Another one bites the dust!

A mere 26 days after re deploying Metis with a new cable and hydrophone, and hearing fantastic whale song, the hydrophone once again was preyed upon! Is is really hard to tell if it is a shark or a barracuda, non-the-less, we are not sure why this is happening. The sea surface temperature has been about the same (78.8°F). We have had a Wave Glider equipped the same way, in these same waters every winter season for years, and never experienced this. This time we have a little audio to go with it. While there is no Jaws music in the background, it does sound like a freight train hit the hydrophone.

P.S. Europa is still happily cruising along and about 400 NM away from Isla Clarión, Mexico. More on this in our next blog.

Hydrophone cable with several rake marks.

Take a look and listen at the audio and spectrogram below of the exact time when the hydrophone got bitten off!

Clear Humpback Whale Song followed by either a shark or a barracuda biting off the hydrophone

Europa's Voyage

Below are two time lapse videos of Europa’s Voyage through The Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument. We had two cameras taking pictures from sunrise to sunset approximately every 1.5 to 3 hours.

The first video is from a camera mounted on the back end of the float. At the beginning of the journey you’ll see some ti leaves on the float. This was part of Europa’s blessing before embarking on her voyage through the PMNM. As you can see, Europa experienced some rough seas, beautiful sunrises and sunsets, full moons, and calm days with an occasional booby resting on the warm solar panels.

The second video is from a camera mounted in the float looking down at the sub and umbilical. You’ll note that the sub moves around quite a bit. There were times when the umbilical had slack and the wings were fully rotated up or down, indicating rough seas. Occasionally, fish even gathered around the sub.

Please enjoy the videos.

Land Ho, Land Ho!

Europa has finally made it home and was safely recovered March 14th. This type of survey throughout the pristine Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument has been the first of its kind. We are very proud of the mission and collaboration with the Navy and NOAA Sanctuary. Thank you all for following Europa’s journey.

Europa’s course navigating outside of the 200’ depth contour (red circles) throughout the PMNM

Europa lays eyes on the Kohala Coast and Mauna Kea on the Big Island

Europa with view of Mauna Kea: Land Ho!

View of Europa from the May Maru

Europa, moments before recovery on the May Maru

Given the current Covid-19 pandemic, Europa follows appropriate bio-security protocol

She's not sure about coming to shore after her journey in the pristine, uninhabited, PMNM. Please stay safe!

Recovery crew: Beth, Maya, and Jessica (from left to right)

Homeward Bound

Europa is on her way home after successfully surveying The Papahānaumokuākea National Marine Monument. As she exited the monument, she concluded with a cross through, and circle around, Middle Bank.

We expect to recover her in Puako sometime in the next 5-7 days, but the journey is not over yet. For this last leg, Europa has been faced with strong winds and high seas, as well as had to dodge a number of cargo and passenger vessels.

Today, a passenger vessel from the Bahamas, headed to Oahu, passed behind her. The vessel’s name was Europa, a good omen we hope!

The entire team from Jupiter, NOAA and the Navy anxiously await her recovery.

Stay tuned!

Europa passing through, and then circling, Middle Bank at the end of her PMNM journey.

A look at all of the marine traffic that Europa is avoiding on her way back home to Puako. Each of those yellow and red dots represent a cluster of vessel breadcrumbs.

Europa vessel that passed by our wave glider Europa earlier today.

Sunrise from Europa in some heavy seas.

Moonrise (supermoon) from Europa with waves crashing.

Half Way Mark - Lisianski and Neva Shoals

We are happy to report that we have continued to hear humpback whales and other species as we passed the North Hampton Seamounts and Neva Shoals at the very north end of our voyage. Of note, the Sea Surface Temperatures (SST) continued to drop. Last night we rounded the north end of Lisianski Island and are now officially headed back down the other side of the chain making our way back home. Below are some pictures from Europa, as well as a couple of audio files from her voyage to the north end of the chain.

