WHOI marine chemist Chris Reddy samples a piece of the mysterious honeycombed flotsam. Reddy and lead author Catherine Carmichael determined the material was part of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. (Photo courtesy of Chris Reddy, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

Shortly after the Deepwater Horizon disaster, mysterious honeycomb material was found floating in the Gulf of Mexico and along coastal beaches. Using state-of-the-art chemical forensics and a bit of old-fashioned detective work, a research team led by scientists at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) confirmed that the flotsam were pieces of material used to maintain buoyancy of the pipe bringing up oil from the seafloor.

The researchers also affirmed that tracking debris from damaged offshore oil rigs could help forecast coastal pollution impacts in future oil spills and guide emergency response efforts—much the way the Coast Guard has studied the speed and direction of various floating debris to guide search and rescue missions. The findings were published Jan. 19 in Environmental Research Letters.

On May 5, 2010, 15 days after the Deepwater Horizon explosion, oceanographer William Graham and marine technicians from the Dauphin Island Sea Lab were working from a boat about 32 miles south of Dauphin Island, Ala., when they saw a 6-mile-long, east-west line containing more than 50 pieces of white material interspersed with sargassum weed. The porous material was uniformly embedded with black spheres about a centimeter in diameter. No oil slick was in sight, but there was a halo of oil sheen around the honeycomb clumps.

Two days later, the researchers also collected similar samples about 25 miles south of Dauphin Island. Nobody knew what the material was, with some hypothesizing at first that it could be coral or other substance made by marine plants or animals. Graham sent samples to WHOI chemist Chris Reddy, whose lab confirmed that the material was not biological. But the material’s source remained unconfirmed.

In January 2011, Reddy and WHOI researcher Catherine Carmichael, lead author of the new study, collected a piece of the same unknown material of Elmer’s Beach, Grand Isle, La. In April, 2011, they found several large pieces, ranging from 3 to 10 feet, of the honeycomb debris on the Chandeleur Islands off Louisiana.

Oil on all these samples was analyzed at WHOI using comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography. The technique identifies the thousands of individual chemical compounds that comprise different oils from different reservoirs. The chemistry of the oil on the debris matched that of oil sampled directly from the broken pipe from the Macondo well above the Deepwater Horizon rig.

Officials used a model that incorporated currents and wind speeds, along with data from planes and satellites, to predict a trajectory of the oil slick spreading from the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. Shaded area represent the predicted trajectory on May 7, 2010. But predictions are not exact; the dotted line represents the degree of uncertainty for the prediction. The mysterious debris was found about 6.2 miles ahead of the projected trajectory of the spreading slick. (Map adapted from NOAA/NOS/OR&R Trajectory Forecast Mississippi Canyon 252) (Illustration by Jack Cook, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

In addition, one piece of debris from the Chandeleur Islands retained a weathered red sticker that read “Cuming” with the numbers 75-1059 below it. Reddy found a company called Cuming Corporation in Avon, Mass., which manufactures syntactic foam flotation equipment for the oil and gas industry. He e-mailed photos of the specimen to the company, and within hours, a Cuming engineer confirmed from the serial number that the foam came from a buoyancy module from Deepwater Horizon.

“We realized that the foam and the oil were released into the environment at the same time,” Reddy said. “So we had a unique tracer that was independent of the oil itself to chronicle how oil and debris drifted out from the spill site.”

The scientists overlaid the locations where they found honeycomb debris on May 5 and 7 with daily forecasts produced by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the trajectory of the spreading oil slick. NOAA used a model that incorporated currents and wind speeds, along with data from planes and satellites. On both days, the debris was about 6.2 miles ahead of the spreading slick.

The explanation, the scientists said, is the principle of leeway, a measure of how fast wind or waves push materials. The leeway for fresh oil is 3 to 3.3 percent, but the scientists suspected that “the protruding profile of the buoyant material” acted acting like a sail, allowing wind to drive it faster than and ahead of the floating oil.

In this case, the flotsam served as a harbinger for the oncoming slick, but because different materials can have different leeways, oil spill models may not accurately forecast where oiled debris will head. “Even a small deviation in leeway can, over time, results in significant differences in surface tracks because of typical wind fields,” the scientists wrote.

