SRVI2 ICON/CREWS Field Log

Station Maintenance Performed

2011-10-07T08:01:00.002-05:00

On Thursday Oct. 6th, 2011 staff from DPNR-CZM's St. Croix East End Marine Park visited the station to perform some cleaning and hook up the groundtruth CT. All looked well at the station including the repair of the ladder rung that was performed by park staff and the USVI NOAA Liaison on Sept. 22nd. Pictures to follow

scientific stewardship of CREWS station begins

2011-05-27T18:00:00.000-05:00

This past week saw the inauguration of a new partnership between the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the U.S. Virgin Islands' Department of Planning and Natural Resources (DPNR) for the purpose of maintaining the Coral Reef Early Warning System (CREWS) station located within the Salt River Bay National Historical Park and Ecological Preserve, St. Croix, USVI. This station (see photo at right), whose National Weather Service (NWS) designation is SRBV3, reports meteorological and oceanographic measurements in near-real time, delivering hourly updates by Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) and its data are uploaded to the National Data Buoy Center (NDBC). From NDBC the data are included in the World Meteorological Organization's (WMO) Global Telecommunications System (GTS), making them available for use by national weather services all over the world.

This new collaboration began last August, when DPNR generously provided personnel and boating support for visiting researchers from NOAA's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML) and the University of Miami's (UM) Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies (CIMAS) during the station's annual instrumentation swapout. Now, thanks to the support of NOAA's Coral Reef Conservation Program (CRCP), DPNR personnel will make regular visits to the Salt River Bay CREWS station to clean and maintain the station's underwater instruments and support structures, as well as to connect a "groundtruth" Conductivity/Temperature (CT) sensor used to track the calibration of the station's permanently installed Conductivity/Temperature/Depth (CTD) sensors.

Meeting on the water this week were Paige Rothenberger and José Sanchez (DPNR), Marlon Hibbert (NOAA/CRCP), Jim Hendee (NOAA/AOML) and Mike Jankulak (UM/CIMAS). The purpose of this operation was threefold: firstly, the Miami team wanted to meet with the St. Croix people in person to give a detailed explanation of the CREWS station maintenance procedures. Secondly, it was decided to do a full instrumentation swapout a few months ahead of schedule since there had been no regular underwater maintenance visits since last summer.

The third and final motivation for this visit was to replace the station's GOES transmitter and its satellite antenna and cable. A typical CREWS station will occasionally drop a transmission due to heavy cloud cover or severe weather conditions, but when averaged over a month's time you would expect to see upwards of 96% of transmissions coming through without errors. Since the last replacement of its transmitter and antenna the St. Croix CREWS station's transmission rate has stayed at 90% success rate or lower, and for the month of February it fell to 76%. These problems may have been caused by loose connections, a too-tight bend in the antenna's co-axial cable, saltwater incursion into the antenna connectors, or any number of other factors. Rather than attempt a prolonged diagnosis of the problem in the field, it was decided to simply replace all transmitter components once again.

On Monday, May 23rd, the DPNR and AOML people met at DPNR's East End Marine Park offices on St. Croix where we assembled all of the equipment needed for the rest of the week and made plans to meet the following morning. Tuesday, all five of us went out to the station where we swapped out three of the four underwater instruments and retrieved all aerial equipment (including the control unit or "brain") for return to land. Wednesday was entirely land-based work as the local memory records were downloaded, the datalogger programming updated, the aerial sensors replaced and rewired, and the entire suite of instruments tested for several hours on land. On Thursday we connected the fourth underwater instrument (the Deep CTD, see below) and the "groundtruth" CT sensor, and reinstalled all aerial sensors and electronics. All sensors were found to be working correctly and before leaving the station we confirmed that satellite transmissions had resumed as well.

