Taking the long way home

By Hannah Piecuch | June 9, 2020

When COVID-19 shutdowns stranded ROV Jason and AUV Sentry in the South Pacific, the National Deep Submergence Facility (NDSF) planned to put the vehicles on a commercial carrier vessel and get them back to Woods Hole as quickly as possible. But the journey home was far from simple, according to Kevin Kavanaugh, a field operations coordinator at NDSF who managed the journey every step of the way while working from home. “With COVID-19 travel restrictions and border closures, getting these vehicles back was quite the logistical challenge,” he said. In early March, the vehicles were in Fiji awaiting pick-up by R/V Thomas G. Thompson for a science expedition. But Thompson was rerouted from Fiji at the outset of the COVID-19 crisis, and then the country closed all ports except Suva. Since there is no direct ship traffic from Suva to the U.S., the NDSF team started looking for a passage via New Zealand. When Kavanaugh secured space on a container ship for the vehicles, which travel in nine shipping containers, that vessel broke down and was pulled from service. Then—as if managing transit during a global pandemic wasn’t difficult enough—Tropical Cyclone Harold closed the port of Suva for two days. When Jason and Sentry were finally loaded on a vessel bound for Tauranga, New Zealand nearly six weeks had elapsed. Since then, transit has proceeded smoothly. From New Zealand, the vehicles were loaded on another vessel and bound for Long Beach, California, where they arrived earlier this week. Presently, they are on their way across the U.S. in tractor trailer trucks. Sentry Team lead Sean Kelley is eager to have his vehicle back home and feels the journey won’t be complete until they unpack Sentry and perform a deck test to assess its status—a necessary step before he can decide how exactly to proceed. “Sentry hasn’t been back in Woods Hole since last summer and since then it has been shipped all over the world,” he said. Both the Jason and Sentry Groups have adjusted their maintenance to accommodate the shutdown. Up next for Sentry is testing a new mission controller that will allow the vehicle to map the seafloor while it traces patterns other than the standard parallel line configuration. Jason is scheduled for a scientific cruise out of Newport, Oregon, in July and will be in Woods Hole only briefly. But this won’t prevent the Jason Group from making the most of the two-and-a-half weeks the vehicle will be on shore. “We’ll check and repack the vehicle,” said Jason Group Lead Matt Heintz, “At the same time, we’ll test a new Jetway power system, a 10km cable, and do some maintenance on the overboard handling system.” When Jason arrives in Oregon for its next cruise, Heintz has requested that the facility in Newport allow his team to continue work on Jason during their two-week quarantine period before the cruise begins. Everyone is looking forward to having the vehicles back in-house, according to NDSF Director Andrew Bowen. “They are after all just robot machines, so it’s not quite the same as welcoming someone home,” he said. “But I am quite sure everyone will have a collective sigh of relief when both vehicles are back in Woods Hole.”

Getting Jason and Sentry back to Woods Hole in the face of cancelled expeditions, closed ports, and tropical cyclones

Cape Cod Times: Plunging into the final frontier

By Hannah Piecuch | April 13, 2020

“Now an $8 million upgrade to the submersible powerhouse Alvin will allow WHOI researchers nearly unprecedented access to some of the most inaccessible corners of the world’s deepest waters, helping us once again to remember what it means to be amazed.” Read an opinion piece on the Alvin upgrade in the Cape Cod Times.

COVID-19 information for NDSF user community

By Hannah Piecuch | March 31, 2020

Following guidance from UNOLS and our host site Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), the National Deep Submergence Facility is monitoring the situation related to COVID-19 closely and taking appropriate actions to keep our team and users safe. We are in the process of bringing all vehicles back to their home port in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.…

Vineyard Current: Andy Bowen on the past and future of deep sea exploration

By Hannah Piecuch | February 4, 2020

Listen as NDSF Director Andy Bowen reflects on deep sea exploration and the challenges of building the robots of the future on an episode of The Vineyard Current, produced by MVYRadio. The interview aired to preview a talk Bowen will give at Falmouth Academy’s Community Forum on February 6 at 7pm. Bowen will share the…

Underway: Alvin and Sentry on the Hot2Cold Vents cruise at 9°50’N

By Hannah Piecuch | December 19, 2019

Continuing work started earlier in 2019, the Sylvan Geomicrobiology Lab from Texas A&M returns to 9°50’N on the East Pacific Rise with Alvin and Sentry to study organisms that live in hydrothermal vent ecosystems and the surrounding seafloor terrain. Follow along on the cruise blog. Read more about the research project.

Lightning Deployment

By Hannah Piecuch | October 29, 2019

The Sentry Team and deck crew on the research vessel Atlantis had to move quickly in order to launch the autonomous underwater vehicle between squalls off the West Coast recently. Sentry was participating in the University of Washington-led Pythias Oasis expedition funded by the National Science Foundation to map a seafloor fluid “seep” named after the Greek oracle at the Temple of Apollo in Delphi built…

Sentry maps the seafloor at the Marion Rise

By Hannah Piecuch | October 1, 2019

Check out the cruise site for Sentry’s deployment in the Indian Ocean this past spring. Sentry mapped ~10,000 square kilometers of mantle exposed at the seafloor in this previously unexplored region. Read the daily cruise blog and more about Sentry and the Sentry team.

Christian Science Monitor: How the deep sea could unlock outer space

By Hannah Piecuch | September 10, 2019

Read an article in the Christian Science Monitor exploring how deep-sea research by the oceanographic community—long enabled by NDSF vehicles—has redefined the understanding of where life can exist. Now that knowledge is being used to look for life beyond Earth.

Alvin in HuffPost: Chasing the methane dragon

By Hannah Piecuch | September 5, 2019

“A submersible dive is like a slow-motion fall through a distant galaxy.” Read a HuffPost article about scientists using Alvin to study how cold methane seeps are responding to a warming ocean (and a journalist’s first deep sea dive).

Disasters at Sea: NDSF assists in investigating sinking of El Faro

By Hannah Piecuch | August 29, 2019

Watch an episode of Smithsonian Channel’s Disasters at Sea to see how a team from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and NDSF assisted with the recovery of the voyage data recorder a year after cargo ship El Faro sank.

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