The UW’s R/V Clif­ford A. Barnes recently com­pleted its 1000th research cruise, as described in this UW Today arti­cle. Our group has used the Barnes exten­sively over the past few years as part of our project on sed­i­ment impacts related to the Elwha dam removal. Be sure to check the photo gallery on the UW Today arti­cle for a shot of our own Kris­ten Web­ster on a Barnes cruise in 2009!

Wow–what a whirl­wind.  The sec­ond half of our field­work was a frenzy of activ­ity.  We fin­ished the sec­ond 25-hour tran­sect and com­pleted the third quickly and effi­ciently.  With over 75 hours of con­tin­u­ous ADCP mea­sure­ments (3, 25-hour sta­tion occu­pa­tions), 230-plus CTD (conductivity-temperature-depth) casts, over 100 sed­i­ment sam­ples, and about 150 water sam­ples, we have a lot of data on our hands wait­ing to be ana­lyzed.  Right now we’re in Seoul air­port wait­ing for our flight back to Seat­tle.  Look for another post or two with some more great pho­tos and per­haps a few data plots describ­ing what exactly it is we did on the river.  For now, we’re headed to our gate, so here a few photos.

A night view from the bow of Aaron filtering

Rip doing cre­at­ing a man­ual vac­uum while we repaired our vac­uum pump

Sun­rise on the Mekong

On April 12–16 we went on our 5th sur­vey cruise to the Elwha Delta as part of an ongo­ing 2-year field effort. The cruise served a dual pur­pose as an edu­ca­tional field expe­ri­ence for the seven stu­dents in the spring Marine Sed­i­men­tary Processes class. Stu­dents helped col­lect data for the ongo­ing Elwha sed­i­ment dis­per­sal project, and also col­lected spe­cial data for their indi­vid­ual research projects. The weather was pretty rough for the first cou­ple days, but we were rewarded with sun­shine toward the end of the trip. In all, we col­lected 72 sed­i­ment sam­ples, dozens of water sam­ples, ship-based ADCP data, PAR sen­sor (light) data in the plume, seabed videos, ben­thos sam­ples, CTD tran­sects, and more. Every­one had a great time and learned a lot!

On April 13th, we re-deployed the pri­mary tri­pod for the fifth time since Novem­ber 2011. We’ll see it again later this sum­mer (hope­fully after the dams are com­pletely gone).

Andrea and Trevor pre­pare to col­lect a sur­face water sam­ple with a Niskin bottle.

Ben and Tianna col­lect water samples.

Riane col­lects light mea­sure­ments from 1 m, 2 m, 5 m, and 10 m water depths in the sur­face plume.

MUD! (and sand) Finally see­ing notice­able amounts of mud mixed with sand near the river mouth.

On shore, the beach crew sur­veyed profiles.

We’re just past half way through our sec­ond 25-hour tran­sect, this one about 15 km far­ther upstream from our first tran­sect loca­tion.  Things have been going well over­all, though the hours are long and the weather decid­edly un-Seattle-like with tem­per­a­tures in the mid-to-upper 90s.  We’ll fin­ish this tran­sect around 9 pm tonight and then every­one will get some well deserved rest before start­ing our third and final tran­sect bright and early tomor­row morning.

Load­ing up with more water for the show­ers and toilets

Sand barge on the river

Major shore­line erosion

Tri and one of the captains

On the bow

Yes­ter­day we spent our first day on the river, load­ing gear, test­ing equip­ment and get­ting set­tled in to our home and work space for the next few days.  From Dai Ngai we tran­sited along Cu Lao Dung island on our way to our first 25-hour tran­sect loca­tion near the mouth of the Mekong.  We started the tran­sect at 5 am today and are about 13 hours in at the time of this writ­ing.  The kinks have mostly been worked out and the sci­ence team and boat crew are get­ting in to a good groove.

Load­ing up

We’ll fin­ish the tran­sect around 6 am tomor­row and then a few folks will explore some man­grove areas for poten­tial future work.  Then we’ll have some much-needed down time and tran­sit to our next tran­sect loca­tion far­ther up river.

Aaron and Dan set­ting up the ADCP.

