13th, Gordon sent the following email to Steven with and attached photo:

I hope things are going well for you, David and the other folks at DEQ. Mike J mentioned that you will be heading out to the station this week for a monthly maintenance visit. The turbidity reading on the PacIOOS sensor is effectively 0.0000. Can you take a picture of the bulkhead connectors on the PacIOOS sensor (see attached)? Based on how the sensor is oriented, the bulkhead is currently on the "bottom", facing the ocean floor. It has the metal U guard protecting it. The picture should show each connector on the bulkhead as clearly as possible. Thanks.

Click on this photo to see a larger version.

In a followup message that same day Gordon explained that the FLNTUS may be connected to the wrong bulkhead connector (which would be obvious in the kind of photo requested above).  Later Gordon decided that a better diagnosis could be had by removing the PacIOOS CTD from the station and testing its cable:

It looks like the PacIOOS sensor will have to be retrieved on your trip to the station next week. We need to do a continuity check with a multimeter of the cable that connects the FLNTUS to the CTD, and test the bulkhead connector pins with a streaming external voltage check via the CTD. Can we set up a time for us to Skype once you have retrieved the sensor, installed the dummy plug and brought the sensor back to DEQ? Thanks.

Unfortunately these messages weren't received by DEQ in enough time before their June 19th visit to the station for them to follow through on the plans described.  However, plans are being made for further troubleshooting of the PacIOOS turbidity sensor during the monthly July maintenance visit.

[This update posted by Mike Jankulak.]

June CREWS Station Cleaning

The following update was provided by Steven Johnson, DEQ/Saipan, by email on June 22nd.  It describes a monthly CREWS maintenance visit that took place on Wednesday, June 19th, 2013.  The data record shows that the "groundtruth" CT was connected to the station shortly after 10am local time and removed at about 3:30pm local time, for a total connection time of about 5h18m.  Steven writes:

This past Wednesday DEQ was able to get the boat around Naftan Point and into Laolao Bay for our delayed station cleaning. The team that headed out to the pylon for the cleaning included myself, John Iguel, Ryan Okano and Jose Quan. We were also fortunate to have John Tomczuk from NOAA SEA Team join us. He was on Saipan assisting with the Jurisdictional Capacity Assessment being conducted by NOAA-CRCP and we decided to take him out with us. Tom was instrumental in supporting the CNMI and AOMLs decision in getting us the CREWS station. The least we could do was take him on some dives.

Most everything got accomplished at the station, save for the PacIOOS tasks (more on that later). We successfully attached the groundtruth CT to the station for a hour prior to the cleaning. During that time we completed one of MMTs long-term monitoring sites in the bay. Highlights from that dive included a handful of octopuses on the transect line!

When we returned to the station for the cleaning we took photos before and after and all instruments/cables seem to be in good shape. The chains of the station are starting to get a fair amount of Pocillopora sp. corals growing on it. Once they get bigger I'll be able to ID them for everyone ;) After cleaning the station we left the groundtruth sensor on for another hour before removing it and heading back to the dock.

Work on the PacIOOS sensors wasn't able to be completed because 1) I didn't see Gordon's email until the morning we went out (backed up email inbox from all of my May traveling) and 2) we could not find a multimeter to use to check the voltage of the sensor. This will be a high priority task for MMT during the first week of July. Gordon, please contact me if there are any updates or changes to what you'd like us to do.

[This update posted by Mike Jankulak.]

Modem Outage, May 31st - June 5th

This time the station went offline on Friday, May 31st at 9pm ChST, or local Saipan time.

I sent the following email to Gordon on June 3rd:

I wonder if you might be able to ask Docomo for another 'purge' like they did before?

The modem went offline on Friday the 31st at about 1100 UTC (700 Miami, 2100 Saipan, 100 Honolulu). It's starting to seem like it's most likely to go offline on Saipan-local Friday evening, which is of course the worst timing since the earliest you and Docomo are both in the office next is Saipan-local Tuesday morning (your Monday afternoon). I guess if this pattern holds then Docomo might find it useful in one day tracking down a root cause.

Gordon sent the following (edited) reply about 3 hours later:

I just got off the phone with [someone] from Docomo. He said that sometimes when the firmware is updated the settings (provisional) for the device get altered. He asked that I send him information on the device and the firmware version the device was upgraded to. In the meantime they will try to push the data through to get the system up and running again. Also, they will track the device and see if they can figure out what's going on.

