Marine Debris UAS Survey

0600 - We woke up the morning to breaking seas and 25 kt winds.  During the night, the winds had continued blowing 20-30 kts which caused the seas to build.  Sleeping was still possible for us but the folks towards the bow had a harder time.  Our room is towards the stern where the ride is smoother.  The winds have continued throughout the day to blow 20-30 kts with higher gusts. The swell has built up as well and depending on our direction, makes for an interesting ride. All UAS and small boat operations were canceled for the day.

The Big Eyes team continued their survey up on the flight deck. Dressed in layers of their warmest clothes, with gloves and hats, they still are chilled after their 2 hour shift. This is not a Hawaiian cruise, despite the fact that we departed from Honolulu. Despite the limited visibility with the high seas, they continued to spot pieces of debris which usually showed up in clumps. No sightings would occur for a while and then suddenly, there would be a number of items coming by the ship. They are seeing everything from fishing debris to 55 gallon drums to a toilet seat. There are a lot of plastic pieces, bottles and misc. The big event of the day (so far) was when they spotted a hawser (barge towing) line. It was tangled up in a mass that was about 3-4 meters across. The yellow line undulated in the swell and waves and would go in and out of view. While they kept track of it, we decided that we would try and tag the line with a GhostNet buoy.  Small boat operations were not advisable so it was decided to bring the ship along side and pull part of it on board to attach the buoy and then let it go.  A hawser line, while a large mass of debris, is not a huge threat to marine mammals or coral reefs.  Tracking the movement of debris is very valuable information to help researchers determine how debris moves about the ocean.  The buoys are attached to the debris and then transmit their position twice a day via satellite.  In this manner, the debris can be tracked a it moves around in the ocean.  The tagging was successful and we continued on our way.

Late afternoon, we turned our course westward and will continue this direction throughout the night.  The turn put the swell and wind on our starboard side so the ship is rolling much steeper than it has been.  Sleeping tonight might be interesting, good thing they have "roll bars" on the  top bunks.

Woke up this morning to sunshine which was soon clouded over.  We prepped for 2 morning flights and during the final radio range test, we noticed some glitches in the radio controls.  After trouble shooting for 5 minutes, we asked for a 30 minute break while we continued to find the problem.  Right after calling for a break in ops, we entered a rain squall and had to break-down all the equipment (monitor, computers, DV recorders) that were sitting out on deck and get them back into their waterproof cases.  The winds came up as well so we decided to call off the morning flight ops.  That gave us time to continue our troubleshooting.  Ends up that everything checked out fine the second time.  Not sure what was causing the interference as we have not seen that before, but we will continue flights with a bit of caution.

It is now about 11am  and we will re-evaluate the weather situation after lunch for possible afternoon flight ops.  When the winds get above 15 kts, the seas are disturbed enough that seeing objects in the water becomes difficult.  That holds true for the video on-board the UAS as well as for the Big Eyes folks looking from the bridge.  The UAS can handle higher winds but the risk factor for take-off and landings increase.  Curt is making use of this downtime to work out some new code for the autonomous flight computer.  We will be trying different methods of surveying autonomously while the ship is under way.  The dynamic nature of this type of operations makes creating an adaptable survey method challenging.

1300 hrs - Winds have picked up to 20-25 kts and are climbing.  The seas are building and visibility is down due to rain.  Flight ops for the day are canceled.  We continue on our zig-zag transect as we crisscross the front in a westward direction.  With everything ready to fly, Curt is the only one doing any work today as he continues to refine software.  Look for pictures to be added throughout the  day.

1900 hrs - Gale force winds this afternoon and evening. The seas are building but the ride is comfortable.  Peak winds were over 40 kts gusting to mid 40's.  Not a good day for flying or small boat operations.  We are taking SST and Cl readings as we travel and are tracking the front as we head west.  Weather maps show a persistent high pressure system to the west and it is evident we are on the back side of the low.  If winds and seas calm down through the night, we will continue with UAS ops tomorrow.