The Coast Guard has a long history of calculating the leeway of various materials, from life jackets to bodies of various sizes and weights, to improve forecasts of where the materials would drift if a ship sank or a plane crashed into the sea. But calculating leeways has not been standard practice in oil spills.

“We never had solid data to make the case until this study,” said Merv Fingas, who tracked oil spills for more than 38 years for Environment Canada, which is equivalent to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

“These results,” the study’s authors wrote, “provide insights into the fate of debris fields deriving from damaged marine materials and should be incorporated into emergency response efforts and forecasting of coastal impacts during future offshore oil spills.”

This research was funded by the National Science Foundation.

The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is a private, independent organization in Falmouth, Mass., dedicated to marine research, engineering, and higher education. Established in 1930 on a recommendation from the National Academy of Sciences, its primary mission is to understand the ocean and its interaction with the Earth as a whole, and to communicate a basic understanding of the ocean’s role in the changing global environment.

NASA image by Robert Simmon, using ALI data from the EO-1 Team

A new island is forming in the Red Sea. About 60 kilometers (40 miles) from the coast of Yemen, an undersea eruption began in mid-December 2011. Local fishermen reported an eruption near the island of Saba, while satellites captured a white plume rising from the sea, and a pulse of sulfor dioxide. The activity was located on the northern edge of the Zubair Islands. On December 23, high-resolution satellite imagery revealed details of the eruption. More recent video from a Yemeni Navy helicopter showed violent explosions, typical of shallow submarine eruptions.

This new satellite image, acquired January 7, 2012, suggests that the eruption has risen nearly completely above water. A plume of steam, other volcanic gases, and ash spews from a distinct cone. The land surrounding the vent has grown, and is now about 530 by 710 meters (1,700 by 2,300 feet) across. Once above water, past eruptions in the Zubair Islands were primarily effusive, with relatively runny lava forming thin lava flows. In contrast to the fragmented rock that forms when lava interacts directly with water, lava that solidifies on land is tough, so this new island is likely to stick around.

This natural-color image was acquired by the Advanced Land Imager (ALI) aboard the Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite.

A merchant ship passes by Haycock Island in the southern Red Sea, image (c) Robert Almeida Photography

Ragged Island, a volcanic island in the Zubair Island chain in the southern Red Sea, image (c) Robert Almeida Photography

RV Southern Surveyor, image courtesy Nautilus Minerals

(University of Sydney)  In the remote waters of the Indian Ocean, west of Perth, scientists have just discovered two sunken islands, almost the size of Tasmania, which were once part of the supercontinent Gondwana.

“The data collected on the voyage could significantly change our understanding of the way in which India, Australia and Antarctica broke off from Gondwana,” said Dr Joanne Whittaker, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Sydney’s School of Geosciences.

Researchers from the University of Sydney, Macquarie University and the University of Tasmania led an international team of scientists on the voyage to map the seafloor of the Perth Abyssal Plain. The expedition returned to Perth last week after a three-week cruise.

Traveling on the CSIRO vessel Southern Surveyor the scientists discovered the islands through detailed seafloor mapping and by dredging rock samples from the steep slopes of the two islands, now in water depths of over 1.5km.

“The sunken islands charted during the expedition have flat tops, which indicates they were once at sea level before being gradually submerged,” said Dr Whittaker.

Rocks from the abyss more than 1.5 km below the surface, image courtesy University of Sydney

Collecting rocks from the abyss more than 1.5km below the surface was not easy, but the geologists managed to retrieve hundreds of kilograms and unexpectedly found rocks that showed the islands had not always been underwater.

The University of Sydney’s Dr Simon Williams, the chief scientist on the expedition said: “We expected to see common oceanic rocks such as basalt in the dredge, but were surprised to see continental rocks such as granite, gneiss and sandstone containing fossils.”

In the Cretaceous period when dinosaurs roamed the Earth (more than 130 million years ago), India was adjacent to Western Australia. When India began to break away from Australia, the islands formed part of the last link between the two continents.

