TROPICAL ATMOSPHERE-OCEAN (TAO) PROGRAM
FINAL

CRUISE INSTRUCTIONS

FOR

KA-00-09 (GP8-00-KA)

November 16 - December 14, 2000


TAO Program Director

Dr. Michael J. McPhaden
PMEL, TAO Project Office
7600 Sand Point Way NE
Seattle, WA 98115

Area: Western Equatorial Pacific

Itinerary:

KA-00-09 Kwajalein, RMI dep. 16 Nov 2000
Honolulu, HI arr. 14 Dec 2000

CRUISE DESCRIPTION

General guidelines are contained in the TAO Program Standard Operating Instructions for NOAA Ship KA'IMIMOANA dated June 09, 2000.

Cruise Objective and Plan:

The objective of this cruise is the maintenance of the TAO Array along the 165E and 180 meridians. The scientific complement will embark in Kwajalein Atoll, Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) and depart aboard KA'IMIMOANA on November 16, 2000 to commence operations as listed in Appendix A. After completion of operations, KA'IMIMOANA will proceed to Honolulu, Hawaii arriving on or about December 14, 2000. All dates and times referred to in these cruise instructions are in Hawaiian Standard Time (HST).

PMC Operations: TAO Operations Manager:

Larry Mordock CDR Mark Ablondi, NOAA
NOAA/PMC (PMC1x3) PMEL, TAO, R/E/PM
1801 Fairview Ave. East 7600 Sand Point Way NE
Seattle, WA 98102-3767 Seattle, WA 98115-0070
(206) 553-4764 (206) 526-6403

Larry.Mordock@noaa.gov mark.ablondi@noaa.gov

1.0 PERSONNEL

1.1 CHIEF SCIENTIST AND PARTICIPATING SCIENTISTS:

Chief Scientist: Linda Stratton

The Chief Scientist is authorized to revise or alter the scientific portion of the cruise plan as work progresses provided that, after consultation with the Commanding Officer, it is ascertained that the proposed changes will not: (1) jeopardize the safety of personnel or the ship; (2) exceed the overall time allotted for the cruise; (3) result in undue additional expenses; (4) alter the general intent of these instructions. A list of participating scientists follows in this set of specific cruise instructions. All participating scientists will submit a medical history form and be medically approved before embarking.

Participating Scientists

Name Sex Nationality Affiliation

1. Linda Stratton F USA NOAA/PMEL
2. Brian Powers M USA NOAA/PMEL
3. Ryan Leslie M USA NOAA/PMEL
4. Tara Stoffel F USA Bloomsburg University
5. June Firing F USA University of Hawaii/JIMAR (for SWFSC2, NMFS)

2.0 OPERATIONS

Mooring Operations are scheduled to be conducted as shown in Appendix A. Operations will be conducted from 8N - 165E to 8S - 165E and thence to 8S - 180 to 8N -180. The following mooring operations are anticipated, though the work may be changed by direction of the Chief Scientist, in consultation with the Commanding Officer.

Location Mooring Type Operation

8N 165E ATLAS II - Taut Repair (Rad)

5N 165E ATLAS II - Taut Recover/Deploy

2N 165E ATLAS II - Taut Repair (Rad)

0 165E ATLAS II - Taut Recover/Deploy (Insert/Faired)

ADCP Deploy

(Avoid JAMSTEC ADCP at: 0-00.1N, 165-16.8E)

2S 165E ATLAS II - Taut Repair (Rad)

5S 165E ATLAS II - Taut Recover/Deploy

8S 165E ATLAS II - Taut Repair (Rad)

8S 180 Standard ATLAS Recover/Deploy

5S 180 Standard ATLAS Visit

2S 180 Standard ATLAS Recover

ATLAS II - Taut Deploy

0 180 ATLAS II - Taut Recover/Deploy

1N 180 SOLO Drifter Float Deployment upon departing station

(Prior to entering Kiribati EEZ)

2N 180 ATLAS II - Taut Visit

3N 180 SOLO Drifter Float Deployment upon departing CTD station

5N 180 Standard ATLAS Visit

5N 180 SOLO Drifter Float Deployment upon departing station

8N 180 Standard ATLAS Visit

8N 180 SOLO Drifter Float Deployment upon departing station

20.6N 161.4W BIGEYE - Taut Recover/Deploy


2.1 South West Fisheries Science Center 2 (SWFSC2) BIGEYE mooring

The National Marine Fisheries Service, SWFSC2, Honolulu Laboratory in collaboration with TAO will recover and deploy a taut-line (0.985 scope) surface mooring in the bigeye tuna fishing grounds southwest of the main Hawaiian Islands to observe the vertical structure of temperature and velocity between 50m and 500m. The mooring site, 20o36.0'N, 161o24.2'W, is at the TOPEX/JASON crossover point in approximately 4780m of water. This location is along the track of northwestward propagating cyclonic mesoscale eddies generated at the Alenuihaha Channel between the islands of Maui and Hawaii. This is the second year of this three year mooring program (through 2002).

