After a long week of patiently waiting and strategic logistics, NEMO & NOMAD subs return home to Pompano Beach, FL to prep for their next mission. As stated by our CEO Robert Carmichael “the girls are finally home.”
NEMO & NOMAD Subs Offloading at Global Sub Dive’s Headquarters
Earlier this year in January of 2019, NEMO & NOMAD shipped out to execute submersible operations for the Nekton Mission First Descent surveying 8 different locations off the Seychelles islands in the Indian Ocean. For this particular mission, the subs were dressed in yellow and red and sported decals from the mission’s partners Kensington Tours and Omega.
We wan to thank Triton Submersibles for the help and support offered to the Nekton Mission First Descent. You guys are awesome!
But yesterday was a really long day for the Global Sub Dive crew and support personnel. Based on the information received from Port Everglades the previous day, we all arrived bright and early at GSD’s HQ to receive our assets. The team and support crew spent quite an amount of time prepping the warehouse to ensure everything will be organized for the arrival of GSD’s best girls. However, in this business, anything can happen.
From left to right, Randy Holt, Billy Neunzing, Shane Zigler, and Diana Giorgetti patiently wait for cargo to arrive…
We waited an hour, then two, then four, and by the sixth hour we were all ready for the girls to get home. But the girls were not arriving. It took some strategic planning and sweet talking the wonderful staff at Maersk and Port Everglades to finally get the first part of our cargo delivered: the container.
During missions, the container serves as the lifeline for the subs. It carries anything from spare parts to miracle fixes. Upon its arrival, our awesome crane operator from Allegiance Crane’s Pompano Beach location was ready to offload all 15,000 pounds of it from the flat rack.
Randy Holt climbs up on top of the container and hooks all four corners to the crane’s rig.
After offload, the container is placed on a trailer, where it remain until it needs to ship out to the next mission. For the next few weeks, the Global Sub Dive crew will inventory its contents, clean it up, and get it ready for the next project.
Randy Holt happy to see the container finally on its trailer!
After the container arrived, was offloaded, placed on its new location, strapped and secured, the GSD team and support personnel prepped for the arrival of the girls: NEMO & NOMAD.
On first look, the girls arrived quite messy. Their “clothing” was undone, but we were happy to see they arrived unharmed and ready to be serviced.
The offloading of the subs took much longer and more fine tuned logistics. NEMO appeared to have been partying all night, while NOMAD was a little more dressed.
Despite their messy look, upon removal of their protective cover, we were happy to see that both NEMO & NOMAD were intact. We are still unsure what transpired at the port, but we thank whomever partied with our girls for returning them home safe.
First to offload was NOMAD. With her bright red suit, she looked stunning to us. Shane Zigler hooked her onto the crane’s rig and carefully offloaded from the flat rack and onto her trailer were she was hauled into our warehouse.
Then came NEMO. With her bright yellow suit, she really looked like a party girl! Once again, Shane Zigler climbed up and hooked NEMO to the crane’s rig to be carefully offloaded and hauled into our warehouse.
After what seemed to be the longest day of my life, container and subs were safely stored inside our warehouse and the Global Sub Dive crew and support personnel finally went home. It was a very long day…
Being part of a submersible operations team is a unique experience, but it comes with hard work and a requirement to be able to work as a team. I think we have the best submersible operations crew in the world and I am honored to be part of Global Sub Dive’s Surface to Seafloor Exploration Team.
Did know our subs executed the first deep ocean live broadcast during the Nekton Mission First Descent? Don’t worry, you can sign up to our newsletter and receive firsthand information about our operations.
The talented Global Sub Dive team of submersible pilots, Robert Carmichael, Randy Holt, and Shane Zigler together with the Nekton Mission First Descent crew of scientists, explorers, researchers, and media have been tirelessly working aboard the Ocean Zephyr to explore the depths of the Indian Ocean.
Join them LIVE tomorrow March 12, 2019 at 1 AM (EST) standard time and learn what an incredible production and team effort it goes into one of this operations.
In preparation of our upcoming missions we have taken receipt of our new plungers.
