Saipan CREWS Station destroyed during close pass of Typhoon Vongfong

In a report dated Thursday, October 9th at local Saipan time 10:31am, Lead Biologist Lyza Johnston of the Bureau of Environmental and Coastal Quality (BECQ) in Saipan, CNMI, states:

Unfortunately typhoon Vongfong took a major toll on the LaoLao Bay ICON station.  The top of the pole snapped off in the storm and the modem and any other instruments that were on the pole are no longer there.  Dave and John went to the site yesterday and snorkeled around to scope out the damage;  they reported that they could see some debris on the sea floor but didn't see any of the instrumentation.  I've attached a few pictures.

I am not familiar with everything that was on the pole, but if there is anything that could possibly be salvaged if found, we will make an effort to get out there on SCUBA sooner rather than later to search.  That being said, Vongfong has gotten huge to our west and will be sending some pretty big west swell our way over the next couple of days and it might be difficult to get the boat around.

We will also probably have to make plans to remove the remaining structure at some point.  Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

Some background on the storm:  Typhoon Vongfong is the 17th storm of the 2014 West Pacific typhoon season.  JTWC warnings were first issued on October 2nd at 12Z about a system estimated at 20 knots of intensity, located just over 1000 nm ESE of Saipan.  Later the system became a tropical storm and was given the name Vongfong.  At 12Z on October 4th (then roughly 485 nm from Saipan) it was estimated to have gained Category-1 intensity, and roughly 35 hours before its closest pass to the islands it was estimated to have gained Category-2 intensity.  At its closest the center passed within 50 nm of the site of the CREWS station at Lao Lao Bay when the typhoon was estimated to have had an intensity of 90 knots (Category 2), with 956 mb central pressure.  This was at 18Z on October 5th.

Image from www.nrlmry.navy.mil

After passing the islands the storm briefly lost intensity, dropping to Category 1 for a single JTWC warning at 00Z on October 6th, but it reintensified rapidly as it moved further away and at 18Z on October 7th it was estimated to be at Category-5 intensity (a super typhoon).  Typhoon Vongfong is said to have been the most intense tropical cyclone of 2014 thus far, beating out Hurricane Genevieve in the East Pacific.

Reports say that CNMI residents on Rota, Tinian and Saipan prepared in advance for the storm's arrival, with more than 200 individuals seeking shelter in Public School System-designated emergency shelters.  The three islands suffered some damage to structures and intermittent power outages but they appear to have escaped anything worse, and the Governor has declared the all-clear, lifting the state of emergency that had been declared before the storm.

As of 1:43pm local Saipan time on October 9th, the latest report from Steven Johnson states:

All of the AOML instruments were still attached to the top of the station. Looks like the light sensor at depth is still attached to what's left of the pylon.

Judging by these reports and photos, the top of the station was completely severed and is nowhere to be found in the vicinity of the station.  By CREWS design, the lower portion of the station is weighted down with lead and the top kept intentionally buoyant with structure-reinforcing polyurethane foam.  This suggests that the top half if separated from the station would be completely buoyant and could therefore be carried a significant distance on the surface by waves and current.  There is no reason to hope that the top of the station might be recovered, and even if it were, most of the electronics would almost certainly be unsalvageable.  However, it is true that when a similar structure was destroyed in Little Cayman due to the effects of Hurricane Sandy, the station's data reserves were successfully read off a CF Memory Card that had spent more than a day in seawater.  So there is a very small chance that some of the data collected by the station from August 1st to early October might still be found.

We at AOML in Miami send our best wishes to the people of CNMI in hopes of a quick recovery from effects of the typhoon.

(signed) Mike Jankulak

Station is offline until further notice

The LLBP7 station as seen in 2013.

The CREWS station located in Lao Lao Bay in Saipan, in the US Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, will be offline until further notice.  The station's communications depended on a cellular service account operated and paid for by PacIOOS, and when PacIOOS decided to terminate its participation in this project in March of 2014 no other entity could be identified to assume responsibility for the account.  Accordingly PacIOOS closed the account on July 31st, 2014 and data reports from the station ceased at that time.