Principle Investigators:

CDR Russell E. Brainard, NOAA, SWFSC 808-983-5392 Rusty.Brainard@noaa.gov
Jeffrey J. Polovina, SWFSC 808-983-5390 Jeffrey.Polovina@noaa.gov
Michael P. Seki, SWFSC 808-983-5393 Michael.Seki@noaa.gov

2.2 Bloomsburg University Barnacle Census Barnacles will be collected in accordance with TAO Standard Operating Instructions. A pre and post cruise inventory of Hazardous Materials (Hazmat) brought aboard and offloaded from the ship will be given to the Chief Scientist and Commanding Officer. All Hazardous Materials will be properly labeled as to content, Hazmat classification and cruise number.

A growth monitoring study of a selection of barnacles from the first recovered buoy may be conducted. Requirements include water from the uncontaminated seawater line (about 4 liters/minute) and incubator space (footprint: 2 ft X 2.5 ft with two ½ inch hoses for overboard discharge) on the starboard weather deck in the CTD staging area, with constant supply of water from the uncontaminated seawater line.

2.3 Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) Underway Mapping

2.3.1 Underway Mapping

The MBARI underway-mapping system (temperature and fluorescence) will be on-line and running throughout this cruise. Phytoplankton work consisting of chlorophyll and nutrients extractions will be extracted from CTD water samples at 0, 10, 25, 40, 60, 100, 150 and 200m. The total volume used from each bottle, including rinses is approximately one liter; except for the surface bottle, which will require approximately three liters. This requires use of the sink/bench area of the wet lab.

2.3.2 Productivity Measurements (C-14)

Five milli Curies of radioactive carbon isotope diluted in approximately 50 Liters of seawater used for productivity measurements on the previous cruise (KA-00-08) will be stored aboard for removal in Honolulu. MBARI's NRC-241 (Report of Proposed Activities in Non-Agreement States) permit will remain in effect. The Liquid Scintillation Counter (LSC) will also remain aboard located either in the wet lab or stored below in scientific stores.

2.4 Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML) Surface Drifters

The Global Drifter Center at NOAA/AOML requests drifter deployments on an ancillary basis. The drifters are small, easily deployed devices which are tracked by Argos and provide Sea Surface Temperature (SST) and mixed layer currents. The global array of drifters provides SST ground truth for NOAA's polar orbiting satellite AVHRR SST maps. They also provide data to operational meteorological and ocean models, and research ocean current data sets.

Most often, drifter deployments are requested when crossing 00 30.0N, the Equator, and 00 30.0S. Drifter deployments are frequently requested at other locations along the cruise track. Typically, less than 12 deployments are requested on a cruise. The deployments should have little or no impact upon primary ship operations. Questions should be directed to:

Craig Engler, Global Drifter Center, NOAA/AOML
305-361-4439 (office) or 305-361-4392 (fax)
Craig.Engler@noaa.gov or http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/phod.html

2.5 Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) SOLO Deep Ocean Drifters

Four "SOLO" (Sounding Oceanographic Lagrangian Observer) Drifters will be deployed at latitudes as specified in "Section 2.0 Operations" above (i.e., 1N, 3N, 5N, and 8N along 180).

Each SOLO float is self contained and should require minimal shipboard preparation prior to deployment. SOLO floats can be deployed at full speed. Whenever SOLO deployment sites coincide with Mooring or CTD operations, it is requested that SOLO deployments be made post mooring or CTD operations as KA'IMIMOANA departs the station.

2.6 Portable Radiation Package (PRP)

2.6.1 Description
A Portable Radiation Package (PRP) installed on the aft conn (October 2000), will be operated to provide a continuous high-quality set of open ocean solar and long-wave radiation. This sampling is part of the Brookhaven National Laboratory's Shipboard Oceanographic and Atmospheric Radiation (SOAR) program whereby a suite of ships across the world will be instrumented with the highest caliber of radiation instrumentation with the intent of collected a long-term global oceanic radiation data set.

The PRP is produced by Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) as part of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) program. The deployment of this instrument on KA'IMIMOANA is part of a long-term collaboration between ARM and NOAA to collect long-term data sets of atmospheric radiation as part of their common global climate research effort. KA'IMIMOANA's theater of operation (Equatorial Tropical Pacific) is of particular interest to ARM's research in tropical climate.