The plungers, which actually are Sediment Coring Devices and not really plungers, are used to grab samples of the ocean bottom. The manipulator arm on the submarine (see image below) will take one of these plungers out of its holder and then press down the plunger into the ocean bottom and when it is pulled out again, you will have a nice sediment sample inside the rod for further studies topsides.
Sediments can be studied for biological, physical or chemical analysis. Traditionally, sediment coring is undertaken remotely from surface vessels, however use of an ROV (remotely operated vehicles) or in our case, the use of manned submarines, facilitates the ability to take multiple and high quality cores from highly targeted locations with specific seabed types or habitats.
The corers comprise of two separate parts, the core tube with T-bar and the corer housing. The transparent push core is manipulated using the T bar handles and pushed into the sediment of interest. A one way valve at the top of the sample chamber allows water to escape as it is replaced by the sediment core. Upon removal from the sediment, the sample is returned to its housing.
We actually still know so little of the ocean and it therefore holds yet so many secrets and lessons for us to discover.
Through more and more missions and assignments with our clients or when we do our own, we hope that we may bring back more insights that we all can learn from.
Fort Lauderdale – Project Baseline, a global conservation effort that invites divers and water lovers alike to systematically document marine and freshwater environments, is delivering valuable exploration assets to a multi-disciplinary alliance of the world’s leading ocean scientists, media organizations, business leaders, philanthropists, educators, and civil leaders under a newly formed research organization, Nekton.
Nekton’s first research program, launching on July 14, 2016 is creating a new standardized methodology for marine biologists to measure physical, chemical, and biological indicators to assess the function, health, and resilience of the deep ocean, earth’s least-explored, largest, and critically important ecosystem. The scientific findings will be released as part of the XL Catlin Deep Ocean Survey.
Exploration assets, being deployed in the waters around Bermuda, include a highly capable and customizable mobile diving platform, the 146’ r/v Baseline Explorer, equipped with human-occupied submersibles and technical dive teams, supported by a complement of resources required to run autonomous diving operations in remote parts of the ocean. The ship and accompanying submersibles are sponsored by GlobalSubDive, a US company founded in 2013 with the primary mission of supporting and promoting Project Baseline and its parent organization, Global Underwater Explorers (GUE).
Baseline Explorer serves as central command for highly-skilled and mission-oriented technical dive teams made up of volunteer divers from GUE’s 64-country network and trained in globally standardized skill and safety protocols to ensure that research and exploration missions are reliably and successfully completed. The Baseline Explorer crew will be deploying pioneering marine technologies, including two crewed submersibles, each rated to 1,000’, to gather physical, chemical, and biological data. The submersibles are adapted with the latest filming and scientific equipment. Their transparent spherical pressure hulls provide a revolutionary platform for scientific observation and will enable the latest Virtual Reality 360-degree cameras on board to document an extraordinary level of detail of the mission, with radio links enabling interaction with the mission team.
The submersibles will be accompanied by technical diving teams trained to withstand the rigors of prolonged exposure to often inhospitable underwater environments while carrying out data collection and exploration missions at depths up to 400’. Divers serve as a highly mobile and versatile extension of the submersible’s data collection, observational, and documentation capabilities, and are tasked with systematically capturing key elements of the deep ocean environment using the latest camera and data collection equipment and observational techniques. The combined components of Baseline Explorer, crewed submersibles, and mission-oriented dive teams create the most advanced, wide-reaching, and comprehensive mobile deep water diving assembly available to private and government entities anywhere.
Dr. Todd Kincaid, Director of Project Baseline and Head of Dive Operations for Nekton’s Bermuda mission, says “Project Baseline is excited to apply our robust collection of diving assets to support Nekton’s Bermuda mission. Our organizational goals are closely aligned, and our desire to explore and share what we see underwater with as many people as possible is the true driving force behind this collaboration. During my 30-year diving career, I’ve spent months of my life underwater. The alarming changes taking place in marine and freshwater environments are very real. The more people can see this change for themselves, the better chance we stand of preserving diverse and vital ecosystems the world over.”