Some detailed comments about this work follow:

The Weather Transmitter (WXT), an instrument manufactured by Vaisala that provides wind speed and direction, relative humidity, barometric pressure, air temperature and precipitation readings, is mounted on an aluminum mast above the station. Last August, the bolt holding this mast in place was found to be loose, allowing the mast perhaps 10° of play (see photo at right). On this trip we returned with a power drill and we drilled and tapped a new hole to pin the mast in place more securely. This work was done on Tuesday.

The platform supporting the GOES antenna is held aloft by two fiberglass poles that slide snugly into two aluminum masts, although there was never anything more than gravity and cable ties holding down this platform in place. On this trip we drilled holes through both support masts and bolted them securely in place (on Thursday).

Tuesday's operation to replace all four underwater instruments (deep and shallow light sensors, deep and shallow CTDs) hit a snag during the disconnection of the Deep CTD's cable, when one of the cable's four pins broke off and was left in the instrument. Fortunately we had a spare "fish-bite" underwater cable with us so we were able to run the new cable up to the top of the pylon (Tuesday) and deploy the new Deep CTD (Thursday) as planned. Note that this is the second cable failure at this site since station (re-)deployment in 2006, as the Shallow CTD cable failed and was replaced during last August's operations.

Sometime during Tuesday's operations, the lowest aluminum rung (removable ladder rungs that are pushed through the station to allow climbing during these operations) was apparently struck by the edge of the boat and was bent. An attempt to remove this bent rung resulted in the removal of one of the fiberglass rung "inserts" as well (see photo at right), exposing the station's interior foam to the outside. Before leaving on Thursday we plugged these holes with rubber aquaseal. The DPNR maintenance team plans to separate the aluminum rung from the fiberglass insert using tools on land and then reinstall the rung insert at a later date.

Dr. Jim Hendee, the principal investigator of the Integrated Coral Observing Network (ICON) and the creator of the CREWS program, climbed to the top of a CREWS station for the first time and powered on the station once all sensors had been reconnected (see photo at right). It is believed that Dr. Hendee becomes only the fifth person to have ever performed this action on any CREWS station.

The sacrificial zinc (anode) connected to the station's base plate was discovered to be completely dissolved on this visit (Tuesday). Fortunately, the CREWS supplies on St. Croix included a replacement zinc and this was installed during Thursday's dive (see photo at right). Note however that there do not appear to be any sacrificial zincs remaining on any of the eight lengths of support chain.

Throughout the week, Paige Rothenberger and José Sanchez conducted several dives to inspect and clean the station supports; Marlon Hibbert also did a great deal of cleaning while snorkeling; Jim Hendee and Mike Jankulak conducted our own dive operations. Paige has spoken several times about wanting to obtain diving reciprocity with either NOAA or AAUS, which would allow us all to dive together and could reduce the number of AOML travelers required for these operations. Until this happens, NOAA/UM dive operations will continued to be conducted separately from DPNR operations.

It is still too early to know whether the transmitter and antenna replacement will have a long-term positive effect on transmitter performance. However, transmissions resumed on Thursday with a higher signal strength than previously and we take this as a hopeful sign.

All in all this week's operations were wildly successful, but the most significant accomplishment is the formal beginning of DPNR's stewardship of the St. Croix CREWS station. The original CREWS station was installed on this site in 2002, and then retrofitted and reinstalled in 2006. Throughout its lifetime it has required costly maintenance contracts with local commercial dive operators. These arrangements have been suboptimal for many reasons and in recent years the costs have become prohibitively high and they had to be abandoned altogether. Thus we are all the more thrilled to have found caretakers from the scientific and conservation community who feel as strongly about this station's mission as we do. This new relationship may foster a new era of scientific collaboration as other researchers can now bring their projects to Salt River Bay and trust that their work will be supported by St. Croix's best scientific minds.

The Miami team sends its heartfelt thanks to NOAA/CRCP and USVI/DPNR, to Paige Rothenberger, José Sanchez, and Marlon Hibbert. We'd also like to offer a special shout-out to CRCP's Dana Wusinich-Mendez who dove into her enormous rolodex last year and emerged with a half-dozen contact names for potential collaborations in St. Croix -- those names led directly to the present collaboration.

