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.]