Mission Day: Ten, Eleven and Twelve

After 9 mission days, we have fallen into a really good sync; both dive teams.  The other entities are still a bit chaotic but we have gotten into a real smooth groove and are doing some real “kick-ass” dives for science that benefits the World.  However, before I begin, I have to show you an incredible shot.  On 27 July, before we descended into the depths, we were asked to do a photo shoot with the submersibles, both of them at the same time.  This shot epitomizes our GlobalSubDive.com Mission:

Our Submersibles Nomad and Nemo with diver
Graham Blackmore defending his underwater space!

I am going to spend the majority of this blog on our dive from 28 July.  That would be Mission Day 11 Why?  Because it is now the epic dive (so far) of the project when you consider our overall goal:  obtaining science, specimens and intel from this underwater world known as the Sargasso Sea, the only sea on the planet with no shore! And supporting the scientists aboard NektonMission.org. 

The "Fountain": Dive Boat

27 July, we supported the Blue team from the Fountain at Spittal (the dive site on the northeast corner of the island).  There dive was to collect SVS video from 300 feet / 90 meters, move up to 100 feet / 30 meters do the same and collect water samples, red algae samples (a new request from the science team) and coral (another new request!) which you have to carry clippers, large scissors if you will, and cut about a ¾” sample from the top of a colony.  So now, we have even more to do…it is not boring…that is for sure.  I do have to say that it does make the dives go faster and with less tedium. 



They dropped at 10:05am and we picked-them up at a bit after 3p.  A 5-hour dive and they accomplished all the underwater goals magnificently.   It was a fairly calm day so the surface support operations that we conducted at the surface were fairly benign; I piloted the Fountain and was supported in the boat by me, myself and I.  Yes, I was solo for that time but I passed the time with some great conversations with fish and turtles.  Sometimes on expeditions of this magnitude, you have to do things that might not be easy but necessity demands adaptation and flexibility.  I was happy to comply and had a great time. 

The Water Monitoring Science Station

28 July, we were up as the dive team at the North by North East site.  Our plan?.. tri-fold; 1) conduct our usual SVS work at 300 feet / 90 meters, 100 feet / 30 meters, 50 feet / 15 meters along with collecting all the science, 2) find 50 feet / 15 meters of depth from underwater and 3) locate and mark that 50 feet / 15 meter site so that during our decompression we could help three scientist/divers from Stanford and the University of Oxford set up a water monitoring station.  Sounds fairly straight forward.  Lets fast forward to 300 feet

We entered the water, from the BEX at about 9:45am and were on our way to the bottom at 10:07.  We moved out to 335 feet looking for a suitable transect starting point and finally settled on a spot at about 312.  We all got set up to do our work and Todd, operating the camera, was frantically trying to get the SVS cameras to start and one was fouled by pressure; the plunger that hits the start button from inside the housing was stuck and would not work.  Needless to say, this frustrated Todd quite deeply (pun intended) and after about 30 seconds of assessment, he pulled out his wet-notes, wrote a note for the topside support on the Fountain, and we sent the camera up to the surface on an orange inflatable buoy, that we inflate at depth with about a breath of air, and away (and up) the camera went with instructions to fix it and send it back down to us when we got to 100 feet. 

Sue Bird taking a minute to get "squared"
away for an awesome shot by Graham
  at 60-65 feet setting up the "Science Station"

Modifying our plan, we filmed a transect with a regular video camera that I manage during the dive for about 500-750 feet along the contour while Todd collected water samples and Sue supervised us both keeping the team intact.  After 35 minutes, we began our ascent toward 100 feet.  Nothing exiting along the way.  We collected some water samples at 200 feet and about 25 minutes later we were at 100 feet.  As I was managing the tow-fish line, I noticed it being slightly difficult to reel in and so I looked up…YEAH!!!! There was the SVS camera, coming down my line ready and working.  We got our SVS transects, water samples and photos at 100 feet and were back on track. 

Now it was time to find the 50-foot station, send up the marker buoy, greet the diving scientists and set up the science station.  We hit the trigger on our scooters at high speed and headed in a 240 degree direction for what we thought would be about 1 – 1.5 miles landing us in 50 feet; not!  After 94 minutes of scootering hard at full speed, about 2.5 miles, my scooter just quit!  Battery dead!  We only got as shallow as 65 feet and with one scooter dead, we sent up a note to the surface letting them know that this was it so if the scientist divers wanted to deploy, we would be there at the ready. 