In this photo are pictured, from left to right, Jim Hendee, José Sanchez, Paige Rothenberger and Marlon Hibbert (not shown: Mike Jankulak).

[Photo credits: Paige Rothenberger (Jim on pylon), Jim Hendee (base plate zinc), Mike Jankulak (all others).]

station equipment swapout and cleaning

2010-08-13T15:14:00.009-05:00

A team from the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML) visited the ICON station near Salt River Bay, St. Croix, US Virgin Islands (the station that is designated SRVI2 by AOML and reported as SRBV3 by NDBC) in the week from August 2nd to 6th, 2010. The team consisted of NOAA Corps officers Lecia Salerno and Rachel Kotkowski, and University of Miami researcher Mike Jankulak.

Some background: this location has played host to a CREWS/ICON station since June 15th, 2002. The station in its current incarnation was installed and went live on September 23, 2006. The last annual visit by AOML was in early July, 2009. There were several problems encountered in the field during this July 2009 visit, resulting in (1) the failure of the standalone air temperature sensor, (2) the failure of the RM Young Wind Monitor and Electronic Compass, and (3) the loss of communications with the station's "deep" CTD. These problems were somewhat mitigated by the existence of redundant air temperature and wind data from the still-functional Vaisala Weather Transmitter (WXT). Also, it was believed that the deep CTD could continue to run on battery power and store data locally for several months, and the "shallow" CTD appeared to be working properly.

Following this July visit, the maintenance contract expired on September 30th, 2009 (at the end of FY2009) and the station's last recorded monthly cleaning was conducted on September 10th, 2009. This means the station went unattended for a period of nearly 11 months (which is unprecedented in ICON history).

In the time since cleanings ceased, the functional shallow CTD lost its power feed from the main station (on December 24th, 2009). It continued to communicate its measurements to the station until April 10th, 2010, at which time its local battery power reserves were completely drained and the instrument went offline.

Regarding this trip in August of 2010: AOML for the first time collaborated with the good people of St. Croix's East End Marine Park (EEMP), see photo at right. We were extremely grateful for the hard work done by Paige Rothenberger, who coordinated the entire operation with AOML, and the very capable boatsmanship of Jose Sanchez who worked with us in the field. Paige and Jose made this operation go extremely smoothly and are in a large part responsible for the effort's success.

And success it was! All electronics were replaced on this visit, including the control electronics and antennae that have been operating at this site since September of 2006. We also installed a new navigation light (see photo at left) with high-intensity LEDs that increase the light's range from 3 nm to 4 nm. We were able to learn a lot about what had gone wrong during the July 2009 trip and in the time since. Accomplishments from this visit include:

