Decisions, decisions

Honey Badger is currently 1070 km from home.  There have been a lot of clouds over the Honey Badger's area the past week, so it has been tough to figure out if the wispy blob of chlorophyll we set out to find was real or not.  However, the most recent one day imagery seems to show that there's nothing special there at the moment.  You can see way point 56 is in the middle of a nicely blue area, and all the interesting yellow-green (higher chl) is off to our west.  Honey Badger is  just at the eastern edge of the no data swath, heading east at 1.2 knots (practically a rooster tail).  Cara and I need to contemplate our options. 

1 day image 18 July 2015

Emily Anderson,  a new M.S. student in my lab, has arrived and is working on the data set.  We'll get her signed up to blog in the next week so she can keep us updated on what she's doing. 

The instruments are sending back good data, although the SMC computer and the phytoflash are not getting along very well.  The problem is likely in the software on the SMC running the phytflash.  It's a new configuration for the wave glider and our budget did not allow extensive testing of it.  Most of the time the phytoflash runs fine.   Periodically something in the system takes a time out from sampling (a coffee break, we call them) and returns in about an hour.  Sometimes it does not come back from the coffee break and goes into dreamtime.  I have to restart the system to get its attention and get the phytoflash running again. 

 Later this week, I"ll post some of the really interesting data we are seeing in the phytoflash.  It is showing the sorts of patterns reported by Mike Behrenfeld in one of his papers a few years ago, and it will allow us to make some interpretations about the types of nutrient limitations found in blooms.  Assuming we find one....

Lost and found

After a somewhat angst-filled morning, Danny, the wise project manager, noted that the tow cable is in plain view.  It is the line with the 4 marks, followed by the 5 bright spots. Those are the weights and floats on it.  I knew that.   So, the LISST-Holo is apparently still with us. 

On another note, the fish actually have names.  The 5 big ones are mahi-mahi and the two smaller blue ones (one has stripes) are pilot fish.  There is a bunch of fuzz on the left hand side of the image in front of the float. These could be small bait fish of some sort, or (more likely)  it could just be schmutz on the lens or camera port.   This is quite the collection.  Our own little Honey Badger ecosystem. 

Honey Badger made some friends...

This image was taken at 12:00 local time on July 1. The honey badger had just made an odd little loop de loop (centered at 28.15°N) which was probably related to some shear in the currents associated with the eddy we are heading into, but we took a look at the camera pics to make sure nothing was wrapped around the umbilical cord. What is worrying is that the holo tether isn't visible. Hopefully is it hidden behind the umbilical. We'll be looking at more pictures to try to confirm that it is still there.

Arrived at 29°N!

A few days ago HB arrived at 29°N, our target latitude since this is where the blooms develop. The glider got here in good time, and we’ve got a few weeks to go before the bloom season gets going as they start to develop in July. Their latitude is usually pretty consistent, but they longitude is more variable, they develop somewhere between 130°-150°W. That's over 1,000 km, which is a big distance to cover, especially for a wave glider moving at a little over a knot! Obviously we are hoping for blooms to develop closer to 150°W than 130°W. While we are waiting for a bloom to develop we are going to head due south, into the center of a little eddy that blew the HB off course on the way up north. The HB's position on June 25, and the new waypoint (the big star) are shown in the image below. However this change of course puts us going directly into the prevailing current, so it might be a little slow going.

New Data Viewing Feature

Lynn DeWitt, the website designer,  added a data tab to the MAGI website which shows the past 7 days of data for all the relevant data streams on Honey Badger, a master systems control page!  Very cool - thanks Lynn!

Week 1

Honey Badger has been on its own for a week now, sailing (steaming?  flapping?) its way north.  All the sensors are working pretty well. There is a bit of a puzzle with one of the C3 sensors that is reporting chlorophyll, CDOM (colored dissolved organic material) and phycoerythrin.   It is connected to a computer board that allows us to change the sampling and averaging.  For some, yet unknown reason, the values from a single measurement every 10 minutes are 2 times the value of the values when 10 samples are taken and averaged together.  This is the data feed on the webpage, and you can see the jump back and forth as we changed the sampling.  It's very odd.  Fortunately, we have a redundant C3 sensor as well as the phytoflash unit. This latter instrument is not on the webpage since the data is a bit complicated to use and not as obvious as to meaning as things like temperature, salinity and pigment.

When in Hawaii,  I was given a unique WaveGlider data stick. It's cool. 

I wish it had a working sub-body (the part with the flapping vanes) so that we could have races! 

 Next time, I will tell the story of the Honey Badger Naming Ceremony that happened in Monterey, CA. 

The mission has begun!

Honey Badger is off to the North Pacific!  We replaced the TBT anti-fouling device over-nighted from Seabird Electronics last night (Thank you, Seabird) on the deck of the boat this morning, activated the Vengmar acoustic listening instrument  provided by Barbara Block of Stanford (listens for tagged animals, probably mostly sharks if we happen by one), and checked on the plugs in the tow fish.  Everything went splendidly and now Honey Badger is heading off to  the northwest.

Track as of 17:54 Hawaii Standard Time.  This can be seen on the main project page.  Honey Badger is where the big green dot it. 

The TBT anti-fouling device.   Brad's pinky is holding it in place until it gets reassembled.

Me checking on the electronics plug.  I fretted about this all weekend. They were tight. 

 This is the final picture of Honey Badger before it sails off into the open Pacific.  Good luck!