|
UH research subs set
for busy season
Planned dives include Loihi and
another underwater volcano off
American Samoa
Rigorous tests began off Oahu yesterday to certify the Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory's two fully overhauled submersibles for a busy dive season in the main Hawaiian Islands.
Several training dives are planned to the Japanese midget submarine discovered by the HURL submersibles off Pearl Harbor in 2002, said John Wiltshire, acting laboratory director.
More dives are scheduled to the midget sub in December for the National Park Service, National Marine Sanctuaries and Asahi Broadcasting Corp., he said, noting Asahi TV is interested in finding relatives of the two Japanese sailors presumably interred in the sub and taking them to the site.
The three-person submersibles, Pisces V and Pisces IV, began about two weeks of tests and training yesterday from shallow to full depths for certification by the American Bureau of Shipping to put them back into service, Wiltshire said.
They will leave Sept. 3 on their mother ship, Ka'imikai-O-Kanaloa, for the science dives.
The dive season is shorter than usual because a big four-month South Pacific expedition is planned starting in March "if we can get clearances," Wiltshire said. A lot of submersible work is planned from American Samoa to New Zealand, he said.
A highlight of the expedition will be dives on Vailulu'u, a hot-spot volcano off American Samoa similar to Loihi off the Big Island, said John Smith, HURL researcher and science coordinator.
Proposals also have been made to go to the remote islands of Holland, Baker and Palmyra, he said.
Terry Kerby, HURL operations director and chief pilot, said his small crew has worked nights and weekends for two months on the submersibles. "We're ready to settle into a nice routine of 17- and 18-hour days for five months."
The veteran submersible pilot is eager to return to Loihi and dive into Pele's Pit, a 690-foot-deep, 3,000-feet-wide crater that he has explored and mapped over the years.
"He's got lots of interesting places for us to check out," said Frank Sansone, a UH-Manoa oceanographer who is planning eight dives on the seamount, about 2,970 feet below the surface.
He wants to complete a time series he has been working on for 10 years, sampling hydrothermal vents to figure out the geochemical cycle before and after a big eruption. "It's a wonderful laboratory to test theories," he said.
Also working on Loihi will be Geoff Wheat of the University of Alaska, a former UH postdoctoral researcher; Dave Clague, former scientist-in-charge of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, now with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute; and Craig Moyer, a Western Washington University microbiologist who earned his doctorate at UH-Manoa.
They will explore changes in the vents and their chemical composition and try to identify and collect samples of microorganisms.
Sansone said he will also be involved in a project led by UH-Manoa botany professor Celia Smith with graduate student Heather Spalding to investigate nuisance macroalgal meadows growing at a 300-foot depth off Maui, Molokai and Lanai.
The botanists will run a number of algae studies combining scuba diving in shallower areas with deep submersible dives, and they will monitor changes at the sites next year, John Smith said.
He said a lot of dives will be in the area from Maui to Penguin Bank off western Molokai, looking at different aspects of algae and fisheries habitat. The 10 projects also include studies of an invasive coral species killing black coral colonies off Maui and Kauai, deep-water corals and genetics of corals.
Some scientists will test instruments they have developed to measure chemicals, collect samples of microbes and sediments, and measure productivity of algae species.
Among the researchers will be Richard Grigg, a UH-Manoa oceanographer and coral reef specialist; Sam Kahng, a graduate student in oceanography; Karla McDermid, a UH-Hilo marine science professor; John Runcie of Australia, an algal physiologist formerly with the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology; Amy Baco-Taylor, a UH graduate now at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; Ron Dunbar of Stanford University; Gary McMurtry, a UH-Manoa oceanographer; HURL researcher Chris Kelley and Whitlow Au, chief scientist, Marine Mammal Research Program, HIMB; and Charles (Chip) Fletcher, a UH-Manoa geology and geophysics professor.
Max Cremer is deputy operations director and a pilot at HURL; Steve Price and Colin Wolleman are pilots in training, as well as support technicians with Douglas Bloedorn and Peter Townsend. Dan Greeson, professor of ocean resource engineering, is chief engineer.
www.soest.hawaii.edu/HURL/