We set up our transects and Todd and Sue completed the task while I scootered back to get the location for the science station and squared away all our gear and saw from above that the divers from the surface were on their way.   About 40 minutes after we arrived at this location and sent up a surface marker buoy, the science station was coming down.  Todd and Sue worked with the scientist divers while I videotaped and photographed the entire process.  It was quite complex but Sue and Todd made short work of it and in fact, we had to send the scientist divers up before it was finished because they ran low on breathing gas and had hit their max time so Todd and Sue actually finished establishing the station.  Wow what a dive!  What a success.  We accomplished multiple objectives, established a pretty cool water monitoring station for the NektonMission.org and the scientists of Stanford and Oxford and did I mention that while we were doing all this, Graham Blackmore, our other GUE team member from the Red team, brought down a 360-degree hemispherical video camera set-up that was comprised of 32 GoPro video cameras that also filmed the activity!  Unbelievable!  We had 7 divers in the water all doing incredible tasks, things that rarely get accomplished by “human” divers vs. robots or submersibles and we, Todd, Sue and I only had 1.5 more hours of decompression!  Just a cool and proud moment for me underwater; an honor to be on this dive.  




32 GoPro's mounted hemispherical! 
Awesome!

After that 1.5 hours of additional decompression, we surfaced with a total run time of 380 minutes.  Yes…that is 6 hours and 20 minutes underwater on about 50 cubic feet of breathing gas.  I did not even wait go get out of my gear once on the boat before powering down a sandwich, chips, Gatorade, power bar and a liter of water.  I was simply exhausted but am elated at what I can get my body to do at 55.








The Simrad GPS screen
aboard the Fountain. 

29 July, we were back on the diver support boat supporting the Red team again at North by Northeast and you already know what it is like for us to be surface support diver.  What is fun to share though is that during our 4.5 hours on the surface, the seas had picked up from a southerly wind blowing at about 15 mph.  This created quite the challenge as our divers were floating south in a slight current and we were being blown north at I would estimate about 5-6 miles per hour due to the Bimini top on the Fountain that acted just like a sail.  If you look at the photo you can see the actual track that the GPS created by me staying with the divers tow-fish for 4.5 hours while they floated south at 1/2 mile per hour as I was being blown north at 5-6 miles per hour; for scale, that photo represents about a 2 square mile area. 

Mission Day: Seven, Eight and Nine

The pace has not slowed down!  In fact It has intensified.  Yesterday Todd, Sue and I hit the boat at 9:50am and were told we needed to splash at 10:15…25 minutes!  And that was not including eating breakfast - which we did on the fly setting up gear!  We made the time limit and dropped to our 300 ft / 90 meter target at 10:38am but….Lets get into sequence. 

Monday 25, July.  Back out to the Argus Bank to support Graham, Meredith and Kevin.  Today was their day to do the 300 ft/90 meter transects and then move up along the contour taking water samples.  We are not going to get a 100 ft / 30 meter transect because the shallowest the bank rises is to 154 feet so we will be going back to do 8 transects there. 

The dive team did a 5.5 hour total underwater run  and had the joy of doing the decompression of 4.5 hours floating in the blue water. 

Tuesday 26, July.  Okay, it is 10:38am and we were descending.  We had literally 30 minutes to prep our rigs, put on our drysuits and haul our gear to the rail and splash.  It is real frustrating to be pressed like that but it is the reality of this type of expedition.  We are at the whim of scientists who simply do not understand what we do and how we need to do it.  At times, like this, we have to adapt rather than explain our dive protocols to a PhD!  Sometimes it is just easier to do than to explain. 

My Rebreather Controller
 Note depth: Upper left corner-"300"

The cool thing… it is quiet and peaceful underwater, no one pressures us to do anything and we can relax in the cool waters of the Atlantic at 300 feet.  We could not have been more excited to submerge.



We were on our drop line over 280 feet and when we hit the bottom we were right on the wall dropping to well over 5000 feet.  Once at depth, we began our transect work and I took a minute to scooter out about 100 feet away from Sue and Todd just to see if anything big might be swimming up the wall…nothing.  This was my time to get out of the way.  I turned back and saw that they were on the move, so I secured their scooters and our tow-fish line and began to do my tasks of photographing the starting point of the transects, as well as my gauge, taking water samples and then scootering out along our transect line to do the same at the middle and the turn. 



