The Bridge

View of the bow
(front) of ship;
whales observed ahead.

After inspecting the inner-workings of this "Salty Ship" (twitter: @saltyship), it seemed only fitting to continue my exploration above deck. On the highest point, minus the "crow's nest," there is a room that they call the bridge. The bridge is the pilothouse, where the captain controls the movement of the ship. On this vessel, it is quite open for us to enjoy the majestic views through the windows that stretch 180° around the bow of the ship. While I was there blue whales were diving with their grand tails breaking the surface before slowly descending below. Pretty cool.

View of the aft (back) of ship;
for scale, the "A-frame" where we
deploy the CTD is hanging
out over the water.

Three crew members and the captain are responsible for the navigation and movement of the ship. Twenty-four hours a day, there is at least one person standing watch. Each mate takes two four hour shifts. The "mid-watch," for example, is on the bridge from 12 until 4, both AM and PM (00-0400 and 1200-1600). Along with the captain's mates, there is an "A/B" on duty as well. The "able bodied seaman" helps the mate keep watch during the same shifts.

Pat Redmond, 3rd mate,
enters weather data.

Patrick Redmond, 32, is the 3rd mate. From New Jersey, he decided to attend SUNY Maritime Academy in New York, before joining the NOAA Corp (one of the lesser known of the seven uniformed services in the U.S. with 300 officers that specializes in the sciences at sea). After his training and commitment there, he worked on some of the big tankers (Holland Oil), but as I have heard over and over, he much preferred the research vessels for the interesting science, the new people to meet, and the cool places that they go. Tankers and cruise liners take the same route over and over while these research vessels go absolutely everywhere. His favorites have been Fiji and Iceland so far, but it is still early in his career. Pat showed me how they report the weather back to NOAA every six hours. Every ship is encouraged to do the same; that way there is a report from all areas that can be used to match satellite data as well as provide weather information to others at sea. Today, the air temperature is 14°C, fair with a light wind--beautiful day and the best weather that we've seen so far.

Dynamic Positioning (DP) controls

Periodic checks are part of
protocol.

These are only a few of the flags on board; as R/V Melville pulls into a port,  they must display the US flag as well as the flag of the foreign country's port. As a research vessel, it goes all over the world; therefore, every country's flag is on board.
That's a lot of flags! 

Next in command, the 2nd mate has separate duties which include the voyage planning, the charts, and the extensive logbook; we can think of the 2nd mate as the navigator. Heather Galiher loves this role. She has been 2nd mate on the Melville since 2009 and literally seen the world. She showed me pictures of Patagonia, Papua New Guinea, Thailand, India, and others. Since 2004, Heather, 33, has moved through the ranks from A/B to 3rd mate to now 2nd mate and will be taking tests soon to earn her 1st mate certification. Heather showed me some of the cool features of the ship.

Quick question: 2,516 tons of ship sits only 15.5 feet below the water. How?

Heather Galiher, 2nd mate, takes detailed notes of
every action on board.

In the engine room, I saw similar controls, four huge diesel generators, and the Z-drive motors to the thrusters. On the bridge, I see how these are controlled. I'm amazed. There are four different ways to control the vessel: manual, auto pilot, auto track, and DP or dynamic positioning. Manual is simply giving full control to the pilot with joysticks like a video game. Auto pilot is just that. You can set a course and let it go at that same speed and heading (direction). Auto track is like auto pilot but makes adjustments along the way, following a predetermined pathway on the computer. Dynamic positioning, DP, is the most sophisticated. It can use all three thrusters to stay within three meters of a predetermined pathway or just sit in one place. Using three GPS satellites to triangulate our exact location, DP calculates in real-time the current and the wind and makes adjustments immediately. It does what no person would be able to do, turning all three thrusters independently 360° to stay in one place. This is super important for research groups that want a core sample from one place, but it is not as necessary for us since we are moving slowly in an area to sample with our three methods.

Motion detector to prevent the
bridge from ever being unmanned

Heather showed off some of the other cool features as well. The Melville like other ships this size have controls on either wing as well as in the middle. The starboard (right) wing controls will be used when the captain goes to dock in port so that he can see directly below and all along the side, controlling it all manually at that point.

Another cool feature is the AIS or auto identification system. The AIS identified a 150m vessel 15.8 miles away that we could not see, but we knew was there because of the monitoring system. The system also told us the ship's name, it's heading, it's type, and speed. "The important number to look at," Heather said, "is the CPA." CPA stands for closest point of approach which means if nothing changes, this is when we would collide. "We don't want that number to be zero," she added.

Quick question: We started with 143, 453 gallons of marine diesel. As of today, we are using an average of 1,413 gallons a day. At this rate, how many days could we stay at sea?

Security on the bridge is lax but only compared to other types of vessels, since we are all science researchers and not carrying containers of materials. There are coded locks on the doors to the bridge, cameras all over the ship, and details of what to do in any emergency, including pirates coming aboard. We have emergency drills and follow protocols mandated by the federal government and Scripps for all of their fleet at sea. One of the security measures that is in many pilothouses now is the motion sensors that will sound an alarm if there isn't movement in the bridge for twelve minutes. No movement, the alarm will sound in the captain's chambers and the mess deck, so there is no sleeping while on watch!

John Jeskevicius, 1st mate on the bridge

The 1st mate, John Jeskevicius, started his career sailing yachts in 1969. As an early computer engineer that worked on the first computers for NASA, he was very successful, bought a yacht, but then needed to learn how to sail it. So, he spent a summer learning, before joining the Coast Guard and getting a job as a captain of ships that look for seismic activity for oil companies. Now, he continues to work at sea, radically different than the computer engineering career that he started.

Captain Wes Hill shows me the route through the locks to Seattle.

It seems that the saltwater gets into your veins, causing men (and women) to make career choices that last a lifetime. As a single person, I get it; as a married man with four children, there's no way.

Captain Wes Hill, like others that have been doing this a while, shucks aside the feat of working at sea for this long. Twenty-four of his twenty-eight years as a sailor have been with Scripps. Born and raised in the Appalachians of Pennsylvania, Captain Hill attended the Merchant Marine Academy in Kingsport, NY and began as a 3rd mate after graduation. Now, nearly three decades later, Captain continues to set sail. There is definitely something in the saltwater. Maybe it's all the phyto's that we're studying... Or, maybe it's the fact that after all of these years at sea, Captain Wes Hill still enters a new port every year. This year, it's the Ballard Locks as we make our way through all the draw bridges and channels to dock in Seattle.