The PRP is approximately 24 inches in diameter and weighs about 30 lbs. The PRP is a precise radiation instrument and measures shortwave and longwave downward radiation. The Fast Rotating Shadowband Radiometer (FRSR) on the PRP makes measurements of the solar radiation with six narrowband filters and can separate the incoming radiation into its direct-beam and diffuse (sky) components.

The PRP will communicate to a small laptop computer, the PRP-Data Acquisition computer (P-DAC), via EIA422 serial computer line. A 16 VDC power supply will power the instrument. These will be located inside the ship and as close to the ship's SCS computer as possible. The P-DAC will be a Windows PC operating a MS-DOS program. A high-resolution (6.5 sec sample) data set will be accumulated in the P-DAC and written onto a 100 MB zip drive (30 days per disk approx).

The P-DAC will provide an RS-232 (9600 baud) serial connection to the SCS computer and a subset of the PRP data will be transmitted as a NMEA-like ASCII string to the SCS. (The PRP parent will add approximately 10 new children (measurements) to the SCS system.)

2.6.2 Operation and Routine Maintenance

During the cruise the PRP system is meant to be almost completely autonomous, requiring typically 10-20 minutes of ST or ET daily. The three optical domes on the PRP plate should be wiped down on a regular basis. Daily cleaning is best, but we have seen no degradation in performance even after several days without cleaning, especially if it has rained.

The zip disk on the P-DAC needs to be checked routinely to be sure it is not full. The data collection program must be checked to correct any time drift.

During the cruise an SCS Event will produce a sub-sampled data set of crucial ship underway information (5-min samples). The daily event file will be approximately 10 KBytes in size. This file can be sent to BNL by email so they can assess system operation and data quality and assist in maintenance activities.

At the end of the cruise, the Survey Tech will prepare the following data set:

1. All PRP raw data zip disks.
2. All SCS data files containing the following information (date, time, 1.lat, lon, COG, SOG, HDG, SPD, selected met/ocean data).

These data can be written onto a special CD and mailed to BNL for data processing.

On several occasions during the year, a BNL technician will meet the ship in port to perform routine quality assurance checks of the calibrations, to make any repairs or sub-assembly exchanges, and to provide any needed additional training for ship personnel. It will be the responsibility of BNL to keep the PRP operating properly and in specified tolerances.

2.6.3 Data Processing

Data processing is the responsibility of the BNL Shipboard Oceanographic and Atmospheric Radiation (SOAR) program. It is our intent to produce final, quality-assured data sets within two months after the receipt of the data CD's from the ship and to make these data available by Internet communication. The ARM database and ARM archive will be at least one final resting place for these data sets. There will be no restrictions on data availability.

As part of the DOE/ARM and NOAA collaboration, wherever KA'IMIMOANA is in the vicinity of TAO buoys, cross inter-comparisons between the buoys and the ship will be made as a check on data accuracy.

2.6.4 Acronyms:

ARM: Atmospheric Radiation Measurement
ET: Electronic Technician
DOE: U.S. Department of Energy
SCS: Scientific Computer System
BNL: Brookhaven National Laboratory
PRP: Portable Radiation Package
P-DAC: PRP Data Acquisition Computer
PIR: Precision Infrared Radiometer
PSP: Precision Spectral Pyranometer
Principle Investigator:

Dr. R. Michael Reynolds reynolds@bnl.gov Brookhaven National Laboratory, Bldg 490d, Upton NY 11973 (t) 631.344.7836 (f) 631.344.2060 (cell) 631.523.7525

3.0 Hazardous Materials

The Chief Scientist is responsible for the proper and safe storage of scientific hazardous material and complying with NC Instruction 6280B, Hazardous Materials and Hazardous Waste Policy, Guidance, and Training, dated May 8, 1991. This includes the requirement for the Chief Scientist to remove all scientific team hazardous materials and waste at the end of the cruise.

3.1 Ancillary Projects Hazardous Materials

1. Acetone 12 Liters MBARI
2. Hydrochloric Acid (HCL) 5 Liters MBARI
3. Radioactive Carbon Isotopes 5 mCi MBARI
(5 milli Curies diluted in 50 Liters of seawater)
4. Soda lime 1 kg MBARI
5. Liquid Nitrogen 20 Liters MBARI
6. Formalin (50% stored in Wx deck Hazmat locker) 16 Liters Bloomsburg University
(diluted to 5% working solution for wet lab use)

Appendices
  • Operations Spreadsheet
  • Trackline
  • Mooring Equipment Weight List