The station's GOES (satellite) transmitter was replaced along with its satellite antenna and GPS antenna. The station's transmission success rate in the year to date has been about 90.3%, which corresponds to the loss of more than 2 transmissions per day (or more than 16 transmissions per week) on average. It's still very early for knowing how well the station is now transmitting, but in the eight days since the station came back online it has only dropped a total of 4 transmissions, which would represent a success rate of 97.8%.
The station's 64 MB flash memory card was replaced with a 1 GB card. Where previously the station stored 10-minute data averages to local memory, it now stores 6-minute and 1-minute data reports locally from all instruments that report this frequently. The station will not exhaust its local memory reserves until early in 2013 (and the station will be visited much sooner than this for its next annual swapout).
As mentioned above, the station's navigation light (which has operated in this location since 2002) was replaced with a new light.
The station's nonfunctional air temperature sensor was replaced with a new sensor. Where previously the air temperature sensor was located behind the station's solar panels, the new sensor is installed inside its own radiation shield (see photo at right). This results in much more accurate measurements. In the past, air temperature measurements from the two sensors (the standalone sensor, and the sensor integrated into the Vaisala Weather Transmitter) could differ by up to 2 °C; since the radiation shield was installed there difference has never been more than 0.51 °C.
The station's RM Young Wind Monitor and Electronic Compass (see image at right) have been replaced and are now fully functional. Whereas in the past the Wind Monitor used to be wired into the compass, which in turn reported data from both instruments, now each instrument is connected independently to the datalogger. This allows us to measure full 5-second wind gusts instead of the 1-second gusts we reported previously. The failure of these instruments in July of 2009 has been traced to a miscommunication amongst team members about the wiring of the Wind Monitor. A longer testing period in the weeks leading up to this visit ensured that this problem was not repeated.
The problem with the "deep" CTD (from July of 2010) was traced to a failure of the connector used at the top of the station. The 2006-era connectors were replaced for the Deep CTD, the Shallow CTD, and the WXT on this trip. Other connectors were thoroughly tested on land and found to be working properly. When the deep CTD's data were downloaded on this trip, we found that it operated on battery power for longer than expected, and data were retrieved for the period from July 8th, 2009 to January 4th, 2010.
The failure of the "shallow" CTD (see image at right) was determined to be due to the failure of its instrument-end connector. The second of four pins was broken and was loose. This probably occurred during the July 2009 visit but its impact was not serious enough to affect the instrument's operation until late December of 2009. The data downloaded from the instrument cover the period from July 8th, 2009 to April 10th, 2010. The problem was diagnosed on this trip and was fixed by replacing the instrument's entire cable, from instrument connection below the surface to its end at the top of the pylon (which it reaches via the pylon's internal cable conduits).

As expected, we found the station to be badly bio-fouled after its long period without cleaning. Our divers conducted five dives of approximately 60 - 70 minutes apiece to swap out the underwater instruments, document the station's condition in photos, and do an extensive cleaning of all surfaces, spectra lines, support chains and lashings.

In the eight days since the station went back online, the team has monitored the station's data feed and at the time of this writing all indications are positive. All instruments are communicating and are fully powered by the station. Transmission success rate has improved post-visit. The navigation light was seen to be working properly at nighttime. The hourly data reports are once again available online, notably the summary report and the report of six-minute wind data. The station's data feed to NDBC has resumed. The station's ecoforecast site is also fully operational.

We at AOML would once again like to express our gratitude to Paige Rothenberger and Jose Sanchez for their generous and able assistance to all aspects of this operation. We hope that this will represent the start of a long and productive collaboration.

(signed)

Mike Jankulak

[photo credits: Lecia Salerno and Mike Jankulak]

cleaning

2009-09-17T09:05:00.000-05:00

On Sept 10, Sam and Gary cleaned the stick. Everything looks good.

cleaning

2009-08-26T13:03:00.001-05:00

Sam and Gary cleaned the stick today. Everything looks good. Cleaning a little late because of "Ana and Bill".

repair & maintenance trip

2009-07-10T12:00:00.000-05:00

The station was visited on Tuesday, July 7th and Wednesday, July 8th, 2009, by a team consisting of Dr. Derek Manzello (NOAA/AOML in Miami, FL), Gary Trommer, Sam Halvorsen (both of Dive Experience in Christiansted, St. Croix) and myself, Mike Jankulak (University of Miami).

Our primary goal was to repair the satellite transmissions system. While we were there, we also planned to replace all instruments that are on 1-year deployment schedules. This included the light sensors (Surface, Shallow and Deep), Conductivity-Temperature-Depth sensors (or CTDs, Shallow and Deep), Vaisala "Weather Transmitter" (or WXT), Anemometer and Electronic Compass.

The primary objective was met. The external connection point of the transmitter's satellite antenna and its cable was found to be corroded, and both the antenna and cable were replaced. The replacement cable was wrapped with tape at its attachment point to better protect it. Following this work, the station is once again transmitting.

The equipment replacement was only partially successful. The new anemometer did not function properly in field tests, so the old anemometer/compass were reinstalled for the time being. However, the old anemometer/compass are not longer operational following their removal and reinstallation. Also, the standalone air temperature sensor started malfunctioning at some time during this visit. All three instruments (anemometer, compass and air temperature sensor) should be replaced at the next opportunity.

