Beyond the Blue: Palau Mapping

September 12, 2025

Closing Thoughts

Seeing land for the first time in weeks was special in more ways than I expected. For one thing, I hadn’t realized just how much I would miss the simple comforts of life on land. Taking a long walk, showering without bracing against the roll of the ship, and sleeping in a bed that I don’t have to climb a ladder to get to are just a few of the experiences I’m looking forward to after deboarding. 

As Guam came into view yesterday morning, my first thoughts weren’t just about the comforts of land — they were about the place itself. This expedition has been full of “firsts” for me: my first time processing multibeam mapping data, my first time participating in an EK calibration, as well as my first time aboard a research vessel in general. 

But perhaps the most unexpected “first” was arriving in Guam by sea.

I earned my master’s degree from the University of Guam and spent a life-changing two-and-a-half years living there. It’s a place where I made some of my closest friendships and accomplished some of my most meaningful personal and professional milestones. When I left Guam to begin my NOAA Knauss Fellowship, I didn’t know when — or if — I’d have the chance to return. As it turned out, that opportunity came just nine months later, aboard this very expedition.

Coming back to Guam this way has been surreal. It’s a full-circle moment I didn’t anticipate, and something that’s reminded me of how unpredictable this field, and life in general, can be. These past 25 days have taught me to be more flexible, to adapt quickly, to take on unfamiliar challenges, and to step outside of my comfort zone. 

I’m looking forward to seeing old friends, introducing my colleagues to a place I once called home — and returning to land with a fresh perspective and a deepened connection to my field.

September 9, 2025

Beyond the Science: Morale at Sea

Being at sea isn’t just work. While members of the science team come aboard with a specific science and exploration role, the ship is both our office and our home during our time here. It’s where we eat, sleep, exercise, and spend every hour of every day. Without the usual boundaries between professional and personal life, it can be hard to separate our jobs from our time to rest. It can be easy for those lines to begin to blur when your office doubles as your living room.

Downtime is crucial for good science at sea. Feeling relaxed, well-fed, and comfortable is essential to putting the best versions of ourselves forward, thereby doing our best work and producing the best results. Plus, it’s nice to get to know your fellow shipmates. I’ve loved hearing the life stories that have brought us all to this niche line of work. After dinner most nights, I like to unwind by reading, playing cribbage, or finding a quiet spot on the bow to watch the ocean and clouds roll by. Sunbathing and stargazing have recently become my favorite pastimes during my downtime, as the weather has turned gorgeous as our journey nears its end.

On top of his other professional duties, our morale officer, Ensign John Canez, works tirelessly to organize board games, video game tournaments, and the beloved weekly ritual of “sundae Sunday.” These activities have given me the chance to not only school my shipmates in Mario Kart, but also to come together as people instead of just coworkers.

These moments don’t happen by accident. One of the clearest examples of a morale boost for me happened a few weeks ago. Birthdays have always been a big deal in my family, and despite the immense opportunity of participating in this expedition, I was still sad to be spending mine so far away from them. While I was feeling a little homesick over lunch, the ship’s steward department surprised me by bringing out an enormous birthday cake, complete with candles and a note. I so appreciated that gesture, along with everyone’s engagement in making our vessel feel more like a home away from home.

September 4, 2025

Above and Beyond Below Deck

There is something comforting in knowing there are experts in fields that I have no experience with. That was the feeling I walked away with today after the mission team toured the engine rooms. NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer’s First Assistant Engineer, Sam Sargent, was kind enough to carve out time from an incredibly busy schedule to show us what really makes our expedition tick.

As we walked (and sometimes crouched) through room after room, I kept thinking that there was an entire boat beneath the boat I thought I knew. The engine level is home to all the systems that, by design, I have not had to think about. I’m in no way an engineer. Given my high school-level understanding of electricity and plumbing, I would struggle to explain the difference between volts and amps.

Despite most of the tour going completely over my head, I remember Sam telling us that the only dumb question was the one we didn’t ask. That invitation made it easier to admit just how much I didn’t know.

The tour answered questions I hadn’t thought to ask. For example, how do we get our continuous supply of drinking water? Sam walked us through the debrining, filtering, and ultraviolet sterilization systems that quietly supply the lifeblood of our operation. How is fuel converted into electricity? That question led us to the cavernous breaker room that felt like something out of an 1980s sci-fi movie, complete with rows of humming equipment attached to arrays of control knobs and switches which we were warned not to lean against.

