oceanography-joshua’s report
Joshua’s field trip report to the USS David Starr Jordan for Oceanography (edited slightly for privacy).
About a week ago, I went with [some of my troop mates], to go take a tour of a marine research vessel. The ship was called the David Starr Jordan. The type of boat was a NOAA Boat, which can fit 18 passengers and sustain them for approximately a month. The boat has many different types of sensors and equipment, nets and cables for checking the environment by checking air pressure, water pressure, fish populations, gas presences, gas chemical and nutrient levels, weather, and charting depths and topography of the bottom of the ocean. They have many different versions of each type of equipment for getting the best results, such as 10-20 communication radios (2-3 just to talk to people on the boat, and the rest for talking with other boats or communicating with the base/homeport.) They have many different types of collision prevention alarms, a computer screen with report guages directly behind the control room, about 10 different cranes and wenches to lift different instruments and sensors from the bottom of the ocean.
To be safe in stormy weather, or in case the boat is sinking all doors are quick-seal hatches, which have levers all around them for really rough weather. They keep all their emergency equipment, such as fire extinguishers and emergency supplies throughout the ship so that if an emergency is keeping them from getting to the emergency locker, they can still get to supplies to take care of the emergency. The emergency locker is a small room with one of the quick-seal doors that has special emergency equipment such as breathing devices, medical supplies, extra fire extinguishers and tons of tools.
There are metal hatches over the port-holes so that the light from the lower decks will not disturb the driver’s night vision or keep other boats from seeing signaling lights. The engine room always has to have an engineer present. It has an extra little room that has gauges and emergency steering. The amazing thing is that the engineers don’t need a degree to work with the mechanics and electrical devices, but it does require special training. The boat has three different recreation rooms, a huge galley, two repair shops to repair anything from a broken pocket knife to a broken anchor. The medical staff on board the boat use their own cabin as the medical office. All the cabins on the boat are as small as a half bath, and most of them have to share a room with another person. Only 2-3 people on the entire boat get to have a cabin to themselves: the captain, the engineer, and someone else.
The boat’s home port, Sand Point, is the center for all testing and scientific research, such as chemical compositions, what the fish are eating, how old the fish are, and making 3D charts of the ocean, piecing together all the info their boats have recovered. It’s so amazing that all the boats from around the country send their information to Sand Point here in Washington! The facility just bought four new scanning and charting boats, and they own two other medium size boats for charting, weather and fish populations. They also showed us on the field trip a giant four hook crane that can actually drive around, and has two padded, super strong ropes between the four hooks to be able to dry dock or move boats to trucks.
The David Starr Jordan is actually a very old boat, and it started costing them too much money to keep it running. So, now, they are selling it for $x (and it’s as big as our house!) My favorite part of the boat was the helm, with all the buttons, levers, computers, and electronic equipment was so cool! The only bad part about the field trip was that the security was super tight.