Ship Operations-R/V Melville

University Of California-San Diego Scripps Inst Of Oceanography, La Jolla CA

Investigators

Abstract

The University of California, San Diego proposed to operate the research vessel Melville to support NSF-funded scientific research at sea in the year 2005. NSF-sponsored projects account for 74% of the work of the vessel for the year (section 5). The ship will spend 2005 in the Pacific, supporting nine very different NSF funded scientific programs in areas ranging from Suva to Seattle and working in the southern ocean down to 55S. This award is a 5-year cooperative agreement, and funds for the years 2006 to 2009 will be negotiated as ship schedules develop to support NSF research. Intellectual and Technical Merit: The intellectual merit of the proposed work is indirect. It derives from the intellectual merit of the individual research projects that depend upon the shipboard work at sea. For example, in February-March the ship will support a geophysical study (Lyle) using seismic and coring techniques to characterize the sedimentary structures at sites targeted for future ocean drilling under the International Ocean Drilling Program (IODP). In turn the IODP drilling will study the patterns of oceanic and atmospheric circulation on earth during the period of extreme warmth in the Eocene, and define differences in ocean circulation between the Eocene and Neogene periods. The sediment cores to be retrieved in the drilling program (and some to be taken in the 2005 program on Melville), when examined for the types and abundances of organisms present in different sediment layers (thus different times in the past), afford inferences about the overlying ocean conditions that nurtured those organisms in those locations prior to their sinking to the seafloor and their deposition in the sediments. The Eocene is an example of extraordinary warm periods in the absence of human interventions in the climate system; understanding the natural potential for climate variability is fundamental. A key is that the ship, her crew and her technical support staff must be . and are - capable and ready to change between radically dissimilar scientific programs during the brief in-port periods scheduled. Extensive loading, offloading, laboratory reconfiguration and setup, and installations of heavy, project-specific deck equipment and container vans are port call commonplaces, in 2005 as in other years. Of special note is support of projects in April-June that involve the new JASON-II remotely operated, vehicle system, a demanding technical and logistical process for NSF-Ridge 2000 in the Lau Basin. Melville operations must successfully support the coring team from Oregon State University. Long-coring apparatus is heavy and potentially dangerous; safe operations require ship capability coordinated with high expertise among all crew and scientists involved. Broader Impacts: The primary impact of ship operations is on the education of many students, principally but not exclusively graduate students in the ocean sciences. The great majority of scientific parties on Scripps (and other UNOLS) ships contain students in their ranks. They form integral parts of the research teams. By going to sea they obtain firsthand experience of the conduct of seagoing research, they learn the difficulties that surround the gathering of meaningful observations from the real ocean, and they gain valuable preparation for leading their own research projects at sea in their future careers. A second important impact is on public appreciation of ocean science. Research ships are novel, attractive venues for tours by school groups and other interested citizens. To the maximum extent feasible within the context of necessary work and constraints of new port and vessel security requirements, Scripps tries to accommodate all such outreach instances in port, in San Diego and elsewhere, since this gives positive representation to science in general and to seagoing ocean science in particular. R/V Melville is one of the UNOLS ships equipped with C-band satellite communications (HiSeasNet), affording Internet connectivity at sea. Using this facility on a cruise near Papua New Guinea in early 2004, Driscoll was able to establish and update a project website ashore to provide a near-real-time view of the work to students and other interested parties, augmented by occasional real-time interactions via the net. Scripps also frequently receives inquiries from the public about volunteering to work at sea on a research vessel, often as a result of having browsed our marine (http://www.sio.ucsd.edu/shipsked/) or general institutional (http://www.sio.ucsd.edu/) website. They maintain information about volunteering on the site, pointing such inquirers toward scheduled chief scientists who may have need of volunteer assistance. There are university procedures in place to enroll volunteers on behalf of projects headed by UC-affiliated investigators, thereby providing appropriate insurance coverage, etc. In cases when volunteers and projects do connect successfully, strong educational experiences arise that can awaken a continuing interest in the oceans and ocean science.