This CREWS station first became fully operational on August 27th, 2011, but lost power due to a short-circuit in the station's control package on October 4th, 2011.  The station was subsequently reinstalled on March 19th, 2012 but again lost power on August 24th, 2012, this time as a result of seawater leaking into the PacIOOS CTD connector.  It was reinstalled one final time on April 30th, 2013 and remained fully operational until communications were cut off on July 31st, 2014, except for the PacIOOS CTD, which was removed from the station in August of 2013 and could not be reinstalled due to the lack of monthly visits between August 2, 2013 and April 1, 2014.

At the last data call this station was still operating normally, apart from the missing PacIOOS CTD.  However, its data cannot be accessed except by manual means, either by connecting to the logger by radio from a laptop in the station's near vicinity, or by physically removing the logger and extracting the flash memory card from it.  Given that the station is now operating "in the dark" as it were, it is possible that it may be experiencing instrument failures or even power failures so we cannot currently be certain that it is operating at all.

This station has been in place for only three years, which suggests that it still has the potential for many more years of productive lifetime, given that a CREWS station's expected lifetime is estimated by some to be approximately five years, and that stations in the US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico have operated for much longer than five years.

Any new information on this station's possible revival will be posted on this blog as it becomes available.

PacIOOS closes its cellular account for this station

[This post is back-dated to July 31st, 2014, which is the date that the station communications came to an end.]

Citing the relatively little amounts of data produced by its participation in the Lao Lao Bay CREWS station project, PacIOOS decided in March that they would withdraw from this collaboration with CHAMP (based out of AOML in Miami) and BECQ (the CNMI governmental agency created out of a merger between former agencies DEQ and CRM).  This scarcity of data was the result of two extended station power outages (one from October 2011 to March 2012 caused by a blown fuse in the station's control package, and one from August 2012 to April 2013 caused by a damaged plug on the PacIOOS CTD) and the eight-month delay in reinstalling the PacIOOS CTD after its removal in August of 2013.  Note that the station has remained online and fully functional, apart from the missing PacIOOS CTD, in the period from April 2013 through to the present, July 2014.

On June 30th, 2014, PacIOOS notified CHAMP in Miami that they were planning to close the cellular account associated with this station's modem.  CHAMP and BECQ began talking about the future of the station, whether it could in fact be maintained as needed (given that in the prior year only three of the expected twelve monthly visits could be performed by BECQ), and who would assume responsibility for the cellular account costs formerly covered by PacIOOS, as well as the costs of purchasing new sensors and recalibrating old sensors on the occasion of the station's next annual equipment swapout (which came due in May 2014).

However, these discussions have yet to produce a clear plan for the station's future, and PacIOOS was facing a hard deadline for eliminating the monthly costs of the station's cellular account.  Without any one player identified as able and willing to accept transfer of PacIOOS' cellular account (which was the one option that might have kept the station's communications uninterrupted), PacIOOS were forced to simply close the account as of July 31st, 2014.

The last data update from this station was received at 2014-07-31 11:31:05 UTC.  The station is expected to continue normal operations but its data cannot be accessed except by manual means, either by connecting to the logger by radio from a laptop in the station's near vicinity, or by physically removing the logger and extracting the flash memory card from it.  Given that the station is now operating "in the dark" as it were, it is possible that it may be experiencing instrument failures or even power failures so we cannot currently be certain that it is operating at all.

station cleaned April 1, 2014

[This post is a copy of an email update from Steven Johnson, and is back-dated to the date of that email on April 2nd, 2014.]

Background:  monthly maintenance visits had not been possible in the period between August 2nd, 2013 and April 1st, 2014, for reasons mentioned in updates sent in September, October, January, and March.  The PacIOOS CTD had been removed from the station during the August visit, and towards the end of its eight-month absence PacIOOS announced its decision to withdraw from this project.  A few weeks later a maintenance visit was once again possible, although in accordance with PacIOOS' wishes its CTD was not reinstalled, as explained in Steven's April 2nd update:

Yesterday, monitoring personnel were able to go out to the ICON Station at Laolao Bay and conduct a cleaning. It had been quite some time since we were able to get out there due to a long stretch of bad weather. Biofouling on the station was noteworthy. Pocillopora sp. colonies have started to setle out fairly well on the support chains, while algae and some barnacles covered most of the stick. We were able to get the fouling off of the sensors.

At PacIOOS request, we did not redeploy the sensor and we're still waiting to hear back from them.

