Ship Services

Power	Primary Propulsion	3 generators 1,500 KW CAT/KATO
	Primary Electric	3 generators 715 KW CAT/KATO
	Emergency Power	1 generator 250 KW CAT/KATO
	Clean Power	M-G sets supply 88 KW for laboratories, plus necessary clean power for exterior communications, navigation equipment, and DPS and propulsion machinery controls
Water Capacity	Fresh Water	13,000 gallons/storage, 2 4,000 gal/day water makers
	Salt Water	Uncontaminated saltwater system supplies 20 gpm to labs
	Lab Water	300 gallons, 2 150 gal/day evaporators
HVAC Cooling Heating	Labs	75°F, 55% relative humidity 70°F
	Scientific Stores	80°F, 55% relative humidity 70°F
	All other A/C Space	80°F, 55% relative humidity 70°F

 

Science Information System

The science information system allows users to access and transfer information throughout the ship via the ships Ethernet. The standard Ethernet is distributed throughout the labs and work areas by fiber optic cable to twisted pair hubs. Wireless access points serve to connect several labs and the outside deck areas.

 

The network is serviced by a workstation running RedHat Linux providing user accounts, NIS, DHCP, NTP, SMTP, POP, IMAP, FTP, NFS, Samba WINS, print services and hosts the R/V Thompson WEB site. Another workstation is the network file server where all scientific data are stored. The scientific data are accessable via NFS, Samba or FTP and much of the data are viewable over the ships WEB in near real time.

 

Temporary email accounts are provided for each scientist. The the 36 science accounts are associated with the room/bunk assigned to the individual scientist. Once the cruise is over the account is reset for the next user. There is a small charge for email usage aboard the R/V Thompson. Each individual is responsible for payment of the amount due for this service. Each account has a message size filter that can be set by the individual to prevent large/expensive messages from being transferred to the ship. Email is transmitted to the shore server 4 times a day Monday thru Friday and 3 times a day on weekends.

 

Shipboard Data Acquisition System (DAS)

DAS Collects and stores data for the following shipboard parameters:

GMT Date	GMT Time
Latitude	Longitude
Heading	COG
Speed	SOG
Sea Temperature	Sea Salinity
Light Transmission	Chlorophyll
Air Temperature	Humidity
Barometer	PAR
Short Wave Radiation
GMT Date	GMT Time
True Wind Speed	True Wind Direction
Average Wind Speed	Average Wind Direction
Water Depth	Sound Velocity
Winch ID#	Winch Rate
Winch Wire Out	Winch Wire Tension

 

DAS Data values are updated at 5 to 60 second intervals depending on the user requirements. The DAS data is available in 24 hour time series plots on the ships WEB as well as in ASCII formatted daily files.

CTD System

Our primary CTD data collection system utilizes a SeaBird SBE 9/11+ with dual sensors, rated for 6,000m depth, and "Seasoft for Windows" modular software routines for acquisition, display, and storage of data. Software capabilities include:

 

• Measurement of conductivity, temperature, and pressure, determination of auxiliary channel voltages from A/D converter channels; operator entry and media storage.

• Computation of depth (m), density (sigma-theta and sigma-t), salinity (salinity units) sound velocity (m/sec), potential temperature, specific volume anomaly, oxygen (ml/l or mg/l), pH, light transmission (percent transmission or beam attenuation coefficient), PAR, fluorescence, sensor frequencies, A/D channel voltages, scan number, and time.

• Creation of event marker or bottle files for easy correlation of CTD and water sample data; CRT display of the converted values in X-Y screen plots or as tabulated engineering units in a fixed or scrolled display; plots of converted values on printer or plotter.

• Storage of the raw CTD data set in standard files; these may be accessed by user programs for further processing or for transfer to another computer.

• Automatic creation of a header file, containing system time and data, calibration of coefficients, and user supplied information for "cruise," "leg," "latitude," "longitude," and X-Y plot label, as well as, annotative (header) information can be entered.

• Replay of data previously recorded, which may be examined with any of the above display or plotting options.

• Splitting of the raw data into separate upcast and downcast files, bin averaging of stored raw data and conversion to an ASCII file containing any selected group of numerical values.

 

Seasoft is not copy protected and may be freely distributed. To obtain the latest version of Seasoft go to the SeaBird web site for more information.

Acoustic Doppler Current Profiling System

The ADCP system employs the acoustic Doppler technique to remotely measure horizontal water currents in the water column from a moving vessel. The 75khz RD Instruments Acoustic Doppler Current Profiling instrument is used on the R/V Thompson. Water current profiles are remotely measured in up to 128 depth bins (4 to 32 meter bin size) over a depth range of up to 1000 meters. In areas where the bottom depth is within the ADCP acoustic range bottom tracking is used as a reference, the sonar also directly measures earth referenced vessel velocity from a GPS. The combination of these measurements allows computation of absolute (earth referenced) current profiles from an underway vessel. A computer processes the profiler data in real time and, together with vessel attitude and heading data, produces vector averaged current profiles in earth referenced coordinates. Processed and/or raw ADCP data are logged on the shipboard acquisition system. Data may also be graphically displayed in real time on the CRT. The data acquisition system software includes a menu driven user interface to allow operators to easily interact with the current measurement system.

Acoustic Swath Mapping Systems

The Kongsberg Simrad EM300 swath mapping system is a high resolution medium range multibeam sonar. The system was installed on the R/V Thompson in early 2003 and is a state of the art instrument. This multibeam echo sounder is designed to map the ocean bottom from less than 10M depth down to approximately 5000M depth. The nominal operating frequency is 30KHz with an angular coverage up to 150 degrees and 135 beams at 1 degree by 1 degree beam width.

 

The R/V Thompson is also equipped with a Krupp-Atlas Hydrosweep DS swath mapping system which operates at a frequency of 15.5 kHz in depths from 10M to 7000M. The angular coverage is 90 degrees with 59 beams of 2.3 degrees.

 

These systems are typically operated by the marine technician or designated watch standers. They provide the user with a real time color display of the depth contours and system parameters. Science parties doing extensive mapping must provide "watch standers" for these systems.

 

MB-system software is available on a PC running Linux. Data processing is the responsibility of the scientist. Map making capability consists of a 42-inch color plotter, processing computer, and software to produce maps. Heavy users of the swath mapping systems must provide their own processing team and plotter supplies.