I was especially fascinated to learn that all essential ship operations, from navigation to steerage, can be controlled entirely from the engine level in the event of an emergency. That kind of redundancy turned out to be a major theme of the day. Nearly every pump, motor, and drive shaft has a backup system, built to be completely independent, standing by in case of a failure.

These systems are methodically maintained by engineers whose work sometimes goes unseen, but is nonetheless vital. We ended our tour by climbing up through a hatch I’ve probably walked over dozens of times, but never stopped to wonder where it led. That moment crystallized something for me: there is a whole world of effort happening just beneath our feet, and I’m grateful for the people who have dedicated their careers to keeping us afloat.

September 2, 2025

Mapping a Seamount

Even with all of the other cool science I’ve been a part of on this trip, the primary objective of this expedition is to conduct mapping operations of the seafloor. Yesterday, while conducting these operations, the multibeam sonar mapped an enormous seamount about 250 miles north of Palau. This feature was not completely unknown — previous estimates from nautical charts published in 2023 estimate that the peak of the feature reached 250 meters (820 feet) below the surface. After analyzing the returned pings, our mapping data shows an estimated peak at 243 meters (797 feet) depth — almost spot on!

This seamount stretches from the abyssal plain at roughly 4,400 meters (2.7 miles) depth to its peak — meaning it is about 4,200 meters (2.6 miles) tall. By comparison, Pikes Peak, one of Colorado’s fabled “14’ers” — that is, mountains that reach over 14,000 feet in elevation — stands at 14,110 feet (4,302 meters) tall. This unnamed undersea mountain would look right at home among the American Rockies instead of submerged beneath the choppy waters of the western Pacific Ocean.

As we voyage on, continuing to “mow the lawn” (map) to ensure complete coverage of the feature through our focused survey pattern, the sheer scale of what’s beneath us is totally unbetrayed by the seas above. It’s funny to me that were we not actively mapping these features, we would have no idea that a mountain half the height of Mount Everest lies directly beneath us. I can’t help but think about the variety of organisms and geologic features that sit below us, undisturbed and undiscovered. Maybe one day the map we made of this behemoth will be used to navigate the feature with a remotely operated vehicle to get a closer look. I guess we’ll see!

August 30, 2025

How Do We Make Sure Our Sonar Data is Accurate?

This is a question scientists can get a little obsessed with — and for good reason. One of the most important tasks our science team regularly performs to ensure the accuracy of our sonar data is calibration.

Calibrations, or ‘cals’ for short, are crucial for any scientific instrument. Over time, even the best equipment can drift in accuracy, and periodic calibrations help correct that drift. Our EK80 (split-beam sonars) are calibrated by taking soundings off of an object with a known return signal strength, or calibration target. During the calibration, our known target is in the form of a baseball-sized metal ball; a 38.1 millimeter tungsten carbide sphere with a 6% cobalt binder to be exact. The sphere is carefully lowered over the side of the ship using three fishing lines, each controlled by a deck-mounted device called a downrigger. Downriggers let out and reel in small lengths of the line to slightly adjust the sphere’s position below the ship.

In theory, the calibration should be straightforward; we need to methodically move the sphere through the beams of sound being emitted from each sonar transducer so that each device can “see” the sphere and then calibrate off of its return signal strength. In reality, however, even small currents and gusts of wind conspire to slightly nudge the boat or the sphere itself, resulting in no returns. Small disturbances often compound, pushing the sphere out of the sonar’s beam and thus rendering it invisible to the onboard sensors we use to track the calibration’s progress. This amounts to a sometimes maddening choreography wherein the team delicately moves the sphere to an exact location underneath the ship in one moment, only for its signature to blink out of existence for seemingly no reason in the next.

On top of the technical obstacles of calibrations, I’ve learned that perfect conditions at sea are rare and short lived. Because time is so valuable out here, there comes a point where we have to stop chasing calm seas, grit our teeth, and accomplish the calibration under whatever conditions are at hand. Today’s attempt was made more difficult by the onset of one of the downpours we’ve come to expect during the “wet season” in Palau. I heard Adrienne remark that this was her first calibration with the ship’s fog horn going off overhead! After carefully swaying the sphere for nearly six hours beneath three of the four sonars, we waited anxiously for the coveted error value that determines if the calibration attempt was successful (RMS value of less than 0.4), or whether we’d have to start over from scratch. The screen refreshed and… 0.33! Success!

Huge shout out to everyone on the team for the patience and camaraderie exhibited throughout this process. Calibration is challenging, but rewarding. Three down and one to go!