Having a relaxing decompression:
Martin low and Sue above

It was absolutely beautiful down there, spiral corals, soft corals, some grasses and algae, fish but most of all…solitude, quiet, calm.  The three of us simply relaxed and went to work.  By the end of the dive, we completed 9 transects, got 6 water samples, 2 red algae samples and traveled over 2 miles underwater from our deepest point of 314 feet to 20 feet about 200 yards from shore.  This truly was our best dive yet of the mission.  Todd, Sue and myself are syncing as a team;  we call ourselves the scout team as we are out there doing the first protocols and performing them at about 50%.  We give that information to the Blue team, they improve and then give it back.  Now we are really being productive. 

The dive went through deep benthic barren topography between 300 feet and 180 feet.  Then it changed to a sandy and rocky bottom up to about 120 feet then incredible coral fields, full of aquatic life, all the way in to 20 feet.  It was an absolutely awesome dive.

Wednesday 27, July.  Let’s ratchet up the pace once again.  Once onboard the BEx, (we were earlier today, about 8am, because we did not have to play water taxi).  If I did not say earlier, we travel each day to the ship in St. George Harbor, via our dive support boat, Fountain.  This morning, we only had to pick up 6 folks from the Princess Hotel, they were all on time, landing us on the ship with plenty of time.  Unfortunately, I would run the dive support operations today solo.  Not optimal, but necessary as our camera calibration, the one we did 7 days ago, needed to be done again and so Todd and Susan stayed behind to accomplish this. 

At the helm of the Fountain

So I hopped on the Fountain at 9:30am and got off at 5:30pm.  All the while…following that orange tow-fish all over the north east side of Bermuda.  It was really very peaceful, nice breeze and I got in via our dive ladder frequently to cool off.  Once I stepped off the Fountain and back onto the BEx, I was told that tomorrow, was gonna be high paced again so I spent the next 90 minutes, foregoing dinner, and sorted out all my gear for tomorrow as I do not want to do a 60-minute prep in 20 again! 

I am getting I some real incredible diving opportunity.  As crazy and hectic as it is, it is real challenging and I am functioning in several capacities helping this mission to be a success.  If I had to keep score, I would say that it is Divers 24, Submersible Operations 10...we are kicking butt and providing the Science Team some invaluable data!!

I will post again in 3 days but I leave you with this little video clip of me scootering through the corals:

 

Mission Day: Four, Five and Six

Mission days 4-5-6



It’s an absolutely insanely paced expedition!  We have 20 scientists, two submarines with support crews of 4 to 5…each!  And…that includes the Chef and his assistant!  Then there is our dive team, six personnel supporting each other, the BEX crew of 5 – 3 captains – and then all the administrative staff for NektonMission.org, Project Baseline and the academic personnel for the scientists.  I have to tell you it is crazy-wild starting at 7am continuous...sometimes thru dinner!



The SVS Camera System with the light brackets...
 minus the lights.

Friday 22, July was our first expedition dive…Project Baseline Mission Dive one.  Finally!!!!  Our site as selected by the science group was Spittal located just outside of St. George Harbor on the North East end of Bermuda.  The plan was to test our protocols for using the SVS camera mounted to the SUEX scooters, that are pulling us around, allowing us to video the 50 meter transects.  Our target depth was planned to be 200 feet and our time was to be 70 – 80 minutes on the bottom. 

Todd Kincaid, Susan Bird and myself entered at 2:15pm local time and dropped at 2:39. Our down line, the line we follow to the bottom, was placed at 150 feet and once we landed on the bottom, we headed for 200 feet.  Our scooters made short work of that 1000-foot distance and in 7 minutes we were setting up our first SVS video transect.

Todd Holding the SVS Camera System
Susan, reeling in the transect tape behind
Me?  On the other side of the camera

As you know, we custom built the SVS camera mount for the scooters and within 2 minutes, we started shucking ballast tubes, lights, video mount (yes the one we custom built) because it did not work.  We simply grabbed the camera and Todd, who was camera man, held the camera in his hands and swam the two 50 meter transects and was highly successful.  The most important outcome of this dive was that we gathered tremendous intel and knowledge to pass on to our other dive team that would allow them to improve upon our dive.  We accomplished 3 SVS video transects and 2 benthic video transects (SVS – cameras pointing forward filming fish diversity, benthic - cameras pointing down and filming the bottom.  We had a max depth of 205 feet, with an average depth of 150 feet for 90 minutes and then spent 2 hours and 39 minutes coming to the surface.  A great dive; a fantastic start.