Eventually these islands, referred to as ‘micro-continents’ by scientists, were separated from both landmasses and stranded in the Indian Ocean, thousands of kilometres from the Australian and Indian coasts.

Dr Williams commented: “A detailed analysis of the rocks dredged up during the voyage will tell us about their age and how they fit into the Gondwana jigsaw.”

- University of Sydney

Sophisticated instruments were put to use…

Helping the scientists to acquire this data was the suite of Kongsberg Maritime hydroacoustic sensors and systems aboard the RV Southern Surveyor, which included:

• Simrad EK60 scientific echo sounder
• Simrad EK500 scientific echo sounder
• KONGSBERG EA 500 hydrographic echo sounder
• KONGSBERG EM 300 multibeam hydrographic echo sounder
• KONGSBERG PS 018 Sub-bottom profiler

Travelling on RV Southern Surveyor the scientists discovered the islands through detailed seafloor mapping using the EM 300 multibeam system and by the challenging collection of rocks from the abyss more than 1.5 km below the surface.

What is a multibeam hydrographic echo sounder you ask?  Check out this video from Kongsberg…

Click here to view the embedded video.

Photo courtesy NASA

Note: This week’s interesting ships are reposted and updated from gCaptain’s archives in commemoration of the last space shuttle launch today, July 8th, 2011.

When one thinks of a NASA ship, it’s generally not the seagoing type that pops into ones head.  However, NASA does in fact have two vessels made for the high seas – MV Liberty Star and the MV Freedom Star – that assist with a shuttle launch.  Both vessels are tasked as recovery ships for retrieving spent Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs) that are used to power the shuttle’s ascent into space.  After two minutes of flight, the boosters separate from the orbiter and external tank at an altitude of approximately 24 miles, descend under parachutes and land in the Atlantic Ocean where the MV Liberty Star and the MV Freedom Star are waiting to retrieve the reusable SRB’s.

It all begins about 24 hours before a shuttle launch, when the two ships set out to sea, manned by highly trained crews of professional merchant mariners and divers. During the operation, each ship retrieves one booster. Each ship has a permanently assigned crew of 10: a captain, two mates, four seamen, two marine engineers and a cook. In addition, eight divers accompany each crew to perform the delicate retrieval operation.

Here is an image taken from from the May 2008 STS-124 mission of an SRB splashing down into the ocean.

Once the boosters splash down into the ocean, the recovery ships spring into action:

First the pilot chutes and main parachutes are brought aboard. They’re followed by the drogue parachute and the 5,000-pound frustum that houses the chutes at the top of the booster. With those elements secured onboard, attention turns to the booster itself, as a team of eight divers boards two small boats.  After installing a 1,500-pound apparatus called an “enhanced diver-operated plug” and air hose, the water is removed from the booster. The booster then rises in the water until it falls horizontally and floats on the surface, enabling the ship to tow it back to port behind the vessel.

Once recovered, the boosters are refurbished and reused in future shuttle launches, and the MV Liberty Star and the MV Freedom Star take on additional duties such as assist with diver training for NOAA and the Navy and additional utility uses.  As to where they go now that the last space shuttle has launched?  We’re not sure.

The Liberty Star and Freedom Star were specifically designed and constructed for this task. Built at Atlantic Marine Shipyard, Fort George Island, near Jacksonville, Fla., in 1980 and 1981, the ships are 53.6 meters (176 feet) in length, 14.3 meters (37 feet) in width and draw 3-4 meters (10-12 feet) of water.

A good article on the SRB retrieval mission has just been posted to the NASA website HERE.

LINKS:

More images can be found HERE and HERE

Freedom and Liberty Go to Sea

Behind the Scenes : Processing SRBs

Alvin, the manned submersible perhaps most famous for such exploits as locating a lost H-bomb in the Mediterranean Sea in 1966, exploring the first known hydrothermal vent sites in the 1970s, and of course surveying the wreck of RMS Titanic in 1986, is to be withdrawn from service this week to undergo a two-phase, $40m renovation – the biggest retrofit of its 40+ year career.