Bermuda is a collection of more than 130 coral islands capping an ancient volcano that rises from the depths of the Atlantic Ocean and is a uniquely transitional location. It lies at the western edge of the Sargasso Sea near the transition into the Gulf Stream, and as essentially a seamount, it sits atop the transition zone between the shallow and deep ocean. Today, Bermuda is near the center of another form of transition, one marking a change in how we regard and interact with the oceans in the face of emerging problems of climate change, ocean acidification, overfishing, and pollution.
Nekton’s mission will focus on a long depth transect down the Bermuda Rise, identifying changing biological, chemical, and physical parameters across a series of ecosystems and the Gulf Stream. This aims to be the longest marine transect in history. Bermuda also provides a unique opportunity for historical comparison, as it was the location for the first ever crewed deep ocean exploration. William Beebe and Otis Barton made their deep dive there in the 1930s, and their data will be a reference point for measuring change.
In addition to supporting Nekton’s scientific agenda, Project Baseline is fulfilling its own organizational goal to establish and communicate environmental baselines in aquatic environments all over the world by documenting key locations through the use of still photography and HD video transects. Images are uploaded to a publically accessible spatial database, already home to over 1,500 geo-tagged locations across 27 countries, making it one of the most diverse and comprehensive publically available databases of marine and freshwater images populated entirely by volunteer observations. The overarching objective of Project Baseline’s global mission and participation in Nekton’s inaugural deep ocean mission is to empower passionate citizens to observe and record change within the world’s aquatic environments, from this project to the rest of our water planet, in a way that fosters public awareness and supports political action.
The full press release and media contact information is available here.
The Nekton mission is officially under way. Launched just the other day in Bermuda we are now three days into the mission.
GlobalSubDive’s exploration platform, the 146′ exploration vessel Baseline Explorer, is filled to the brim with equipment for the mission including of course its two invaluable Triton submarines.
Scientists, skilled exploration divers, crew and more are busy making it all happen.
Today, the submarines Nemo and Nomad were test-launched and dove into the depths to test all of the new equipment and SVS cameras. The test site was a site called Spittal.
Nekton’s mission is to use exploration and science to focus the world’s attention on the health of the deep ocean.
We know very little of what’s really underneath the surface of our oceans and yet, we do know, that the oceans are critical for the health and survival of our planet.
With this mission we are hoping to learn more about the deep ocean and also get an insight into the state of health of same. The mission is closely aligned with that of Project Baseline, the Global Underwater Explorer’s initiative, so the alignment between Nekton, GlobalSubDive, Project Baseline and Global Underwater Explorers (all participants in this endeavor) is perfect.
The test dive was successful and the submarines are now ready to begin the XL Catlin #DeepOcean Survey.
This is still early into the mission, but stay tuned for lots more updates to come and learn more about the findings from the skilled exploration divers and the scientists that will dive in the submarines.
The first mission – Mission One – of the series of missions that the newly established Nekton has planned had the following four main objectives.
The first objective was about assessing the health of the deep ocean and in the process creating a standardized methodology of physical, chemical and biological indicators useful for marine biologists to evaluate the health, the function and the resilience of the deep ocean.
Another part of the mission objectives was that of Storytelling, raising interest and awareness and inspiring a new global audience. To that end the mission employed among other things the latest 360 degree and virtual reality underwater cameras to document the journey into the deep.
While there seems to be a great interest in the media for space exploration, exploration into the oceans tends to be overlooked, so one of the mission objectives was also to bring the exploration and the science into the classrooms of the world. Nekton even had ambition of establishing and launching a new educational programme – Submarine STEM (Science Technology and Engineering Mathematics) which would have the Triton Submersibles and the 360 degree video etc. as the focal points for media content and content creation, in a quest to reach more than one million school children and young adults, educating them further about ocean science.
Finally, the Nekton mission had hopes of creating impact, by triggering policy changes to increase ocean protection, not just for us but for generations to come. Key ocean conservation groups include: International Marine Conservation Congress (IMCC4), Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organisation (NAFO), IUCN’s World Conservation Congress, Our Ocean (Secretary Kerry, USA).
We are hopeful that readers and followers of GlobalSubDive will support the efforts of Nekton and all the other partners and team members in spreading the word and awareness of this incredibly venture.