This was at about 10am Saipan time on Tuesday, June 4th.  In fact this action by Docomo only brought the modem back online again for about 15 minutes, long enough for the station to catch us up on its one-hour and 6-minute data tables but not long enough to completely download the rest of its data.

I notified Gordon of this and he again contacted Docomo for another purge, which brought the station back online again on Wednesday, June 5th at 10am Saipan time.

There was another 3-h outage later that same day (from 7:30pm to 10:30pm Saipan time, Wednesday the 5th) but as far as I'm aware this outage did not require any intervention from Docomo to bring the station back online again.

In the days after this longer outage, Gordon shared the following explanation from a Docomo account executive:

I’ve been in contact with our engineering department to troubleshoot this issue. We’ve purged the service, hoping to force the device to reconnect again. Let me know if you were able to connect to the device again.

As for what may be causing this to disconnect. We suspect that high voice traffic in this area is what disconnects the device from the network. And our network prioritizes voice calls over data use. You mentioned that you noticed the device would disconnect on Fridays. This may be when the golf course nearby gets busy, and voice usage may increase. We will be adding another channel to our site that covers this area, with hopes that this would prevent the device from disconnecting. We plan to have this in place by next week Monday, our time. Which would be Sunday in Hawaii.

I apologize for the inconvenience. I’ll keep in touch with you while we work to resolve this. And let me know if anything else.

This Docomo update was dated Thursday, June 6th at 5:41pm.

Mike J+

Battery Update, June 4th

This was another limited-distribution email update about battery levels at the Saipan station.  Two and a half weeks previously we had made the call that we should buy replacement batteries for the station, since we were in a time when such purchases could easily be authorized and future prospects for these batteries were rather uncertain.

However, the wheels of purchasing move slowly and during this time the battery levels continued to strengthen until achieving levels that are entirely normal for a CREWS station running at full strength:

Click this graph to see a larger version.

Based on this new evidence we are postponing our purchase of replacement batteries, indefinitely.  These batteries appear to have survived everything we've thrown at them and are still going strong.

Mike J+

Intermittent Modem Outages, May 22nd - 31st

This update covers a nine-day period during which the cellular modem was largely online and functioning correctly.  But during this time there were repeated, brief outages.  These outages might be occurring in a pattern that could be repeated in the future, or might be illuminating to Docomo at some point down the line.

The dates and times described here are all in ChST, local Saipan time.  Times may be rounded to the nearest hour.  These, then, were the outages during this time:

• 3 hours, Wed May 22nd at 10pm until Thu May 23nd at 1am
• 1.5 hours, Thu May 23rd from 11:30am to 1pm
• 3 hours, Fri May 24th from 2am to 5am
• 3 hours, Sat May 25th from 2am to 5am
• 2 hours, Sun May 26th from 10am to noon
• 3 hours, Fri May 31st from midnight to 3am

Following this last outage the modem went offline for another prolonged period of time and required another "purge" from Docomo before coming back online (to be described in a future blog update).

Mike J+

Battery Update, May 22nd

The graph was created on May 22nd, when we regained contact with the station after a week-long modem outage and could have another look at its battery levels.  My own emailed update from this date reads as follows:

I'm attaching a graph of battery voltages since go-live April 30th. Right when I'd given up on these batteries ever climbing above 12V, they seem to be improving. So we remain uncertain what the long-term prospects for these batteries are. I would say there is certainly no immediate danger of out-and-out battery failure, though.

Click this graph to see a larger version.

[This update posted by Mike Jankulak.]

Modem Outage, May 15th - 22nd

This modem outage began at about 10am Saipan time, Wednesday morning, May 15th, 2013.  This was only about 16 hours after coming back online after the last outage, which had lasted about 4 days.

The outage lasted a week, with communications resuming on Wednesday, May 22nd at about 10am Saipan time.

After communications resumed, I received the following (somewhat edited) update from Gordon Walker, who is our PacIOOS contact and manages the Docomo account that provides cellular service to this station in Saipan:

I was able to speak with [a Docomo representative] from the Guam office. Calls to Docomo, Saipan that are not answered by a certain number of rings are routed to Guam. [He] was able to get their tech folks to "purge" the line. They asked if we could do a hard reset. After explaining our situation a few times, he finally understood that getting to the modem in Lao Lao bay is a difficult task.

