It’s not a great thing when the CTD (Conductivity, Temperature and Depth) Rosette bumps into the hull of the ship, as it did on one of the launches today.

The CTD weighs about half a ton when the water sample canisters are empty, and about 1,300 pounds when the bottles are full. A wayward swing could not only damage the sensitive – and expensive – equipment, it could cause serious injury and death.

But the CTD has an outer cage meant to protect the equipment, and it did its job very well. No harm, no foul. Read More »

As I started writing this, an array of sensors was taking measurements from the surface to near the bottom of the Santa Cruz Basin. They are being tested with a CTD (Conductivity, Temperature and Depth) Rosette device, which will help researchers characterize the distribution of biomass at different water depths.

CTD Rosette probes provide scientists with data about water temperature and salinity in real-time through an electrical cable attached to the ship. The CTD includes gray canisters that allow scientists to collect water samples at various depths. Read More »

The time was 5:55 a.m., and I was wondering whether I should wake up Berkeley Lab engineer Tim Loew, who had nodded off at the table in the middle of assembling a polarizer for the robotic float. I wanted to let him sleep long enough for me to reach for my camera, but he woke up before I got the shot. Maybe next time.

The original departure time for the Oceanus was 7 a.m., but that was pushed back yesterday when it became clear that not all parts were ready to go. It was clear weeks ago that things were running behind. Parts broke or didn’t work as expected, special screws needed to be ordered, each sample collection tray required 12 hours in a 3-D printer.
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The countdown has begun. In less than 24 hours, I will be boarding a ship with a team of scientists and engineers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California, Berkeley, as they prepare to set sail on a 10-day voyage to study the ocean’s biological carbon pump.

Leading the 13-member team is biogeochemist Jim Bishop, a faculty senior scientist at Berkeley Lab’s Earth and Environmental Sciences Area and a professor at UC Berkeley’s Department of Earth and Planetary Science.

Bishop notes that much of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is sequestered in the oceans through the actions of microorganisms, but there is much about the process that remains poorly understood. The biological carbon pump operates on time scales of about a week, so detecting changes and disturbances in the cycle would require ongoing monitoring that is currently impractical and cost-prohibitive to do with humans on a ship.

Robotic floats would be ideal for such applications since they could ultimately be left out at sea for months or even a year at a much lower cost. Read More »