Also, at the end of our work we found that the "Deep" CTD was not communicating properly with the station. This is probably either a loose wire in the instrument's plug (at the top of the pylon, inside the "brain" chamber) or a bad connection within the "brain" package itself. The serial-port units were both looking rusty, and may also be a problem. There is currently no sign of damage to the instrument's underwater cable, either at the waterline or lower down, but there's also a small possibility that this cable is bad. The instrument itself was retrieved to the boat and was demonstrated to be fully operational. It was manually programmed and reinstalled. It will continue to operate normally and store its data internally for later retrieval. It is not known whether the CTD is being supplied with power from the station or not. If it is, it could run for indefinite periods of time. If the power connections are also broken, the CTD might only run for a few months before exhausting its local battery power.

Due to logistics problems (the boat was not available for work either Wednesday afternoon or Thursday morning), work was brought to a halt at this point. However, this station should be visited again, and sooner than its regular 1-year equipment replacement schedule. The next visit should address the problems with the compass, anemometer, air temperature sensor and Deep CTD. It's also been suggested that we reinstall the rubber covering that was protecting the underwater cables at the waterline.

-- Mike Jankulak

cleaning

2009-06-18T10:07:00.001-05:00

On June 17, 2009 Sam and Gary cleaned the stick. Ran calibration. Everything looks good.
Gary

cleaning

2009-05-29T10:21:00.000-05:00

Sam and Gary cleaned the stick 05/29/2009. Everything looks good.

cleaning

2009-04-09T10:36:00.001-05:00

On wed 04/08/2009 from 9am to 10am Gary cleaned the stick. Everything looks fine.

cleaning

2009-02-16T13:25:00.001-05:00

On monday 02/16/2009 Sam and Gary cleaned the stick. Everything looks good.

stick cleaning

2009-01-13T08:08:00.003-05:00

On sunday 01/11/2009 Sam and Gary cleaned the stick from around 10am to 11am. The rubber cable protection at the water level if gone now. It was damaged in "omar" and now is gone. Guess some other protection needs to be tried. Everything else looks fine.

Station Maintenance

2008-06-20T06:17:00.005-05:00

AOML's Dr. Jim Hendee, Dr. Derek Manzello and Mike Jankulak visited the SRVI2 station on the afternoons of Wednesday, June 18th and Thursday, June 19th, 2008, to replace/remove equipment and inspect the environment (see previous blog post). We were assisted by Gary Trommer and Sam Halvorson of Dive Experience, Christiansted.

The Surface BIC (light sensor) was original to this station's installation in September of 2006, and was replaced on this trip. Its cable was cracked by sun and weather and was also replaced.

The Vaisala WXT510 (Weather Transmitter) was replaced. At the same time, an adjustment was made to the orientation of its mount to correct a 17° error (affecting wind direction readings) introduced during its last replacement in August of 2007.

The Shallow CTD, originally deployed in May of 2007, was replaced by divers.

Perhaps most significantly, the SeaBird SBE-29 Pressure Sensor was disconnected from the station and its cable removed. This instrument's cable was not our standard "fishbite" cable, and in recent months it had worn through to bare wire at the waterline where it had been rubbing up against plastic zip ties wrapped around the pylon. This turned out to have unfortunate effects on the station electronics: many of the analog measurements made by the datalogger were intermittently returning null readings, including the wind speed reported by the Wind Monitor / Electronic Compass, the standalone Air Temperature Sensor's reading, and the datalogger's own voltage readings. It seems likely that the intermittent nature of these problems was due to the action of waves breaking against the damaged part of the cable and occasionally shorting its power/ground wires. Other station functions (logging to memory, transmitting via satellite, and RS-232 serial instrument communications) do not appear to have been impacted.