So it seems in this case that Docomo was prodded into action that directly resulted in the resumption of communications with the station.  This is potentially bad news for Gordon and Docomo, since it means they must be alert to future outages and take manual correction action, but good news for the station and the DEQ/CRM folks, since it means that communications can sometimes be restored without the need for going out to the station and climbing it to power-cycle the modem.

Mike J+

Modem Outage, May 10th - 14th

The station went offline at about 19:20 ChST on May 10th, 2013 (local time, Friday evening, in Saipan).  It was noted by Mike J+ in Miami during Miami's Friday afternoon, i.e. after about 8 hours offline.  Word was sent to Gordon and Joe in Honolulu but Gordon was on travel and not available for immediate followup with Docomo.

Communications resumed at about 2pm Saipan time on Tuesday afternoon, May 14th, 2013.  So it was offline for just a few hours shy of 4 days.  As far as we know, there was no contact with Docomo in this case that brought the station back online, it just spontaneously came back online.

Note that with the benefit of hindsight (I am retro-posting these blog updates so we have them for the record) we know that the station only stayed online for about 16 hours and then went offline again.

Mike J+

Station Update -- Modem, Batteries

[From an email sent by Mike Jankulak on May 6th]

The CREWS station at Lao Lao Bay has been online for about seven days now, so I thought I'd send a brief update on these two issues.

Regarding the modem -- I am not aware of any further modem failures since the last observed outage on Wednesday the 1st. Note that brief outages may in fact go unnoticed, since our systems automatically "catch up" our data files with all new data since the last successful connection. Extended outages (on the order of one day or more) however, would trigger alerts that would be logged, and that has not happened in the last five days.

Regarding the batteries -- please see attached graph (below) of min/max/avg station voltages per 6-minute period, plotted against day-of-year. The first night's power outage has not been repeated since, and the good news is that the station's nightly lowest-power levels have steadily increased over the past week. This is promising sign, and I believe the station could continue to operate indefinitely at these power levels.

It is true that these are not "normal" power levels for a CREWS station. Ideally I would like to see power levels range diurnally from about 12.5V to 14.5V, as (for example) we observed for this station from March to May, 2012. Right now the power levels range from about 11V to 12V. However, a look back at the station's early days in August and September of 2011 reveals a similar pattern of initial-deployment battery levels, where during its first week of life it rarely exceeded 12.5V, and in fact required a bit more than three weeks before assuming a normal 12.5V - 14.5V diurnal pattern.

So I would remain cautiously optimistic about the performance of both the modem and the batteries. Certainly there is no cause at present for immediate intervention, and I would recommend that we continue our watch-and-watch approach for at least another two weeks before making any decisions about modem troubleshooting or battery replacement.

Click this image for a larger version of the graph.

Mike J+

CREWS and MApCO2 Operations in Saipan

[Please note that clicking on any of the photos in this post will load a full-sized version of same.]

At the end of April a great inter-agency collaboration took place in Saipan, in the Pacific U.S. territory of CNMI (the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands), not far from Guam.  CNMI's Division of Environmental Quality (DEQ) hosted visitors from PacIOOS (Pacific Islands Ocean Observing System), who were also affiliated with the University of Hawai`i, and Miami's AOML (Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory), who were also affiliated with the University of Miami.

There were two separate projects being addressed:  the Coral Reef Early Warning System (CREWS) station was being brought back online, and site surveys were being conducted for a potential deployment of a MApCO2 (Moored Autonomous pCO2) buoy.  Both of these programs are sponsored in whole or in part by NOAA's Coral Reef Conservation Program (CRCP).

The CREWS station was originally installed in August of 2011, but has suffered from intermittent communications outages and power failures, and its equipment was removed in September of 2012 for inspection, diagnosis and repair.  A failed plug for one of the underwater instruments was identified as the cause of the power failures, and plans were made to reinstall the station with entirely new equipment.  CREWS stations, which are also found in St. Croix, Puerto Rico and Belize, are a key component of the Integrated Coral Observing Program (ICON) which is run by AOML's Coral Health and Monitoring Program (CHAMP) team.

