Full Validation and Clean 9 October 2012

Cleaning of the CREWS station has been on schedule but the blog has fallen behind the last couple of months.  All dates have been blogged.  Apart from the cleaning, there is nothing really to report, we have had no storms, so the orientation, the lines, chains and equipment are all doing well.  Bio-fouling has been low over the summer, but we have had some fire coral creep in that we are tying to stay on top of.

The GT Sensor was installed at 1pm and cleaning commenced with two divers at 2:10pm.  The dive lasted about one and a half hours the instruments were cleaned first then the lines, chain and pole.  The GT sensor was removed at the end of the dive.  We also replaced the copper filters on the CTD.

Full Validation and Clean 14 September 2012

Full Validation and Clean 9 August 2012

Full Validation and Clean 11 July 2012

Full Validation and Clean 13 June 2012 and Nav light replacement

After the Ground Truth sensor was installed at 7:50, a cleaning session involving 7 divers started at 9:00.  All the instruments, chains, lines and pole were cleaned.  Bio-fouling was moderate, probably due to us cleaning a the station a couple of weeks late.  Cleaning finished at 11:30 and the GT Sensor removed at 2pm.

We tried to replace the anodes on the chain but between the two sizes we have, one is two big and another two small. We will source from somewhere else.  Three of the chains do now have new anodes.  Anodes and filters on the instruments were also cleaned and checked and are in good condition.  While we were out there we mounted a YSI pH instrument to the side of the pole one meter below the surface.  This will be collected in 2 weeks and the data used for one of CCMI's Ocean Acidification Manipulative studies.

A few weeks ago the Navigation Light on the Station stopped working, yesterday (June 14th) we replaced the light with a Carmanah M650, a newer model of the M601 which was installed before. ( please see photo)

Full Validation and Clean 2 May 2012

Due to an unexpected Nor'wester our cleaning of the CREWS station was postponed to and completed on 2nd May.  3 divers started cleaning at 9:15 and finished at 11:00. The GT sensor was installed at 7:50am and removed at 1:30.  Strong current made cleaning difficult near the surface but all was completed.  The sensors, lines, chain, and stick looked to be in good condition with low biofouling, no change on the orientation of the station.  It was noted that there was minimal fire coral present before cleaning.

Full Validation and Clean 21/Mar/2012

Yesterday 4 divers completed a full validation and clean. The station had low to moderate biofouling. A couple of patches of fire coral were noted as we have not had any on the station over the winter, we removed all that we could find, lets see if we have more as the water temperature increases. The Gt Sensor was installed at 8:15am and removed at 1:05pm, we commenced cleaning of the instruments at 11:20 and completed the rest of the station over the next 90 minutes. We also removed the 4 temperature leveloggers form the station and are returning them to Miami for calibration, they have been on the station for over a year. Everything else on the station looked normal.

Full Validation and Clean 11/Feb/2012

The CREWS station received its second cleaning of the year. All the sensors, chains, lines and pole had limited biofouling. The whole station was cleaned by 4 divers after the GT sensor was installed at 8am, the cleaning commenced at 9:30 for 90 minutes. The GT sensor was then removed around 1:20pm. Everything looked in place, no changes were obvious since our last visit.

Full Validation and Clean 11/Jan/2012

After many weeks of high winds we finally completed a full station cleanup of all instruments, chains, lines and pole on Wednesday 11th January 2012. Surprisingly the biofouling was not as much as we suspected, but definitely needed a clean. Could this be due to Herbivory fish?

Photos before and after cleaning

The GT was installed at 7:45 am. Cleaning commenced around 10:40, (we installed some settlement plates on the reef wall before we started cleaning), and finished around 12:05, the GT sensor was then removed around 3:30. In addition to the general cleaning of the station and instruments we replaced the copper filters on the CTD and added three anodes to three separate chains, more will need to be replaced over the coming months. The condition of the lines are in good shape, the four lines at the base did not seam as tight as normal but the station was solid and the orientation has not changed.