“The deep-ocean and seafloor beyond 4,500 meters water depth is this planet’s last frontier. A critical asset in this exploration is a more capable human occupied vehicle,” said Dr. Susan Humphris, the principal investigator on the upgrade project and a geologist with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), which operates Alvin for the U.S. oceanographic community.  “Those capabilities will be achieved through a two-stage upgrade of the current Alvin that will ultimately allow the sub to stay down longer – up to 12 hours – and dive to 6,500 rather than 4,500 meters.”

Upgrades include:

During Stage 1, a new personnel sphere with improved ergonomics will be integrated into Alvin’s modified frame, and other improvements made to provide:

• Increased fields of view (with five viewports instead of three, and complete overlap with the pilot’s field of view)

• Improved illumination and imaging systems

• Improved data collection, logging, and interface capability

• Increased payload for Alvin’s basket for carrying samples and equipment.

As funding becomes available and as lithium ion battery technology matures, the changes necessary to increase the working time and extend the depth rating of the submarine will be completed.

Since it was put into service in 1964, Alvin has made more than 4,600 dives, playing a major role in important discoveries about the biological, chemical, and geological processes that shape our planet. Its personnel sphere was last upgraded in 1974, when a titanium sphere replaced Alvin’s steel sphere, extending its diving capacity and ultimately enabling firsthand observations of mid-ocean ridges.

The new 6,500 meter-depth-rated sphere is the biggest technical challenge of the Alvin upgrade project. It must be able to withstand immense pressure – about 650 times that felt on the surface of the Earth. The sphere, which is close to completion, has 3-inch thick titanium walls and tests have shown it is an almost perfect sphere.  Its interior volume has been increased by nearly 20 percent and has been redesigned – with input from more than 110 biologists, geologists, microbiologists, geochemists, and engineers – for greater scientific efficiency and a bit more comfort. Instead of crouching on the floor of the sphere, scientists will now have adjustable benches giving observers the option of sitting, kneeling, or lying flat.  And rather than just three viewports, the new sphere has five larger viewports, with overlapping fields of view enabling better observations, communication and coordination among those in the sub.

Alvin’s final dive before the re-fit was on December 14th in the Gulf of Mexico where it has been stationed since December 6th on an expedition searching for signs of oil and its impact on deepwater ecosystems.

Read more at WHOI.edu

It really did not surprise us when it was revealed in the most recent Maritime Monday that James Cameron is planning a nearly 7 mile voyage to the Mariana Trench to film, in 3-D of course, scenes for the upcoming Avatar sequel .  After all, we’ve seen his ambition with 3-D and underwater exploration before, both with the first Avatar and the lesser known Aliens of The Deep, and again with his plans to re-release Titanic in 3-D.

We’re also familiar with his expertise in deepwater diving. On June 1, Cameron met with EPA and other federal officials for a brainstorming session on ways to stop the Gulf oil leak, providing a proposal that included an offering for his team of scientists to dive the Deepwater Horizon wreckage as part of the investigation into the causes of the incident.  While Cameron’s offer was later denied, we tended to agree that his ideas were well within his team’s ability and expertise.

Thrown into this mix is the incentive of a $10 million X-Prize that will go to the first privately funded sub to make two repeat manned descents to Challenger Deep, which at a 36000 feet is the the deepest surveyed point in the oceans.

Obviously, Cameron has a long history of successful projects but, in this case, we’re talking the longest 7 miles on earth.  More men have walked on the moon than explored what Cameron plans on doing, however, if the task he’s set before him wasn’t in fact within the realm of possibility, we’re quite sure he would not set himself up for failure.  The is no way to answer whether or not Cameron he will reach Challenger Deep until his mission is completed, but one thing is for certain – Avatar 2 is going to make Cameron boatloads of money!

What do you think?  Will James Cameron be successful in reaching the Challenger Deep, shooting some 3D footage and taking home the $10 million prize to boot? Continue after the jump to take the survey and see a great infographic explaining a little about the proposed voyage. 

Check out this cool infographic provided by DailyMail.  Click image for a slightly larger version.

