notes from maintenance trip (Dec 18 - 21, 2006)

Our trip lasted from Monday, December 18th through Thursday, December 21st. The team for this trip was Chris Langdon, Derek Manzello and Mike Jankulak (me). Alfonso (a student at UPR) stepped in at the last minute to pilot our boat on the 19th and 20th.

On Tuesday the 19th, we removed the electronics package (the "brain") and retrieved the SAMI pCO2 sensor. Both were brought back to the lab for work that afternoon and evening. Also, Chris reports that he cleaned the underwater light sensors.

Back at the lab, Chris downloaded the stored data from the SAMI, and it appears as though the instrument has been worked properly since its deployment in November. The "brain" had the following work done:

• the RF400 was updated to the latest firmware and set to 38.4K baud (and radio communications were tested in the lab)
  
• the barometer, whose molex plug was broken during removal, was rewired directly to the datalogger ports
  
• the transmitter was replaced with a unit brought from Miami for this purpose
  
• the datalogger program was updated to communicate with the SAMI at 19.2K baud (instead of 9600 baud)
  
• all stored data was downloaded from the memory module
  

On Wednesday the 20th, we started by completely replacing the satellite antenna and its cable, then reinstalled the "brain" package. At the same time, Chris and Derek redeployed the SAMI and cleaned the CTDs.

In our first post-installation test the Deep BIC was offline due to its power (+12V) wire having come loose, so the station was re-opened to correct this problem. However, all other instruments (including the Groundtruth CT and the SAMI itself) were working okay. In subsequent tests, 100% of station instrumentation was found to be connected properly and reporting correctly.

Note: we observed a large bird "parked" on the surface light sensor for parts of Wednesday morning. We have one picture of this bird. There was also a lot of bird guano on the satellite antenna, which is the largest, highest and flattest part of the station.

Conclusions: the SAMI is now connected and its data is available on our web site. We conclude that there was never any cable or wiring problems with the SAMI and the reason it didn't report data after the November trip was the incorrect baud rate (the SAMI was set to 19.2K baud, the datalogger to 9600 baud). This problem was fixed by updating the datalogger baud rate to 19.2K for the SAMI since we didn't have the needed hardware to change the baud rate on the SAMI.

Also, initial performance of the replaced transmitter/cable/antenna was encouraging although since then we've seen evidence that the transmitter may still be dropping transmissions as before (see, e.g., records from the early hours of December 24th). Since the transmitter, cable and satellite antenna have all been replaced it seems possible that something external is interfering with transmissions. I'm going to ask CSI whether this could be caused by a bird perching on the antenna (!).

Also note that UPR will need us to send them more copper screens for the CTDs.

-- Mike J+

Calibration

Ground-truth and cleaning.

[Entered for Francisco by Jim.]

more LPPR1 news from the field

I've spoken by phone with Chris Langdon, who is working at LPPR1 this week.

The SAMI is the same unit that I tested earlier this year in my office. It was set up to output a report once per hour, approximately on the hour. He is bringing me a sample of the instrument's output so I can check it against the programming.

The SAMI is connected but not reporting to the station. It seems unlikely that this is either a programming or instrument problem. That leaves cable failure or loose connections to the brain. The next trip will probably be designed around swapping the SAMI cable and verifying that the programming is correct and complete. In the meantime, the SAMI also logs all measurements to its own flash memory.

Other news: they've replaced the mounting arm of the Deep BIC with one fashioned by Manny. They've taken the old mount and used it to mount the Shallow BIC away from the station as well. Roy and Lew have both noticed that the Shallow BIC is shaded by the chains during the day, and it is hoped that this will correct that problem.

Chris also reports that they've cleaned the BICs.

-- Mike Jankulak

SAMI pCO2 installed

SAMI is installed since 10 am your time.  New bottom BIC bracket also installed.  Will talk to Roy about what to do about top BIC bracket. Let me know how how the pCO2 data look.

Chris Langdon
Research Assoc. Professor
RSMAS/MBF
Uni. of Miami
4600 Rickenbacker Cswy
Miami,FL 33149

The CREWS/ICON station received a complete cleaning and ground-truthing on Wednesday Oct. 18, 2006. No bleaching was observed. Basic cleaning was done on Oct 04, 2006. Next Basic cleaning planned for Nov. 01, 2006.

Bleaching assessment

Hi Jim:

I did not notice anything that could be considered “new” bleaching due to this summer’s conditions. Corals were pale to begin with before the 2006 summer warming began. But Ernesto has far more data and information than I do, so I’d like to read his opinion.

Alina
*******************************************************************
Dr. Alina M. Szmant
Coral Reef Research Group
UNCW-Center for Marine Science
5600 Marvin K. Moss Ln
Wilmington NC 28409

No Bleaching

Even though it has been a pretty warm summer, according to the local students and other observations, there has been no widespread coral bleaching.

Jim Hendee