Instrument, Programming changes

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

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

Dave Ward

Agaricids paling in deep water (20 m)

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

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

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

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

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

Jules