The source of our trouble was the speed controller. After moving it to a less insulated position in Malolo 2's center section and installing a heat sink to dissipate the heat, our flight times improved dramatically. We flew two flights today with times of 47 minutes. As we are very busy with UAS Ops we haven't had time to upload photos. But Allan, Our Big Eyes team leader took some great shots of our take-offs and landings with his camera motor-drive whirring. We'll post them as soon as we can!

Today was our first day of UAS Ops. Just over seven hundred miles from the nearest point of land, the ATI team successfully completed three launches and three recoveries from the Oscar E. Sette.

We sailed clear of the fog and set up our equipment on the bow. After launching support boats, we went down our check list preparing to hand launch the Malolo 1 off the port (left) side. Tim donned his NOAA sanctioned protective gear and with a short jog and toss, the UAS was airborne—the first launch of a UAS off a NOAA ship. Curt, our seasoned RC pilot, climbed flew several passes by the ship. As he turned for another run, the motor cut out. Unfazed, Curt performed a flawless dead-stick landing next to the ship. Our support boat cruised up to it, the UAS was lifted from the water and brought back to the Sette. After transferring it back onboard ship, Tim and Mike carried it back up the the bow to be inspected and prepped for another launch.

The second launch was uneventful and Curt again flew past the ship, catching our chase boat and the Sette in our live video feed. After five minutes we again lost power and Curt performed another forced landing. Concerned with what we suspected was a battery problem, but happy with the performance of the aircraft and the recovery crew, we decided to launch Malolo 2.

Tim launched it over the bow and it climbed smartly up and away.  After several passes of the ship and a flight time of around seven minutes, it's motor shut down as well. It was recovered, taken down to the bench and taken apart. We soon eliminated the batteries as our problem and now strongly suspect that the motor speed controllers have been overheating. Making our UAS watertight AND providing adequate cooling for hot electronic components can be a challenge. We are working to take care of that in time for operations tomorrow.

Fog.  We woke up this morning in light fog and were allowed a quick peak of a sunrise before the fog settled to the water for most the day.  Debris sightings continued but were often limited to 100 meters or less on each side of the ship.  The last of the CTD readings will be taken shortly as we are approaching 34 30" N.  At that point, the ship will be turned back to the southeast in hopes of being back out of the fog by morning.  We crossed into cooler waters last night which caused the fog.  UAS operations are on hold until we get a bit more visibility and ceiling.  Hopefully, tomorrow will be our first UAS flights.

We (UAS team) saw our first net this morning!  Curt was boss of the day again and let us go outside for a break.  Despite the fog, we were still able to spot a net fragment floating by the ship.  If  we could have gotten to a boat hook quick enough, we would have recovered our first debris piece.  That would have made good copy for the Resolution UAS.  A picture will be posted this evening.

Curt contacted a friend of his via the internet that does 3D modeling for computer graphics.  Curt sent him a .pdf of the Oscar E. Sette deck plans and within hours, was given back a 3D model of the ship we are on.  The 3D model will be imported into our flight simulating software where we will then be able to see a real-time simulated view of the UAS flying off the ship and over the water.  Too bad we can't post the graphics real-time on the web, you will have to trust us that it is pretty cool.  Curt has nice connections!

Mike and I continued to prepare both airframes for their initial flight.  Malolo 1 is ready to go for the first flight of the morning.  It is the tried and proven aircraft that we have flown numerous times before and the one we did sea trials with last Dec.  Malolo 2 is the second generation Resolution class airframe.  We hope to do a maiden flight with that aircraft in the afternoon if weather cooperates.

The sunset tonight was uneventful.  We think it took place because it started getting dark but fog was obscuring the sky.  We did learn that standing on the bow when the ship is in fog is a good place to burst your eardrums (or something more embarrassing).  The very loud fog horn goes off every two minutes.  We decided the bow was not a good place to watch the foggy sunset.