Cleaning Update August - September

Basic cleaning of the CREWS station in La Parguera, Puerto Rico was performed on August 22, 2008 by Francisco Soto and Diana Beltran from 9am - 9 30am.

A basic cleaning of the CREWS station in La Parguera, Puerto Rico was performed on August 28, 2008 by Francisco Soto and Diana Beltrán. The station was cleaned between 9:35 and 9:55 am.

A basic cleaning of the CREWS station in La Parguera, Puerto Rico was performed on September 5, 2008 by Francisco Soto and Diana Beltrán. The station was cleaned between 9:35 and 9:55 am.

A complete cleaning of the CREWS station in La Parguera, Puerto Rico was performed on September 12, 2008 by Francisco Soto and Diana Beltran.

The validation CT was installed at 7:50am and removed at 11:30am. The station was cleaned between 9:10 and 9:55am.

Biological survey

A qualitative survey was performed at Enrique and Media Luna Reefs from 29-31 July 2008 near La Parguera, Puerto Rico. Bleaching was nearly non-existent with only a few colonies of Palythoa caribaeorum displaying visually discernible bleaching as shown in the image on the left. Several colonies of Siderastrea siderea displayed evidence of paling and discoloration from their normal brownish-gray hues to shades of dark pink and blueish brown. This is likely a result of the normal, seasonal summer declines in zooxanthellae densities within the coral host and not indicative of a bleaching event.













On the north side of Media Luna Reef (east of the ICON pylon) there were high abundances of urchins (Echinometra viridis and E. lucunter -- it is likely that both species were present, but E. viridis appeared to be more abundant). In the images above it is clear that these urchins are bioeroding some dead coral heads through their feeding activities. Urchins graze upon turf and macroalgae that grows upon reefal carbonate substrates and in doing so chew-up some of the reef. This is totally natural and erosion rates are usually less than the rates at which new carbonate is produced by corals and calcareous algae. However, population booms of urchins were observed in the eastern Pacific following the mass coral mortality that occurred as a result of bleaching due to thermal anomalies associated with the 1982-83 El Nino-Southern Oscillation. These increases in urchin abundances were shown to rapidly erode reefs in some areas of the eastern Pacific. It is believed that the large amount of bare substrate which opens up on reefs following mass coral mortality events facilitates the recruitment of urchin larvae by 1) creating more appropriate habitat space for urchin larvae to settle and 2) causing an increase in algae that grows upon this bare space and provides more food for the urchins. These population booms eventually "snuff themselves out" by overgrazing all of the algae available, making them resort to feeding on the less nutritious crustose corraline algae (CCA) and then the actual reef framework itself, which has little if any nutritional value. In the end, many of the urchins will simply starve to death, but in the process can rapidly destroy in tact reef framework structures. Fortunately, these very high urchin abundances appear restricted to very shallow water on the north side of Media Luna. Echinometra was observed around the ICON pylon and on Enrique Reef, but their abundances did not appear to be unnatural. These high (albeit localized) abundances of urchins three years after the Caribbean-wide bleaching event suggest that this phenomenon may be a characteristic of post-bleaching/mortality reef dynamics. It will be interesting to see if urchins go through boom/bust population dynamics anywhere else in the Caribbean, or if this is isolated to SW Puerto Rico.
A beautiful Porites furcata reef was observed by Dr. James Hendee and myself on the east side of Media Luna Reef proximal to the area of intense bioerosion noted above. Live coral cover was very high and mono-specific in this area. These adjacent accretional and erosional environments illustrate the highly dynamic variability of calcium carbonate production and loss that can occur on reefs over short distances.

Dr. James C. Hendee and myself observed a potential back-up site for the planned MAP-CO2 buoy just west of Media Luna Reef, but sill east of the ICON pylon. This is a mostly dead Montastraea annularis reef that occurs in the lee of Media Luna. However, there are patches of living M. annularis re-colonizing some of the dead reef surface.

Best regards,
Derek P. Manzello

Station Instrument Swap, Electronics Upgrade

A team from NOAA/AOML visited the station for extensive work in the week of July 28th - August 2nd, 2008. Team members involved with the work on the ICON/CREWS station were Jules Craynock, Jim Hendee, Derek Manzello and Mike Jankulak. Boat operations and invaluable assistance were provided by Milton Carlo and Francisco Pagan of UPRM.

Regarding the instrument swap: all instruments were replaced, including the two CTDs, the two underwater BICs and the surface BIC, the "groundtruth" CT, the Wind Monitor, and the Vaisala Weather Station (WXT). The new groundtruth CT is a Falmouth NXIC model which uses the same cables and connectors used by all other underwater instruments; accordingly, the old, proprietary-design CT cable was replaced with a new, standard-issue one.