On the MApCO2 side, CRCP is in the process of implementing their National Coral Reef Monitoring Plan (NCRMP).  NCRMP calls for sustained monitoring of biological, climate, and socio-economic metrics at all US coral reefs.  The end goal is that every four years, based on NCRMP data collection, the Coral Reef Conservation Program will provide a report card to congress on the state of US coral reefs.  The NCRMP climate monitoring plan calls for establishment of three sentinel (or class III) sites in the Atlantic and Pacific basins where high-resolution monitoring of climate change variables (mainly temperature and CO2) will be made.  Based on the successful installation of the ICON/CREWS pylon in 2011 and the ongoing relationship between DEQ, AOML and others, Saipan was identified as a potential candidate for establishment of one of these sentinel climate monitoring sites.

Work proceeded in tandem on both projects over a period of about two weeks.  First, the entire team visited Lao Lao Bay for the recovery of all remaining equipment left over from the initial deployment, including the station batteries.  All CREWS work during these operations was carried out exclusively by CNMI personnel from DEQ and also Coastal Resources Management (CRM), with guidance as needed from AOML/CREWS people.  This is a first for CREWS, and sets up the Saipan station as the most completely autonomous operation in the program.  The CNMI staff are now capable of conducting their own operations on the CREWS station, down to the installation and recovery of every type of equipment, without the need for assistance by Miami personnel (and the associated travel costs).

CRM's David Benavente spent four long hours atop the Saipan CREWS station during reinstallation operations on April 30th, 2013.

DEQ's Steven Johnson finished up the reinstallation work (seen here getting some assistance from PacIOOS' Joe Gilmore) after having, a few days earlier, removed all equipment left over from the station's original deployment.

While the CREWS people were aloft on the station, the first of several MApCO2 site surveys was taking place in Lao Lao Bay.  In the following days, while the CREWS were being configured and tested on land, MApCO2 site surveys continued at such sites as Boy Scout Reef, Managaha Bay, and Sugar Dock.

AOML's Derek Manzello took photos at Lao Lao Bay while CREWS work was underway.

AOML's Ian Enochs at Lao Lao Bay.

One of the photos taken at Lao Lao Bay by Derek Manzello.

At the start of the second week the team from PacIOOS/UH arrived from Honolulu.  PacIOOS provides a Conductivity-Temperature-Depth (CTD) instrument outfitted with Chlorophyll and Turbidity add-on sensors, and they also provide the digital cellular modem (both the device and the service plan) used for station communications.  At this point the final system tests between CREWS equipment, modem and PacIOOS CTD were conducted on land.

The last step of the process was reinstallation of the CREWS station, which required many long hours atop the station by CRM and DEQ personnel, while AOML and PacIOOS divers deployed the underwater sensors and secured their cables.  Station operations were verified via a radio-connected laptop on the boat before tying everything down and leaving the site.

AOML's Mike Jankulak and PacIOOS' Gordon Walker are seen here installing the CREWS station's "deep" CTD.

Results on the CREWS side were mostly favorable.  All instruments are connected and working normally for the first time since October of 2011, with the inclusion for the first time of a backup Conductivity-Temperature (CT) instrument next to the shallow CTD.  There remains some question about the status of the station's rechargeable batteries, which were drained by a short-circuit and left uncharged on site for seven months.  But battery levels, while not optimal, have proved strong enough to keep the station running nonstop since the first day after redeployment.  A separate question remains about the quality of cellular service at the site and the need for frequent intervention by the service provider to resolve communications outages.  These are being addressed by the PacIOOS team.

The MApCO2 team had come to Saipan hoping to find that the optimal buoy site would be close to the CREWS station in Lao Lao Bay.  Somewhat to their surprise, however, Sugar Dock has emerged as potentially the most favorable buoy deployment site.  This site is most accessible year-round and is relatively free of any issues that may interfere with Ocean Acidification (OA) monitoring such as groundwater, runoff, or sedimentation.  No final decision has yet been made about MApCO2 buoy placement and deployment work is still at least a year away, but the team leaves Saipan having met face-to-face with many of the key CNMI people and having learned a great deal about the data collection efforts that have been ongoing at these sites for many years.