Saturday 23, July was dive day for our second team on this part of the mission.  Meredith Tanguay, Graham Blackmore and Kevin Dow.  As I mentioned earlier, the way we execute dives is from our specialized dive support boat, Fountain and operating that boat and supporting that day’s dives is the other dive team.  So today, Todd, Susan and I were operating the boat while the other three went underwater (Todd, Meredith and I are Diving Safety Officers for the Baseline Explorer and Global Underwater Explorers, Project Baseline). 

Quick explanation.  Because of the depths of these dives (200 – 350 feet), the planned underwater mission times (5 – 6 hours underwater) and the duration of the mission (20 days), it is not physically safe to dive consecutive days so we break it up and dive every other day and support on our off days. 

Back to today…and this is very cool and exciting.  With the intel and knowledge that we passed on to the “red” team (my team is the “blue” team…drysuit colors…names that just kind of naturally developed) they were able to complete 8 SVS video transects and 4 benthic.  They knocked it out of the park.  They worked at 200 feet, with the submarines observing and were underwater for a bit over 5 hours. 



Divers working with "Nemo" one of our two Triton Submarines

Sunday, 24 July.  The blue team was at bat.  We were heading for the Argus Bank.  30 miles southwest of Bermuda and part of the Bermuda Rise.  No land in sight.  A sea mount created by an underwater volcano that rose to within 180 feet of the surface.  Today we were going to 300 feet (90 Meters by the scientific definition) but again, no-one has ever done this dive in this manner…ever!  So again, the blue team was out to gather intel and pass that along to the red team.  We dropped down to 190 feet and headed east looking for the Argus Bank rise.  10 minutes later we hit the edge of a 10,000-foot abyss.  We dropped down to 300 feet and began our work.  The first thing we encountered was a current!  This really makes it hard on us as a dive team because now you have to manage all our gear, lights, scooters, cameras, transect tape measures and water sample bottles; yes, we are also doing water sampling at 20 meter (70 foot) increments.  With visibility of about 100 feet, we began our work and it was exhilarating to be working in pure weightlessness over 10,000 feet of water.  The wall was very rocky and covered in purple corals and green algae.  Swimming around were many pelagic’s.  Closer to the wall were many smaller fish, like amber jacks, gobies, damsel fish and we even saw a few really colorful anemones but big, like 16-18 inches in diameter; usually they are half this size.  After 45 minutes we completed our 2 SVS video and single Benthic transect and moved ups to 185, took some more water samples, scootered around the top of the bank for another 20 minutes and at minute 65, we began our decompression to the surface.  Our deco today, some 220 minutes, was spent floating in that current, blue water (not along the bottom – midway between the bottom and the surface.  A very tedious and boring 3.5 hours but necessary for this kind of research diving.   At the end of the day we visited a world 314 feet below the surface, literally in the middle of the Atlantic, spent 65 minutes on the bottom and the rest of the underwater time floating south some 2.5 miles where we started. 



Our perspective: the diver tow-fish
The Baseline Explorer on the horizon.

I end by answering the question, “how does the diver support boat and your support team upon it know where you are underwater”?  A small 30-inch-long orange tow-fish floating at the surface attached to me with about 500 feet of line scoped out above me.  A great day; a great mission; thanks Global Underwater Explorers, Project Baseline and NektonMission.org! 

I will post again in 3-4 days.  It is midnight here and we are up at 6 to support Team Blue!   

Mission Day: One, Two and Three

It has been whirlwind since I arrived in Bermuda on Tuesday at 3pm.  Arriving at the Baseline Explorer I had a “todo” list an arm’s length; that list kept going.  Working until 11pm on Tuesday we finally got to our accommodations and were up first thing Wednesday morning for another day of lists; ending that day also at 11pm. 

