MVCO Waves Newsletter - January 8, 2003
(Click here for pdf version)

	R/V Connecticut prepares to deploy a SPACE tripod off the stern A-frame, while Scripps engineer and diver James Uyloan, on the ASIT leg, communicates with divers aiming a transducer at the acoustic array. R/V Asterias, R/V Mytilus, a rubber boat, and the F/V Morue were also involved in parts of the deployment.

A mile southwest of MVCO, the CBLAST facility had a big month in November. No sooner had it come on line than the key players in the multi-institution ONR SPACE program (Surface Processes and Acoustic Communications Experiments) arrived to move onto the site. WHOI's Jim Preisig hosted Grant Deane and Dale Stokes from Scripps and Svein Vagle from the Institute of Ocean Sciences in British Columbia.

Deployment of the diverse and complex suite of both horizontal and vertical moorings, tripods, and acoustic arrays was led by WHOI's Will Ostrom. A mini-fleet of small vessels and ten divers have been involved in the instrument installation. An innovative horizontal mooring supported three instrument frames to collect data on acoustic propagation in wave generated bubble clouds. A camera, positioned 180 ft. above them on a small blimp, recorded the visual image of the sea state. Periodic gale winds and dropping temperatures combined to test the mettle of the crew, a determined and robust group, who proved to be up to the challenging tasks and very long days of deploying, recovering, repairing, and redeploying. The six-week deployment was recovered the first week of December.

CBLAST On-Line

Jim Edson and Steve Faluotico have also been busy deploying the first of the CBLAST multi-instrument mini-nodes. Designed by Jon Ware, the system uses a PC-104 to manage acquisition from a suite of instruments communicating via ethernet. With the capability of handling up to eight instruments per mini-node, the scope of the 19 ports in the ASIT electronics bottle is greatly expanded.

Returning Users

December brought the return of the NRL group for another year of watching the winter storms reorganize the benthic sediments at the 12M node. Peter Traykovski and Jim Irish are hosting Mike Richardson's group from NRL in Mississippi. They redeployed the NRL optical burial instrument, a full spectrum of current meters and scanning head sonars, as well as Peter's new bedload sensor with its own mini-node developed by Jim Irish. The off-season has been busy for this group too, although much easier than their winter deployments. They took advantage of the summer to mount several cruises to the site for an extensive bathymetric survey in July and vibrocoring for sediment samples in August.

Ethernet User Bulletin

Users planning to use Ethernet protocol should check with Marga for the latest engineering notes on using the guest port test equipment and assuring that your configuration properly simulates that at the nodes. We have found that the documentation (which is being upgraded) has led to some confusion, which we are trying to eliminate. Also, check the web pages for the latest information on changes, due to system upgrades, to the connectors and locking sleeves needed to install instruments at MVCO.

User Group Meeting

MVCO is well into its second year of full operation with a growing and diverse user community. Many lessons have been learned and we are ready to share our experience base and improve our user services. A user group meeting will be held Thursday, January 23, in Smith conference room from 10 to 11:30 AM. The two goals of the meeting are to explain the MVCO organization and support and to gather feedback from the user community.

Agenda:
· Description of management plan (Edson 10 min)
· Self-introduction of users with brief description of work program (15 min)
· Open discussion: user experience and connection issues (45+ min)
· Summary: priorities & items for future meetings (10 min)

Feedback, suggestions or comments on this newsletter may be sent to mmcelroy@whoi.edu.

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