These issues appear to have been resolved by removing the SBE-29. The datalogger and standalone air temperature sensor were both tested on land and appear to be functioning properly. All analog measurements appear to be reporting correctly now. A sheet of rubber was wrapped around the pylon at the waterline, between the cables and the zip ties, to prevent this problem from recurring.

The orientation of the masts of the wind sensors were visually measured with a compass. The WXT mast is mounted at approximately 97° and the mast of the Wind Monitor / Electronic Compass at approximately 340°. The Wind Monitor and Electronic Compass were last replaced in March of 2008; when they reach their deployment lifetimes, it is anticipated that we will eliminate the Electronic Compass from this station and use a manually-oriented Wind Monitor, with offsets added to the logger programming as required.

All dataparser configurations have been updated and data from the station are once again appearing in the near-realtime web reports.

2008-06-19T23:04:00.006-05:00

A qualitative biological survey was performed 18-19 June 2008 adjacent to the ICON pylon located at Salt River Bay, St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands. There were no signs of bleaching. Many colonies of Montastraea faveolata exhibited signs of recent tissue mortality associated with 'Yellow-band' disease as first noted last August and September in St. Croix and Jamaica, respectively. This 'yellow-band' event appears to be Caribbean-wide as other confirmed reports have been made in the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and St. Thomas.

Dr. Ernesto Weil will discuss this ongoing and seemingly chronic disturbance at the upcoming International Coral Reef Symposium in Ft. Lauderdale.

Note how cyanobacteria have colonized the recently-dead skeleton of the colony of M. faveolata in this image.

'Yellow-band' is not as aggressive as some of the more well-known coral diseases (e.g., Black-band disease, White plague). It isn't clear if this is related to the high incidence of disease that occurred on those corals which survived the 2005 bleaching or is a separate, unrelated event.

Best regards,
Derek P. Manzello

Instrument, Programming changes

2008-03-12T21:09:00.004-05:00

Mike Jankulak (yours truly) of AOML visited the station on the afternoons of March 11th and 12th, 2008, accompanied by Gary Trommer and Sam of Dive Experience.

The plan was to replace the Surface BIC (light sensor), and the Wind Monitor / Electric Compass, and to update the programming to add more extensive meteorological fields for a planned XML feed to NDBC.

Upon arrival, it was discovered that the Surface BIC had been mistakenly deployed as the Shallow (underwater) BIC during a trip in February. Gary removed the surface unit which disintegrated during removal and is likely unrecoverable (the plug had come off and the unit was completely flooded). He then deployed the intended Shallow (underwater) BIC in its place. The current status is that both underwater BICS are correctly deployed and the Surface BIC is still the same one originally deployed in September of 2006 (and should soon be replaced).

Some difficulty was encountered in extracting the aluminum mast of the Wind Monitor / Electronic Compass from its fibreglass housing. Efforts were suspended on Tuesday the 11th and we returned on Wednesday the 12th armed with a fresh can of WD-40. This eventually did the trick. The new electronic compass was put through its calibration while on the boat, then the new compass and wind monitor were wired together and mounted on the mast, which was in turn mounted on the station. This work is complete, but early indications are that the wind directions reported from the electronic compass vs. the Vaisala Weather Station are now quite divergent, perhaps as much as 15 degrees off. It is not known why this might be since the WXT was not removed or adjusted during this trip.

The programming update appears to have been successful. The station is now reporting on a new platform ID and the dataparser configuration updates are complete. For the first time, an ICON station now reports six 10-minute averages of wind speed and direction per hour:

http://www.coral.noaa.gov/crw/crw_data_srvi2_Win_12.html

Many thanks to Michelle Pugh, Gary Trommer and Sam of Dive Experience for their very capable and professional work during this trip.

yr scribe,
Mike J+

Maintenance Update

2007-11-03T12:00:00.000-05:00

The stations was maintained and cleaned today at 10:45am.

