Sustaining The Seas: NOAA Uses Technology to Expand Ocean Research

By OTTO KREISHER

Otto Kreisher is a reporter for Copley News Service.

The nation's oldest oceanic research service is getting deeper into its subject and is harnessing the power of high-technology equipment to improve and accelerate its dissemination of information about the oceans and the weather they spawn.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is in the midst of a five-year program: (1) to study the oceans at greater depth and with more scientific intensity; and (2) to provide the data and the thrill of the quest to an ever wider audience.

Two of NOAA's current thrusts--intensified ocean exploration and the study of what constitutes "sustainable seas"--are focused on the dual goals of discovering "what's out there" and of "getting young folks interested in oceanography and the whole aspect of human exploration," said Rear Adm. Evelyn J. Fields, director of the agency's Office of Marine and Aviation Operations.

NOAA is the environmental science branch of the U.S. Department of Commerce. As such, it collects a wealth of scientific data and applies that data in ways that affect all Americans.

Perhaps its best-known component is the National Weather Service, which provides most of the data that government and civilian meteorologists use to develop and disseminate their forecasts.

Using orbiting satellites, manned aircraft, and earth-bound sensors, NOAA watches for and provides warnings on the more violent forms of weather, such as tornadoes and hurricanes, and also monitors the more benign cycles of sunshine and precipitation.

NOAA scientists also collect and analyze the more esoteric data used to provide a greater understanding of the major climatic changes--including the El Niño and La Niña phenomena and the thinning of the protective ozone layer--that have so profoundly affected life on earth in recent years.

A Jeffersonian Beginning

Much of that data is gathered by the crews of the 15 ships and 13 aircraft under Fields's command, and by NOAA scientists at locations as varied as the top of Mauna Loa in Hawaii and the South Pole. NOAA operates the largest fleet of oceanic research ships in U.S. service. But those ships work closely with oceanographic survey vessels operated by universities, private organizations, and the U.S. Navy.

In addition to scientific research, NOAA survey ships also helped to locate the wreckage of TWA Flight 800, Egypt Air Flight 990, and John F. Kennedy Jr.'s plane.

The agency also uses its ever-expanding knowledge of the ocean floor to annually produce and/or update about 1,000 nautical charts covering the waters around the United States and its territories.

It is that mission--the charting of U.S. coastal waters--to which NOAA traces its origins in 1807, with President Thomas Jefferson's creation of the Survey of the Coast, run at first by officers of the U.S. Army and the U.S. Navy. A separate group of uniformed officers was established in 1917 as the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey Corps. The corps' officers, and most of its ships, operated under the Navy, sometimes in actual combat, during both world wars.

The corps later became the Environmental Science and Services Agency, and assumed its current title in 1970. NOAA's commissioned officers constitute the seventh and smallest of the nation's uniformed services.

It seems appropriate that Fields, who is director of NOAA's commissioned officer corps, began her own service with the agency in 1972, as a cartographer, after her graduation from Norfolk State College with a degree in mathematics. When NOAA began to accept women as officers the next year, Fields applied for and became the first African-American woman to earn a NOAA commission.

That was the beginning of a long string of ground-breaking achievements for her. She also was the first woman, and the first African-American, to command a NOAA ship and, in 1999, the first to be promoted to the top rank of the NOAA corps.

Rebuilding After the Freeze

Fields said she came to NOAA "quite by accident," but found cartography fascinating: "Kind of like putting together a puzzle. ... It got me hooked."

One of her current challenges is trying to rebuild NOAA's officer corps, which lost much of its strength during a four-year hiring freeze imposed by the Clinton administration, which was considering replacing the commissioned officers with civilians. Although that idea was abandoned, the corps had dropped from 410 officers to 235.

In 1998, Congress authorized a corps ranging in strength between 264 officers and 299. Fields is currently trying to reach the minimum number authorized, and hopes to be up to 244 officers by the end of this fiscal year.

NOAA officers make up about one third of the personnel in the Marine and Aviation office, Fields said, with the remainder about evenly divided between Civil Service workers and civilian mariners.

The commissioned officers command most of NOAA's research vessels, fly the agency's aircraft, and direct many of NOAA's laboratories, research stations, and administrative offices. Many of the commissioned officers, all of whom must have an education in science or engineering, come to NOAA from the other U.S. uniformed services.