Underwater sights at Obyan Beach, another site visited in Saipan.

Another photo taken at Obyan Beach in Saipan.

The AOML team, consisting of Derek Manzello, Ian Enochs and Mike Jankulak, wishes to thank all of their collaborators in these two projects, including DEQ's Fran Castro, Steven Johnson, Ryan Okano and John Iguel, and CRM's David Benavente (who made a special trip from Guam), as well as PacIOOS' Gordon Walker and Joe Gilmore, who traveled from Honolulu.

The "deep" sensors on the CREWS station:  the CTD in front, and the light sensor on its extended platform behind.

The "shallow" sensors on the CREWS station:  the PacIOOS CTD (with add-on chlorophyll and turbidity sensors) on the right, and an additional CT on the left.

A view of the completed Saipan CREWS station in Lao Lao Bay.

[Update written by Mike Jankulak.  Photos by Derek Manzello, Joe Gilmore, Gordon Walker and Mike Jankulak.]

CREWS and MApCO2 operations: timing and logistics

I have packed up my field equipment and instruments and shipped it (with Mike Shoemaker's help) to Saipan.  The shipment was collected from AOML on April 4th and delivered to DEQ on April 9th.

I have also submitted two dive plans to our UM DSO.  The first covers diving operations to involve only Miami folks, the second is a joint operation between the Universities of Miami and Hawai`i.  Initially we were going to involve Saipan divers as well but we could not easily determine how to arrange for reciprocity among our three institutions.

As hoped, David Benavente (CRM) will be coming back to Saipan for at least part (and perhaps all) of the period we will be working on the station.  Also, Gordon Walker and Joe Gilmore (PacIOOS) will be traveling from Honolulu to take part in the aforementioned UM/UH diving operations.  They will be carrying the PacIOOS CTD with them so that it can be deployed again with the rest of the CREWS equipment.  Gordon and Joe will be arriving Sunday night, April 28th and leaving Thursday morning, May 2nd.

Ryan Okano and John Iguel of DEQ have also been providing much-needed information for planning our diving and boating operations.

We are all ready to go!

Mike J+

the MApCO2 side of our upcoming operations

AOML currently has multiple research interests related to Saipan, CREWS and MApCO2.  Derek Manzello has provided this background about why he and Ian Enochs will be coming to Saipan to meet with people and conduct site surveys for a possible MApCO2 buoy deployment:

NOAA's Coral Reef Conservation Program is currently in the process of implementing their National Coral Reef Monitoring Plan (NCRMP). NCRMP calls for sustained monitoring of biological, climate, and socio-economic metrics at all US coral reefs. The end goal is that every four years, based on NCRMP data collection, the Coral Reef Conservation Program will provide a report card to congress on the state of US coral reefs. This report card will replace the previous 'State of the US coral reefs' report some of you may be aware of.

At AOML, we developed and are leading the in situ climate monitoring portion of NCRMP. The NCRMP climate monitoring plan calls for establishment of three sentinel (or class III) sites in the Atlantic and Pacific basins where high-resolution monitoring of climate change variables (mainly temperature and CO2) will be made. Based on the successful installation of the ICON/CREWS pylon in 2011 and our ongoing relationship with local partners, Saipan has been identified as a potential candidate for establishment of one of these sentinel climate monitoring sites.

If Saipan is chosen as one of the three sentinel climate monitoring sites in the Pacific, this would result in the collection of valuable data on the risk and impacts that Saipan's coral reefs face, or are experiencing, from climate change and ocean acidification. One of the ways this information is collected, is the installation of a MApCO2 buoy (see the following website for data from one of the sentinel sites recently established in the Florida Keys: http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/Cheeca+Rocks).

Thus, for our trip at the end of April, myself and another colleague, Ian Enochs, would like to do a site survey in Lao Lao Bay to 1) determine if this is a suitable site for deployment of a MApCO2 buoy and 2) identify a location where the buoy could be deployed. After completion of this site survey, we would like to complete a CaCO3 budget survey -- this would involve transect monitoring at six sites within Lao Lao Bay where we would make measurements of corals and bioeroders to estimate current rates of CaCO3 production and loss (methodology from Perry et al. 2012).

In total, this work would require approximately 3-4 days of SCUBA in Lao Lao, assuming 3 tanks per day. We likely could complete our work quicker, but want to be conservative in the estimation of our possible needs.

