Category Archive

During a recent science verification cruise a remote-controlled kayak from Dr. Eric Terrill’s group at SIO was tested, using R/V Sally Ride as a platform. It sits in a custom-built frame, which was lowered into the water using the ship’s A-frame. From there it was operated by a hand-held controller just like those for toy cars, leaving the frame and heading off … Read More

Those of us who work and live aboard research vessels know that many of them are owned by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) and operated by oceanographic institutions such as Scripps, Wood’s Hole, and the University of Washington. ONR is a division of the United States Navy that, after World War II, funded the AGOR (Auxiliary General Oceanographic Research) fleet of … Read More

[ngg_images source=”galleries” container_ids=”6″ display_type=”photocrati-nextgen_basic_imagebrowser” order_by=”sortorder” order_direction=”ASC” returns=”included” ajax_pagination=”0″ maximum_entity_count=”500″]  For the next few days, R/V Sally Ride will be doing science operations as part of a verification cruise in La Jolla Canyon. Just outside of the marine protected area, the ship will be recovering moorings for the lab groups of Dr. Ana Sirovic and Dr. Matthew Alford. Deployed from R/V … Read More

  Dr. Sophia Merrifield is Chief Scientist aboard R/V Sally Ride this week. A postdoc in Dr. Eric Terrill’s lab at Scripps, she organizes and watches over every deployment and recovery. Other members of the lab are out here on a science verification cruise, to make sure the ship is ready and able to deploy their unmanned autonomous vehicles. Designed, built, … Read More

Since the CalCOFI program is well-known and proceeds on a predictable schedule (once per season), there are often scientists who ask for bunk space to come along – but they often have to settle for water samples to be collected on their behalf. R/V Sally Ride, however, has a higher number of science berths than many similarly-sized research vessels so the usual CalCOFI science party had … Read More

The Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network is a collection of 26 sites throughout the United States and its territories, plus Antarctica and Tahiti. Studies spanning decades provide insight into environmental changes over seasons and years across a variety of habitats. In 2004, the California Current Ecosystem (CCE) site was added to the network, with scientists collecting seawater samples on CalCOFI … Read More

R/V Sally Ride has 25 bunks for scientists. The ships that CalCOFI usually sails on have less, only 18 on the retired SIO vessel New Horizon and 15 on NOAA ships Lasker and Shimada. Those extra bunks mean that some side projects can be accommodated. Here on the inaugural CalCOFI on Sally Ride, Dr. Dave Checkley, a professor emeritus and director … Read More

What a difference a day makes. The morning after having to move operations inside due to weather, the marine mammal observers aboard R/V Sally Ride were out enjoying the sunshine while 3,000 long-beaked common dolphins surrounded the ship, spread out from horizon to horizon. The chief scientist and ship’s captain had worked together to change the order of stations so that we moved … Read More