August 26, 2025

Line Throwing Devices

My simple mantra “safety first” was quickly upgraded to “safety first, last, and always” today. In that spirit, the science team and crew were treated to a demonstration of a piece of safety equipment that I didn’t realize we had on board — line throwing devices.

Line throwing devices are essentially more specialized t-shirt cannons. Using compressed air or disposable carbon dioxide (CO2) canisters, line throwers launch a projectile in the air with an attached nylon rope hundreds of yards over the side of the ship. When seconds count, quickly getting a line out to a mariner overboard is an essential piece of safety equipment. Line throwers come in two types: reusable and single use. Reusable line throwers save the ship from having to expend its limited supply of CO2 canisters, but they rely on a functioning air compressor — a resource not guaranteed in every emergency. No matter the style of thrower, aim definitely matters. I learned that lesson the hard way when I accidentally launched a line directly over the A-frame on the fantail (back of the ship). Whoops!

After the serious demo, things got more… fruitful. Line thrower projectiles got replaced with expired produce that we used for very important testing purposes. For the record, kiwis and apples make terrible ammo, but line throwers make great blenders!

I thoroughly enjoyed seeing the skills of the officers and crew on display. It’s great to know that our safety is in good hands. It was a blast (literally). A huge thanks to the NOAA Commissioned Officer Corps for the demo and for cleaning hydraulic grease off the tangled lines afterward. Sorry about that!

August 22, 2025

Processing eDNA

Sending a refrigerator-sized device down to thousands of meters below the ocean surface and recovering the liters of water that have been carefully taken from several ocean depths sounds challenging. And yet, as I observe the survey technicians, deck hands, and officers go about the work to launch a conductivity, temperature depth (CTD) rosette, the procedure seems almost routine to them. The practiced steps codified in the dozens of standard operating procedures (SOPs) and training I have begun digesting make for a standardized and maybe routine experience for those who have been through this before. Even if a CTD deployment is somewhat unremarkable, I can’t help but be amazed at what is below the surface. From this operation, we can get a glimpse of the assemblage of ocean life from the environmental DNA (eDNA) in these samples and the work that goes into making expeditions like ours happen.

At the most fundamental level of expedition planning, provisions have to be ordered, inventoried, and preserved, not to mention prepared into the exceptional meals we’ve had on board so far. The ship herself needs constant attention – both navigational and mechanical to efficiently ferry us to our deployment sites. Cranes need to be expertly manipulated to transport the often delicate instruments from the crushing depths of the deep ocean to the blinding light of the deck. Outside of the effort put forth by our crew, the weather needs to cooperate enough that we can operate under safe conditions. So much is needed to go right for science to happen at sea, it is a small miracle that anything gets done at all. I try to hold that thought in my mind as we encounter hiccups. As my colleague and survey technician Heather [Rippman] reminded me, when you’re exploring, any data is better than no data!

eDNA processing has been going great. It’s nice to feel my experience in a genetics lab snap back into focus as I try to maintain as much sterility in the wet lab as possible. Not being able to catch even a sliver of land in any direction makes me feel truly and deeply lucky out here.

August 18, 2025

We Are Finally at Sea!

After a grueling 32-hour journey from Washington, D.C., to Palau, fellow traveler Gretchen Spencer and I were finally able to glimpse where we will be spending the next 25 days. Coming aboard NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer for the first time was an unforgettable experience. Operations Lead Treyson Gillespie and NOAA Corps officer Lieutenant Jane Saunders welcomed us to the ship with a safety briefing followed by a ship tour that wound through doors that lead to hallways that lead to shafts that lead to rooms. The metal hatches and unmarked doors are second nature to our tour guides, but I’m definitely still in the process of mentally mapping the full 224 feet of the vessel that is my new temporary home.

I have never experienced the misfortune that is sea-sickness, but even if I was prone to it, the seas were glass-like for our first few days. The truly stunning views that are the rock islands of Palau have begun to fade into our rearview, giving way to distant squalls, seabirds, and the everpresent horizon that surrounds us.

My Knauss fellowship mentor, Adrienne Copeland, pointed out that since deeper waters are so close to port in this area, the transit to our sample sites wouldn’t take too long. Sure enough, we conducted our first conductivity, temperature, and depth (CTD) operations and subsequent environmental DNA (eDNA) sampling on day one. The quick pace is exciting in some ways — we’re hitting the ground running — but an early downtime to help us landlubbers adjust will largely be absent from our itinerary. Starting the work of the science that we are out here to do so quickly is a daunting, but exciting way to start this journey.

I can’t wait to see what comes next. Stay tuned!