The Final Float Deployments

I must admit that I had an initial creative block when thinking of decorating the final SOCCOM float of the cruise. Students from New Hanover Township School named the float “Southern Ocean Spy” because it would be “spying” on the Southern Ocean by taking important measurements and helping unlock its secrets.  I even asked my coworker from Seattle what they thought I should do, and they suggested having the float in full tuxedo garb. The tuxedo idea had a certain James Bond vibe to it that I liked, but I thought it would be hard to implement in practice. For starters, it would have required the sacrifice of many black Sharpies.

The inspiration came one day when I was talking to my fellow shipmate Rachel. We were reminiscing about playing Pokemon in our childhood (and occasionally in our adulthood) when the idea was suddenly tossed to have a Pokemon float. The only remaining float was the “Southern Ocean Spy” so we decided to put a Pikachu in a spy outfit and have it spying on a penguin. In hindsight, Pikachu’s clothes look more detective than spy. Floats also don’t collect data on penguins, but it’s not like we were going to have the Pikachu looking at nitrate. In any case, Rachel and I had a blast decorating the float, and we hope the students of New Hanover don’t mind the artistic license we took.

The ”Southern Ocean Spy” is ready to go

The “Spy” was deployed shortly after station 82. The deployment was at night, which I was initially disappointed about because my pictures never turn out well when it’s dark outside. Alison then made an excellent point that it was fitting that the “Spy” got deployed in the dark of night where it can slink off secretly on its mission. The deployment went smoothly, and we watched as the yellow blob floated away on a sea of black.

The “Spy” was accompanied by the deployment of an EM Apex float from the University of Washington Applied Physics Lab. The EM stands for electromagnetic, and as the name suggests the float is able to measure the surrounding electromagnetic field, which lets it estimate the velocity of the water current. This float has some unique features including electrodes and a fin ring that surrounds the float. The fin ring is delicate, which makes the normal approach of deploying the float over the side of the ship with some line too risky. This meant that we had to use the A frame for the deployment in order to get the float away from the side.

All of the previous float deployments had only required a couple of minutes, but the EM floats proved to be a little more time intensive as we had to rig up the A frame. The float had a special harness that had two places to attach lines. One line looped through a handle on the harness, and this line was to hold the weight of the float. Another line was attached to a release pin on the harness, and this line was to remain slack until the float was over the water and ready to be released. There were a couple of other lines attached to the float to prevent the float from swinging around while getting it over the side. Finally after all the rigging of the lines was complete, we got the float over the rail and away from the ship. We then lowered the float to right above the water, and the person holding the release line gave the line a good yank.  The float burst free from its harness, and it was successfully deployed!

Now that all the floats are off the boat, I want to take a moment to appreciate how great it was to be able to take part in their deployments. It was awesome having so many people on board participate and help out with the floats. The two marine techs (Jenny and Tony) are awesome and did a fantastic job deploying them. It was also great to hear about all the students learning about the floats and the Southern Ocean! Maybe one day, some of them will be out on one of these cruises.

 

Ellen, Bingkun, and I getting ready to deploy the EM Apex float.