When doing an expedition such as the NektonMission.org, you have a tremendous amount of moving parts.  They don’t always go as smoothly as you would like but eventually they start to sync.  We are not there yet; we are close.  My biggest challenge was building the “stereo video underwater camera system” SVS for short.  The camera housings were built in Australia, shipped to Florida and I had to have a mount built so it would fit on our underwater diver propulsion vehicles.  I had a great machinist in Reno and he too the manufacturer specs and my input, he created a mount and my first task, taking me all the first day and most of the second was to take the actual housing, mate it to our mount made in Reno and then get it on the scooter ready for use.  It all worked and I was incredibly pleased. 

The next step, which was most of today, 21 July, was to actually calibrate the camera system underwater.  We had quite the time of it.  Again, the scientist that sent us the calibration instructions is in Honduras, the scientist wanting us to do the diving is here.  The software that guides the calibration, not sure where that was, probably the UK as that is where NektonMission.org is,  at but thanks to YouTube….there was a calibration video!  Once we watched that, we were off to dive.  WAiT…the submarine ops group (remember there are two 1000’ deep rated submarines on our ship the Baseline Explorer - BEx for short) wants us to calibrate their SVS camera.  Different system all together but we endeavored as we are all on the same team.   So 5 pm today, we hit the water with both SVS systems, all set-up.  It basically took the six of us divers, Susan Bird, Kevin Dow, Meredith Tanguay, Graham Blackmore, Todd Kincaid and myself in some capacity to accomplish the task and we did!  A short 70’ dive but very successful. 

It really has been about 72 hours of organization, coordination, gear assembly, equipment configuration, equipment location and modification.  No one gets to the summit in one day of a major mountain climb.  I would equate this expedition to one just like Mt. Everest (if you will allow me to use that cliché).  We are not even to base camp yet but tomorrow we will make our first foray to depth for a 300 feet/90 meter scientific research dive using the SVS camera system.   

Divers Todd Kincaid, Susan Bird and myself preparing for entry of our dive support boat, Fountain – a 39’ ChrisCraft.  The other dive team was already in the water. 

Working on aligning the cameras in the SVS underwater video system.  Note that there are two cameras mounted on either end, slightly off angle.  When the videos from both cameras are placed into a computer software program, it creates a 3D video that the scientists can use to study fish density and bottom density, coral configuration;  basically the quality of the underwater environment.  This can then be used as a “baseline” for future evaluation of the Bermuda Rise;  thus, Project “Baseline". 
 

The Countdown Has Begun - Expedition Bermuda

On July 18, New Millennium diver, Martin McClellan will be joining Global Underwater Explorer’s (GUE) Project Baseline mission to Bermuda.  This is a joint research effort as GUE is teaming up with Nekton, a conservation organization from the United Kingdom, The University of Oxford, GlobalSubDive, the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans and BIOS, the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences.  The overall mission will be to conduct a scientific survey of ocean and reef conditions in the Mesophotic Zone (depth range: 200 – 1000 feet/60 – 300 meters).  The research locations will be in the vicinity of the Bermuda Islands; including the Argus and Challenger Banks

Martin and the dive team aboard the Baseline Explorer (BEx), are a group of highly trained and experienced GUE trained JJ Closed Circuit Rebreather (CCR) divers.  On a daily basis, they will execute specific mission objectives focusing upon the collection of video transects filming coral and fish diversity from depths between 200 feet/30 meters down to as deep as 300 feet/90 meters; part of the mission will also include specific dives to gather video and photographic documentation of large animal life including several species of game fish and Tiger sharks.

Martin is one of three, Diving Safety Officers (DSO), aboard the BEx.  His responsibilities will be to organize & lead one of the two, three (3) person dive teams, operate a dive support boat (a smaller vessel strictly dedicated to the divers), manage gas fills, work closely with the mission’s Data Manager to coordinate cameras with GPS,  and operate the Recompression Chamber as one of the onboard trained Hyperbaric Medical Technicians. 

The Baseline Explorer (BEx) is owned and operated by GlobalSubDive.   It is deployed for the advancement of GUE’S conservation initiative Project Baseline.  It primary goal is to inform the public on the environmental issues our Oceans presently face.

New Millennium Dive Expeditions would like to thank the sponsors of this Expedition:

• XL-Catlin
• Garfield Weston Foundation
• Teledyne Instruments
• Halcyon Manufacturing

NOTE TO FUTURE POSTS…

Martin will post directly to this blog going forward in the first person tense.  New Millennium Dive Expeditions wishes him great success and a fantastic voyage.