Ryan was able to take some photos yesterday and he will be sending those out to everyone.

PacIOOS withdraws from Saipan CREWS collaboration

[This post is back-dated to March 22nd, 2014, which is the date that CHAMP received word from PacIOOS that they would no longer be part of the Saipan/CHAMP/PacIOOS collaboration that was behind the deployment of the LLBP7 CREWS station at Lao Lao Bay, Saipan, CNMI.]

The CREWS station known as LLBP7, located in Lao Lao Bay in Saipan, was originally conceived as a collaboration between CHAMP in Miami, FL (the people who installed similar stations in the Bahamas, the US Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Jamaica and the Cayman Islands), Saipan's CRM and DEQ (which were later merged to form a new CNMI governmental agency known as BECQ), and PacIOOS (a program based out of Hawai`i that among other things installs CTDs at sites of interest throughout Hawai`i and the Pacific Ocean).

The station first became fully operational on August 27th, 2011, but lost power due to a short-circuit in the station's control package on October 4th, 2011.  The PacIOOS CTD continued to log data locally following the station's loss of power, though.  The station was subsequently reinstalled on March 19th, 2012 but again lost power on August 24th, this time as a result of seawater leaking into the PacIOOS CTD connector.

The station was reinstalled one more time on April 30th, 2013.  At this point, all systems were working properly except the chlorophyll/turbidity sensors, which were part of an add-on package known as the FLNTUS, piggybacked off of the PacIOOS CTD.  PacIOOS recommended that a continuity test be performed on the FLNTUS cable or, if that was unfeasible to do in the field, that the FLNTUS and its cable be removed and returned to land, and that its connector be dummy-plugged on the CTD so that the CTD could remain deployed and operational while further tests were performed on the FLNTUS.  Unfortunately, the entire CTD was removed on August 2nd, 2013, and could not be redeployed as expected in September or October or even by the following January or March.

These station power outages and this prolonged CTD absence left the PacIOOS program with very little in the way of results to show for its efforts with the CREWS station, and as of March 22nd, 2014, the decision has reluctantly been made for PacIOOS to withdraw from this project.  They have requested that the PacIOOS CTD not be reinstalled on the station and instead be returned to Honolulu at the earliest opportunity.

Another implication of this decision is for the station's communications.  PacIOOS supplied not only the CTD but also the digital cellular modem by which data are accessed in near-real time by the CHAMP servers in Miami, FL.  PacIOOS additionally covers the monthly costs of the Docomo cellular service for the modem.  It is expected that PacIOOS will at some point wish to terminate their cellular account and recover their modem hardware, so in order for communications to continue long-term someone else must assume the cost of the modem hardware and monthly cellular service.

station still unreachable

[This post is a copy of an email update from Steven Johnson, and is back-dated to the date of that email on March 13th, 2014.]

Background: the last monthly maintenance visit had taken place on August 2nd, 2013, at which time the PacIOOS CTD had been removed.  Expected reinstallation of the CTD in the following month could not take place in September or October and for various reasons was still not possible by the end of January, 2014.  Steven provided the following update on March 13th:

I'm back on Saipan and we're stuck in some bad weather again. While I was gone there was a typhoon that passed by our area and we're still dealing with some of that mess (http://www.prh.noaa.gov/data/GUM/CFWMY). Once things simmer down and we're able to get out to Laolao we will deploy the PacIOOS sensor and do a thorough cleaning.

Also, I've been remiss for not mentioning to the broader team that MMT has recently added two new biologists to our program. We've added Lyza Johnston and Denise Perez to the team and they've been getting the full MMT treatment and have been great additions to the team.

Hopefully next week brings back some better weather.

station visits not possible for going on six months

[This post is an excerpt of an email update from Steven Johnson, and is back-dated to the date of that email on January 24th, 2014.]

Background:  the last email contact from the Saipan team had been received by AOML in October of 2013, so in January we requested a status update.  The PacIOOS CTD had been removed from the station on August 2nd, 2013 and could not be reinstalled as initially expected a month later, as the station was reported to be unreachable during the months of September and October.  This was Steven's January 24th update in reply to AOML's query:

We have not been able to our routine station maintenance for some time due to a number of factors (bad weather when the boat is working; good weather when the boat hasn't been working; government agency mergers; response surveys to coral bleaching events...).