[posted by Mike J+]

revival plan: April 24th - May 1st

Agreement has been reached on the dates for bringing the CREWS station at Lao Lao Bay back online.

Derek Manzello, Ian Enochs and myself (all of AOML and the University of Miami) will leave Miami on Monday, April 22nd and return May 2nd (Manzello, Enochs) and 3rd (Jank+).  This should give us five full days of field time together with Steven Johnson of DEQ/Saipan.

We may also have visits from David Benavente (CRM/Saipan, currently at school on Guam) and possibly one or more people from PacIOOS at the University of Hawai`i.

Mike J+

PacIOOS CTD returns to Hawai`i

The situation:  a decision has been made that I will travel to Saipan to work with Steven Johnson and David Benavente on the reinstallation of the CREWS station in Lao Lao Bay.  Meanwhile, Derek Manzello and Ian Enochs (both of AOML and the University of Miami) have an interest in Lao Lao or other sites in Saipan for a potential deployment of a MApCO2 (Moored Autonomous pCO2) buoy, and wish to conduct some site surveys in the area.  A plan is coming together for the three of us to travel to Saipan, possibly in April.

Meanwhile we would like to redeploy with a functional PacIOOS CTD.  With Gordon Walker's (PacIOOS, University of Hawai`i) assistance and his FedEx account, I have shipped the PacIOOS CTD back to Honolulu.  It was collected from AOML on January 24th and delivered to UH on January 25th.

Gordon will be sending the CTD back to SeaBird for evaluation and repair, in order to have it returned and ready for deployment in April.

Mike J+

decision: Jank+will travel from Miami

Jim Hendee (AOML/Miami) and Fran Castro (DEQ/Saipan) have jointly decided that it would be best if I (Mike Jankulak) travel to Saipan to work in person with David Benavente (CRM) and Steven Johnson (DEQ), among others.

A message to this effect from Fran says, in part:

Situations have changed with some of the guys but we want to continue to maintain the station. I discussed with my staff and they are very interested in getting time for training so it would be ideal if Mike can come out. I have cc'd Steven Johnson who you can work with regarding Mike's visit, so just contact him in the future and keep me in the loop. Spring to summer might be the best time.

status update on Miami testing ops

I am finishing up my in-depth test of the Saipan brain. One thing I've learned is that the serial ports (SIO4s) apparently got corrupted during one of the power outages. The SIO4s can store strings for me, containing commands to send to the instruments. I used to use those strings a lot more but after we migrated to the CR1000 loggers I started coding them into the logger program itself, which makes things more dynamic and easier to update. However, the BICs and the GroundTruth CT still used some SIO4 strings. I think this might help explain some other phenomena I've seen in the past during power failures, like at Jamaica in 2008 when all of the BICs went silent after an extended power failure (this has been otherwise inexplicable because the Jamaica DBJM1 CREWS station was lost before we could examine the equipment after the power outage).

Anyhow I'm trying to toughen up the logger program a bit by eliminating the last of those SIO4 strings and consolidating its filter strings. This enhancement will be rolled out to Puerto Rico in a few weeks, to Saipan when we reinstall, and perhaps to St. Croix next April/May. This is why I have two test brains running now, one on the roof (since Jan 4th) and one on my workbench.

I put the Saipan brain up on the roof for a few days (January 10th - 15th) to verify that its connections to the batteries and solar panels are okay, and to test the analog met sensors/wiring.

My assumption is that we will be shipping everything but the PacIOOS CTD to Saipan, shortly.  At that point either I can work with Steven and David remotely, or if we all decide it is best, I can visit Saipan some time in April/May to walk them through any still-unfamiliar procedure step-by-step in person.

Mike J+

update on PacIOOS CTD data corruption

At the suggestion of SeaBird (via Gordon Walker), I manually reset the CTD's "sample number" to something reasonable and tried downloading its stored data again.  This does not appear to have produced any more data than previous attempts.

So in terms of direct downloads from the CTD, we have data from August 23rd to September 6th, 2011.  We are missing data from that point until the following year, September 27th, 2012.

In terms of data reported to the station, we have the initial period through October 4th, and a set dating from March 19th to July 19th, 2012.

Mike J+