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...).

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.