Dave Ward

Agaricids paling in deep water (20 m)

2007-10-10T13:10:00.000-05:00

Dave Ward (via Jules Craynock) reports that the large, plating Agaricia spp. in deep water (i.e., 20 m) are about 30% bleached. The Agaricids are known to be conspicuous annual 'bleachers' and the majority of this is likely sub-lethal seasonal paling (See work by our colleague Dr. William Fitt at the Univ. of Georgia).

When Dave and I dove at the end of August, these same colonies were either partially bleached or pale, so this report is not unexpected.

Tootles,
Derek Manzello

coral disease at Salt River

2007-08-30T18:42:00.001-05:00

Hey team,

After consulting an expert (Marilyn Brandt at RSMAS) I am pretty confident that the disease I saw on a bunch of Montastraea faveolata colonies at Salt River is "Yellow Band Disease". Tyler Smith reported seeing a bunch of this around the rest of the USVI and Marilyn told me it was quite prevalent in the Dominican Republic. I think it may be worth doing some more intensive monitoring of the progress of disease on tagged colonies when we go to Jamaica.

Take care,
Derek

Coral Observations

2007-08-30T08:30:00.000-05:00

Here are some observations from diving August 28th:

-Overall: only mild, partial bleaching and paling on very few colonies. Likely nothing more than normal summer paling as only Agaricids seemed affected and they are notorious partial, annual bleachers.

-Most colonies of Montastraea faveolata appeared to show signs of disease. I am not totally convinced that it is "disease," nor am I confident regarding which disease it is (Yellow Band?), but I will investigate further.

Derek Manzello

Station Maintenance by AOML Crew

2007-08-29T20:23:00.000-05:00

Yesterday (Aug 28) the "brain" and Vaisala weather package were removed from the station and taken back to the hotel for reprogramming, etc. We saw NO major signs of bleaching in the area, just very few scattered minor incidences--"nothing to write home about" (Derek).

Today, the logger was re-inserted into the stick, the new Vaisala was installed, and the CT was removed. However, problems arose with the deep CTD, and we decided to watch it through the day and see how it would look by the end of the day. Tonight it appears the CTD has "cleared its throat" and is once again transmitting correctly.

Crew: Dave Ward, Derek Manzello, Mike Jankulak, Jim Hendee

Cheers,
Jim

Maintenance Update

2007-08-23T12:00:00.000-05:00

Dave just called me. He said he did a cleaning at 1130 yesterday. Station looks OK. Slight bleaching occurring near the station.

Jules

New CTD

2007-05-30T11:41:00.001-05:00

The instruments were cleaned on 5/30/07 just after 11:00 am. The shallow CTD was changed out and plugged in just before 11:00 am. The fouling on the deep BIC was almost nill????

Dave

Maintenance.

2007-05-11T17:00:00.001-05:00

General maintenance and cleaning on the station.

Dave Ward

Maintenance Update

2007-04-24T06:44:00.001-05:00

Hi Jim

The instruments were cleaned on Feb. 28, and March 27 before 12 noon. Nothing significant was noticed. I am still waiting for instrument brackets, long and short cable ties, and word on when to remove the groundtruth CT. Please advise

David Ward
Scuba Shack
PO Box 3221
Frederiksted, VI 00841-3221
340-772-DIVE
Toll Free 888-STX-DIVE
www.stcroixscubashack.com
email info@stcroixscubashack.com

Cleaning update

2007-01-28T11:00:00.000-05:00

I cleaned the instruments on Jan. 28 at 10 am. Not a lot of fouling noticed. I am still waiting for instrument brackets, long and short cable ties, and word on when to remove the groundtruth CT.

Dave

station back online November 30th

2006-12-26T13:23:00.000-05:00

The station came back online without intervention on Thursday, November 30th. There continue to be sporadic transmitter error counts reported but as of December 26th they are not appearing consistently so there is less cause for alarm.

The current working theory is still that these error counts relate to a problem obtaining a daily GPS fix. If that's true, then we should be able to go for roughly one month with consistently reported transmitter errors before we can expect the station to go offline again. As of December 26th we only have two consecutive days' worth of transmitter error reports so if the GPS theory is true, the station could go offline again no earlier than late January.