We are moving away from using the Electronic Compass with the Wind Monitor; on this trip, the new Wind Monitor was manually oriented and directly connected to the datalogger without a compass. It currently reads wind directions approximately 14 degrees off the Vaisala WXT measurements. This will be addressed in the data parsing routines and corrected during the next station instrument swap.

Regarding the electronics upgrade: on this trip nearly every component of the control unit (or "brain") was upgraded to a newer model. This includes the datalogger, memory unit, satellite transmitter, and RF radio. This also enabled us to upgrade the datalogger programming with the newer code that has been running at SRVI2 since March of 2008. This new code corrects the handling of meteorological data and reports all six 10-minute wind averages from each hour. It also stores more 10-minute data locally on the memory module.

During the rearrangement of the control unit hardware, an additional experiment was conducted to determine whether there was room (with the smaller-profile CR1000 dataloggger) for an additional SIO4 serial-ports unit. The experiment was successful, and the LPPR1 electronics now feature three SIO4s for a total station capacity of 12 serially-communicating instruments. Up to four additional serial instruments may now be added to this station provided that room can be found in the pylon conduits for additional instrument cables.

Data parsing configurations have been updated and near-realtime reports can be found on the web. The 12-hour reports, updated hourly, are the Summary Report, the Detailed Report, and the Report of 10-Minute Wind Data. Data have been downloaded from the flash memory of both retrieved CTDs and from the station's old memory module.

Cleaning update June

A complete cleaning of the CREWS station in La Parguera, Puerto Rico was performed on June, 2, 2008 by Francisco Soto and Jorge Casillas.

The validation CT was installed at 7:50am and removed at 11:30am. The station was cleaned between 9:10 and 9:55am.


Basic cleaning of the CREWS station in La Parguera, Puerto Rico was performed on June 10, 2008 by Francisco Soto and Jorge Casillas from 9am - 9 30am.

A second cleaning of the CREWS station in La Parguera, Puerto Rico was performed on June 27, 2008 by Francisco Soto and Jorge Casillas from 9am - 9 30am.

Cleaning Update May 2008

A complete cleaning of the CREWS station in La Parguera, Puerto Rico was performed on May 7, 2008 by Francisco Soto and Katie Flynn.

A basic cleaning of the CREWS station in La Parguera, Puerto Rico was performed on May 14, 2008 by Francisco Soto and Jorge Casillas.

Cleaning Update April 30th

A complete cleaning of the CREWS station in La Parguera, Puerto Rico was performed on April 16, 2008 by Francisco Soto and Katie Flynn.

The validation CT was installed at 7:50am and removed at 11:30am. The station was cleaned between 9:15 and 9:55am.

Cleaning Update March 26th

A complete cleaning of the CREWS station in La Parguera, Puerto Rico was performed on March 26, 2008 by Francisco Soto and Katie Flynn.

The validation CT was installed at 7:50am and removed at 11:05am. The station was cleaned between 9:15 and 9:55am.

Cleaning Update March 4th 2008

A complete cleaning of the CREWS station in La Parguera, Puerto Rico was performed on March 4, 2007 by Francisco Soto and Katie Flynn.

The validation CT was installed at 8:45am and removed at 12:15pm. The station was cleaned between 10:05 and 10:55am.

Feb.19-20, 2008 Base Repair

The base was repaired with about 370 lbs. of Portland Type I concrete. After cleaning
the exposed surfaces, small batches of concrete were mixed on the surface and brought
down for application. All four corners of the base had 2-3" hollows exposing the thread
of the corner bolts under the plate. The southern edge of the plate lost about 4" of concrete
probably due to water movement from the last hurricane. Hypothesis is that sufficient
force was put on pylon and translated to base to make the base flex about 1", cracking the
concrete on all sides. All voids were packed with new concrete and an additional layer
of canvas bags full of concrete were added in a circle around the plate, with rebar rods
securing the bags to the underlying concrete. Cracking along base plate edges should
be reported as soon as possible before further erosion occurs. Concrete repair may have to
be a normal annual function for this site. Baseplate condition should be annotated for
the monthly maintenence visits.

Update February 6, 2008

A complete cleaning of the CREWS station in La Parguera, Puerto Rico was performed on February 6, 2008 by Francisco Soto and Katie Flynn.

The validation CT was installed at 8:50am and removed at 12:15am. The station was cleaned between 10:10 and 10:55 am.

The cement around the base needs to be replaced.

Cleaning update january 16, 2008

A complete cleaning of the CREWS station in La Parguera, Puerto Rico was performed on January 16, 2008 by Joselyd Garcia and Katie Flynn.

The validation CT was installed at 7:50am and removed at 12:10am. The station was cleaned between 9:05 and 10:00am.

The cement around the base plate is deteriorating and needs to be replaced!