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FYI Research: |
"Going out on cruises and seeing stuff break." That's how Lou Bartek has become expert at collecting geographic data in the ocean. First as a graduate student, then a postdoctoral fellow and now as associate professor of geological sciences at Carolina, Bartek has done his share of problem solving on research trips. So when, on a spring 2003 trip to the South China Sea, he and his students faced a major mishap -- losing a $95,000 piece of equipment to the water's depths -- they didn't panic. They got to work. "Maintaining equipment -- and the risk of losing it -- is something you constantly have to live with," Bartek said. "It's part of getting the project done." But that doesn't mean the loss was easy. For Bartek, it's one he can't afford. "If I can't recover it," he said, "I can't replace it." The lost gear--a Datasonic TTV-190 deep-tow Chirp Sonar Sub-bottom and side-scan sonar tow vehicle--is one piece out of a host of equipment that Bartek and students use to gather data about the geology of the ocean. In simple terms, the "fish," as Bartek calls it, sends out high-frequency sound waves. When the "chirp" of sound bounces off the physical structures of the ocean floor, it resonates back, then feeds into the ship's computer as computerized data. The team deciphers the resulting pictures to learn more about the climate change that has happened in key areas over the last million or more years. "It's flawed thinking to try to use what we see just from the most recent events," Bartek said. He and his team are searching for "groundtruth" -- data to determine whether geologists' current models of climate change really reflect what has happened over long periods of time. On March 30, the day they lost the fish, the team was cruising on the Ocean Researcher I, a Taiwanese ship also carrying some Taiwanese researchers and crew. Bartek was in a below-deck lab, monitoring incoming data. Earlier in the week, the team had had some problems with the towfish. Its computer system kept crashing. Each night, one of the graduate students would wait until it was daytime in the United States, then call technical support. In the morning, they'd try the solutions that tech support had offered. But none of it was working. Finally, undergraduate Dan Pignatello, who had picked up some of his roommate's computer skills, offered to bring the computer down, take it apart, and bring it back up again. Bartek said to go for it. Pignatiello tried, and it worked. So on March 30, around 2 p.m., the team was cruising along again, and Bartek was feeling good. "We were collecting amazing data," he said. But then they started noticing strange readings. So Bartek shut the fish down. As part of restarting it, he flipped a high-voltage breaker. "When I flipped it, it immediately popped back," Bartek said. "When that happens, it's just like your breaker at home. It means you've got a short circuit." Bartek knew there was either something wrong with the fish or its cable. Bring it back up, he said. Bartek monitored the operation from the lab, watching through a small window as some technicians on deck raised the cable. As the fish was nearing the surface, Bartek saw the cable go slack. He ran outside. The technicians said that they had the fish in sight, above the surface, when the cable snapped. The fish -- all 300 pounds of it -- had broken free and sunk to the bottom. The team immediately started planning for recovery. By that evening, Bartek was on deck using a satellite phone to call their funding agency, the Office of Naval Research, to ask for money to launch a salvage mission. Bartek and a Taiwanese colleague on board, Wen-Miin Tian, hatched a plan -- they'd return to shore, get a smaller boat with a sonar, which would guide them to the submerged equipment, and a fishing trawler, which could use its nets to scoop up the fish. But before they could even get back to shore, a cold front moved in, bringing intense winds and high waves. The ship had to move to an area on the southwest side of Taiwan to wait out the storm before heading to port. "We basically got chased out of there by a bad weather system," Bartek said. The Carolina team soon returned home. The Taiwanese scientists had hoped to attempt a rescue on June 9, Bartek said. But another cold front moving in stopped that trip, too. Bartek remains optimistic. When they lost the fish, they had just cleared an abrupt drop-off where the water is 1,000 meters deep. They didn't lose the fish until they reached relatively shallow water -- a little more than 100 meters deep. And the spot is not in a heavy fishing area, which means there's less chance of the equipment suffering damage from fishing lines or boats. "I can only say it was luck that we lost it where we did," Bartek said. If they can recover the fish, it is likely to be in pretty good shape, Bartek said. "But the longer we wait, the lower the probability of recovery," he said. No matter what happens, the team is getting on with their work. Even as they wait to find out if they'll get their equipment back, they're planning a trip to Antarctica for January 2004. Students on the South China Sea trip were undergraduate Dan Pignatiello and graduate students Heather Ramsey, Jeff Warren, and Brandon Wood. |