However, if the current patterns hold, the station could well remain online indefinitely.

-- Mike J+

Cleaning update

2006-12-20T12:00:00.000-05:00

Cleaned station today.

Dave

station offline

2006-11-19T17:22:00.000-05:00

The St. Croix station went offline after its last transmission on Sunday, November 19th at 22:22 UTC (6:22 PM local St. Croix time, 5:22 PM AOML time).

We are examining the data for hints about what may have gone wrong. At this stage the most promising hypothesis is a failure in the transmitter's GPS system.

Deep CTD swapped, capillary tubes removed

2006-10-24T10:00:00.000-05:00

In a visit to the station on Tuesday, October 24th, Dave Ward removed the SRVI2-Deep CTD (s/n 1644), whose temperature sensor was malfunctioning, which was also affecting this CTD's salinity data.

The new SRVI2-Deep CTD is s/n 1608, and it appears to be working properly.

Dave Ward removed the capillary tubes from the SRVI2-Shallow CTD (s/n 1643) and from the SeaBird SBE-29 pressure sensor. It was hoped that this would fix the problems with the pressure readings from SRVI2-Shallow (which show a large drift in readings over time) but removing the capillary tubes has not fixed the SRVI2-Shallow problem. It appears as though we will have to replace SRVI2-Shallow as well.

The so-called "GroundTruth" CT remains a permanent fixture on this station while we work out the problems with the CTDs.

Station up and running

2006-09-23T17:00:00.000-05:00

At last! The station has been installed and is broadcasting data.

An update will follow soon.

Jim Hendee

Stick is in the water!

2006-09-20T04:21:00.000-05:00

The stick is in the water, sturdy, straight.  I think the heavy work is more or less done already.  It's still got plastic wrapped around the top but the light's been unwrapped.  It sounds like they've done some amazing work here already this week.

Tomorrow we go into Fredricksted to pick up the electronics from the red boxes.  I bring 'em back here for a few hours of handholding before they go out, and then tomorrow afternoon we'll start loading up the stick.

Well begun is half done!

cheers,
Mike J+

Biological Monitoring

2006-08-05T07:39:00.000-05:00

As of 4 August, the corals in St. Croix looked great with no bleaching (not even the fire corals (Millepora spp.) or Palythoa were pale). A few Montastraea faveolata were still a little pale, but Dave Ward told us that these still haven't recovered fully from last years bleaching event.

Ruben van Hooidonk and I did four 20 meter video transects directly under the stick site (transect lines were tied from opposite eye bolt to eye bolt across the base plate). Everything looked great here. Interestingly, there were a lot of coral recruits (small colonies that were < 2 yrs old or so). Ruben and I also did three transects each at the east and west wall of the Salt River Canyon at 90 feet, 55 feet and 30 feet (six total). These will act as reference sites to the coral under the stick and will provide great data in the event of bleaching. Ruben is very interested in the effect that hurricanes may have across this depth distribution.

On the last day, Ruben and I tagged 68 colonies and took small cores for zooxanthellae studies. One of Andrew Baker's students across the street, Adrienne Romanski, is going to analyze the DNA of the zooxs from these samples. The idea is to sample the same corals over the next three years annually to see if the types of zooxanthellae change with time. Some zooxs are more temperature tolerant than others, and researchers have found that corals can swap out for the hardier types during bleaching. These questions are vital to understanding if corals have any chance of acclimating to warmer sea temperatures.

In short, it was a successful trip. Ironically, the two days Tropical Storm Chris was 80-90 miles North of us were the calmest and didn't stop us from working.

Derek

New Station Design for Salt River

2006-07-06T07:09:00.000-05:00

The Integrated Coral Observing Network (ICON, formerly called CREWS) station within the Salt River Bay National Historical Park and Ecological Preserve in St. Croix will have a new design, beginning in August, 2006.

Cheers,
Jim Hendee