[Infographic provided by MailOnline]

On Aug. 5, 2010, a massive island of ice, roughly 97 square miles (251 square kilometers) in size or 4 times the size of Manhattan, broke off the Petermann Glacier, along the northwestern coast of Greenland.  Scientists from the Canadian Ice Service project the chunk of ice to be moving toward the Nares Strait, which separates Greenland’s northwestern coast and Canada’s Ellsemere Island.  While the iceberg poses no immediate threat, it could eventually threaten Canada’s offshore platforms in the Grand Banks off Newfoundland and major shipping lanes.  The Canadian Ice Service however estimates that the journey could take one to two years and it’s likely to break up as it weathers and moves through warmer waters.

Icebergs calving off the Petermann Glacier are not unusual. Petermann Glacier’s floating ice tongue is the Northern Hemisphere’s largest, and it has occasionally calved large icebergs.  The recently calved iceberg is the largest to form in the Arctic since 1962, said the University of Delaware.

Keep reading after the jump for more pictures released by NASA.

Above image taken at 17:15 UTC on July 28, 2010

Above image taken at 18:05 UTC on August 5, 2010

Above image credit: NASA

25 years after the discovery of the Titanic shipwreck, a team of scientists and organizations are getting ready to embark on an expedition of, well, titanic proportions. The expedition, which will commence in August, aims to literally raise the Titanic… virtually. The Associated Press has the details:

A team of scientists will launch an expedition to the Titanic next month to assess the deteriorating condition of the world’s most famous shipwreck and create a detailed three-dimensional map that will “virtually raise the Titanic” for the public.

The expedition to the site 2 1/2 miles beneath the North Atlantic is billed as the most advanced scientific mission to the Titanic wreck since its discovery 25 years ago.

The 20-day expedition is to leave St. John’s, Newfoundland, on Aug. 18 under a partnership between RMS Titanic Inc., which has exclusive salvage rights to the wreck, and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. The expedition will not collect artifacts but will probe a 2-by-3-mile debris field where hundreds of thousands of artifacts remain scattered.  Keep Reading

The expedition will be based on the R/V Jean Charcot, a 250-foot research vessel with a crew of 20. Three submersibles and the latest sonar, acoustic and filming technology will also be part of the expedition.

While the expedition is being privately funded with an undisclosed amount of money, hopefully this will open the doors for similar expeditions, or perhaps investigations, in the future.

More information on the expedition can be found at www.expeditiontitanic.com.

[Image via Associated Press]

The Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes mission, or GRIP, will use 15 cutting edge instruments, a Global Hawk UAV, a McDonnell Douglas DC-8 and a Martin WB-57F Canberra to gain a new look at how hurricanes form, strengthen, and weaken. This will be NASA’s first major US-based hurricane field campaign since 2001.

This August and September, NASA is leading an aircraft campaign that will provide a sustained and unprecedented look at the inner workings of hurricane formation and intensification. The Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes (GRIP) experiment will take place from Aug. 15 to Sept. 30 and employ three NASA aircraft flying over the Gulf of Mexico, Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea to try to answer some of the basic but still lingering questions about how and why hurricanes form and strengthen.

NASA has flown over hurricanes before to gather data on precipitation, winds, convection, temperature and other factors that are known cyclone ingredients. The logistical demands of doing so have only allowed for two to four hours of data collection at a time, a snapshot of a storm that could spin for days. But for the first time, scientists will fly an unmanned drone, outfitted with 3-D radar, a microwave radiometer and other instruments over tropical systems for up to 20 consecutive hours. NASA.gov

This is pretty cool.  The photo above is from National Geographics collection of “Space Photos This Week” and is titled Ship Tracks in Sky.  Using NASA’s Terra Satellite, the image is a false-color picture showing pale arcs in a layer of marine clouds that are in fact traces of the paths of ships in the North Pacific.  Natational Geographic tells us more:

Clouds form when water droplets condense around airborne particles, such as dust and sea salt crystals. Over the open ocean, there are fewer natural particles, so the water droplets that do form tend to grow relatively large.

But air pollution from ship exhaust creates smaller cloud droplets, which are more reflective and thus brighter in the enhanced image.

Check out the full collection of Space Photos HERE.