Fields said that NOAA usually is able to recruit enough young people who are interested in the environment. But she is having retention problems because the corps' greatly reduced current manning level requires the crews of NOAA ships to spend additional time away from home.

The current budget for her office is $102 million, a significant increase from the $80 million allocated the previous year. Although the budget provides $1 million to help recruit more officers, Fields doubts that that will be enough. Nonetheless, with $124 million requested for the office in President Bush's fiscal year 2002 budget, Fields said, "We're in reasonably good shape."

Enlarging the Fleet

The new budget request includes enough funds to reactivate two ships and to repair or upgrade two vessels already operating. One ship, the FairWeather, will be refitted to help the backlog of hydrographic work around Alaska, Fields said. A former Navy oceanographic ship, Adventurous, will be brought out of dry storage to serve as an interim replacement for NOAA's Hawaii-based fisheries research vessel, Townsend Cromwell, which is having mechanical problems.

The refurbished ships will augment the agency's overtasked fleet of 15 vessels, which range in size from the 274-foot Ronald H. Brown to the 90-foot Rude, and in age from the four-year-old Brown to the 50-year-old John N. Cobb.

NOAA has awarded a contract to Halter Marine shipyard to build a new fisheries research vessel, with an option for three more, Fields said. The FY 2002 budget also funds repairs to the Albatross IV to keep it going until the new ship is ready, and to upgrade the Gordon Gunter.

Fields's aircraft include two WP-3s, both of which are nearly 30 years old, and a relatively new Gulfstream IV. Those three planes are used extensively for hurricane research, with the P-3s passing through the storms at lower levels and the Gulfstream flying at higher altitudes to collect data on the steering currents. NOAA also flies seven smaller fixed-wing aircraft and three helicopters.

High-Tech Upgrades

The Marine and Aviation Operations office plays a key role in helping to execute NOAA's five-year strategic plan, developed in 2000, which set four major goals: to provide better products and services; to improve responsiveness to its customers; to establish new research partnerships; and to build a more skilled and diverse work force.

As part of that effort, Fields's fisheries research ships are being fitted with new high-tech data-collection equipment that gives researchers faster access to the survey data. The Fisheries Scientific Computer System, which was tested aboard the Albatross IV, records data electronically and transmits it directly to laboratories ashore. It replaces manually kept paper logs that sometimes might not be available for analysis for months.

"The research ships "take a load of fish on board, weigh it, and the data goes from the fish scales to the computer and is relayed ashore," Fields said. "They can send a day's information back at once," she said, which means that scientists can start working on it immediately.

That data can be used to make more timely and better-informed decisions on opening or closing fishing areas and/or setting quotas for fish catches.

The new system is now being installed on NOAA's seven other fisheries research ships.

NOAA also is taking advantage of new technology to improve its abilities to chart U.S. territorial waters. Side-scanning sonars and improved computers are enabling the agency to chart additional areas of the ocean floor and to provide more accurate and detailed research data, Fields said.

There is a greater need for and increased interest in the coastal surveys not only because of the larger, deeper-draft commercial ships that are now using U.S. ports, but also because merchant ships, fishing vessels, cruise liners, and private boats are going to destinations not previously on their itineraries.

Coral Reefs and the Internet

NOAA also is carrying out ocean exploration at much greater depths than ever before, Fields said, and is involved in several new research projects, such as some critical studies on the threats to fragile coral reefs. To facilitate this research, the agency has formed a partnership with the National Geographic Society to use manned submersibles to explore undersea marine sanctuaries.

It also is conducting more intensive climatic research. The Ronald H. Brown, for example, is using a specialized radar to study the area "where sea and air come together," Fields said, to analyze its effects on climate and weather.

Another of NOAA's major thrusts is an expanded outreach and education effort that uses the agency's research activities to get school children more interested in science and the oceans. One such program, called Internet at Sea, allows students to ask questions of, and get answers from, scientists at sea.

"A lot of us take the oceans for granted. We can't do that. The oceans are going to be very important to our lives," Fields said.

NOAA officials realize that the data collected for the mapping program can be used for other programs as well, Fields said, and could lead to a better understanding of the marine habitat as part of fisheries research, the bottom characteristics in the marine sanctuaries, and "just a variety of purposes we never thought about before.

"It's not just hydrography data, it's just data," she said. "It can be used for other things, so the taxpayers get that much more for their money."