So far the data we have col­lected look promis­ing.  Check back for some pre­lim­i­nary results in the com­ing days.

Aaron, Dan, and Rip reflected on a stan­chion on board the VLC.

Today we made the 3.5 hour jour­ney from Saigon to Can Tho, where we met col­leagues from Can Tho Uni­ver­sity.  From there we headed to Dai Ngai where we met the ves­sel we’ll be using for research:  the Vinh Long Cruiser.

Vinh Long Cruiser

The Cruiser is very much a ves­sel of oppor­tu­nity but it should work out well for the types of work we’ll be doing over the com­ing week.  Tomor­row morn­ing we’ll load up and start set­ting up equip­ment.  For now it’s din­ner time, a much-needed shower, and our last night of sleep on dry land for a while.

We spent most of today pur­chas­ing more sup­plies and test­ing equip­ment in prepa­ra­tion for trav­el­ing to the Mekong tomor­row.  Our route will take us through Can Tho where we will meet up with col­leagues from Can Tho Uni­ver­sity.  Then we will spend the night in Soc Trang before meet­ing the boat on Tues­day morning.

Check out a few pho­tos from today in the gallery below.

Because we packed our gear within the con­fines of air­line lug­gage, we are assem­bling here in Viet­nam some of the larger equip­ment needed for our field work.  The video below shows stain­less steel pipe being cut at a store­front in Saigon’s Dis­trict 11, which is also Chi­na­town.  We will bolt the pipe to a flanged mount­ing bracket (that was small enough to fit in lug­gage) built by UW Oceanog­ra­phy engi­neer­ing ser­vices.  Fully assem­bled, this mount will sup­port our ADCP–acoustic Doppler cur­rent profiler–which mea­sures water veloc­ity from a mov­ing boat and which we will use exten­sively on the Mekong River in the com­ing days.

Sev­eral mem­bers of the Sed­i­ment Dynam­ics Group left Seat­tle yes­ter­day for Viet­nam where we will be doing field research on the Mekong River for the next two weeks or so.

On our last expe­di­tion we shipped pal­lets of gear by air freight to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) but this trip will be shorter and leaner with only what we can trans­port as air baggage.

This photo shows what three grad stu­dents’ worth of gear looks like before head­ing to the air­port.  The fourth mem­ber of the US team will arrive about 24 hours after we do with more gear (hopefully!).

Our group made it safely to Seoul, South Korea with a tight con­nec­tion and arrived in Saigon about an hour ago.  We’ll meet up with Viet­namese and US col­leagues and pre­pare for about a week of work on the tidal por­tion of the Mekong.  Look for more updates in the com­ing days!

This quar­ter (Spring 2013), Andrea, Chuck, and Emily are back at Fri­day Har­bor Labs teach­ing an inten­sive, 15-credit research appren­tice­ship course for under­grad­u­ates enti­tled Marine Sed­i­men­tary Processes. The class explores marine sed­i­ment dis­per­sal and depo­si­tion in the con­text of the Elwha River Restora­tion, but cov­ers a wide range of geol­ogy and oceanog­ra­phy top­ics. Dur­ing the class, stu­dents design and exe­cute indi­vid­ual research projects while work­ing as a team to gather, process, and ana­lyze data from the sub­ma­rine Elwha Delta and nearby shores. Every­one from the Sed­i­ment Dynam­ics Group will visit the class dur­ing the quar­ter to present lec­tures, pro­vide project assis­tance, and lead field trips to San Juan Island and the Elwha water­shed. Stay tuned!

WEEK 1 saw the class of to a busy start, with ori­en­ta­tions, lec­tures, lab instruc­tion, and a field trip to Lime Kiln State Park & False Bay. Next week: field work!

Back row, left to right: Riane, Bri­anna, Tianna, Trevor, and Camp­bell
Front row, left to right: Kevin, Emily, Ben, and Andrea (photo by Kathy Cow­ell of FHL)

The class inves­ti­gates dif­fer­ent sub­strates in False Bay

dig­ging holes (of course)

Andrea talks about the tec­ton­ics that formed the local geol­ogy at Lime Kiln State Park

The class explores lime deposits that were once mined from the island