A booby catching a ride on Europa

A beautiful sunset seen from Europa

Located 208 kilometers (129 miles) northwest from Laysan is the island commonly known as Lisianski. Another name for Lisianski is Papa‘āpoho. It is a combination of two words. Papa means a reef, flat surface, or foundation and ‘āpoho means depression, hollow, or pitted. Combined, they describe the depression between two tall sand dunes which may have once been the location of a lake similar to the one on Laysan.

About 20 million years ago, geologic forces raised the tip of a huge coral bank above sea level. Today, Lisianski Island is 1.5 square kilometers (381 acres), about the size of Honolulu. While its land mass is relatively small, Lisianski’s coral reef, known as Neva Shoals, is massive at 310,000 acres or 1,254.5 square kilometers, an area nearly the size of O‘ahu.

The first western explorer to reach the island was the Russian Captain Yuri Feodorovich Lisyansky in 1805. The captain ran aground in his ship, the Neva, after which the shoal to the south was named. Various ships visited Lisianski throughout the 1800s to harvest fish, turtles, guano, beche-de-mer (sea cucumbers), sharks, and seals. During this period rats and mice arrived on Lisianski in the 1800s as accidental introductions, and rabbits were purposely introduced by humans as a food source. These mammals consumed most of the vegetation and negatively impacted the terrestrial ecology. Captain John Paty claimed the island for the Kingdom of Hawai‘i on behalf of Kamehameha IV on May 10, 1857. In 1890, the North Pacific Phosphate and Fertilizer Company acquired a twenty-year lease to mine the island for guano. From 1904 to 1909 Japanese feather poachers harvested birds from the island. This activity was stopped after Lisianski became part of the Hawaiian Islands Bird Reservation in 1909.

Today, Hawaiian monk seals and green sea turtles are common visitors to Lisianski's sandy white beaches. Migratory shorebirds seen on the island include the kolea (golden plover), ulili (wandering tattler), and kioea (bristle-thighed curlew). Nearly three-fourths of the Bonin petrels nesting in Hawai’i make this island their home. In some years, more than a million sooty terns visit Lisianski.

Photo by: Greg McFall/NOAA Office of National Marine Sanctuaries, 2011

Coral and giant trevally / ulua aukea (Caranx ignobilis) at Lisianski Island in Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument.

Reef fishes of the nearshore waters are abundant and diverse. Researchers have found predators near Lisianski's reefs, such as sharks, to be very aggressive. Even ulua (Trevally jacks) will harass divers and small boats. The reefs of Lisianski and surrounding Neva Shoals are called "coral gardens" by some scientists because of their abundance of coral and the variety of growth forms assumed by their colonies, including structures resembling spires, castles, and a variety of other shapes.

Aloha Raita Bank and Maro Reef

Europa has endured some strong winds and high seas the last few days as a cold front has moved from west to east across the chain. The sea surface temperature has also dropped a bit as we keep heading NW. We were a bit nervous as Europa tracked close to Maro Reef in search of humpbacks. Previous research has indicated that humpback whales frequent the waters surrounding Maro Reef. Humpbacks at Raita Bank have not been previously reported, possibly due to limited survey effort. Europa’s survey has confirmed an abundance of singing humpbacks as well as other odontocetes around Maro Reef and we are happy to report that Europa heard a fair number of humpbacks off Raita Bank as well. Again, this shows the enormous potential autonomous vehicles could have for studying whales in remote areas.

Picture of Europa’s course over the last two days. The red lines demark the 200’ depth line. We have defined this as our “exclusion zone” or safety margin. Alarms will be sent to our piloting team should Europa cross the line. As you can see, she is traveling quite close to shallow waters!

There are approximately 30 submerged banks in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. Up until recently very little was known about the banks beyond that they were shield volcanoes formed at the hotspot. Some scientists believe that many of the banks act as ‘stepping stones’ for marine organisms to migrate in the region. The bank areas provide extensive habitat for bottomfish and a few are known to provide foraging habitat for endangered Hawaiian monk seals. Large precious corals, such as gold, pink and black are also found in the deep waters of the banks. Unlike shallow reef corals which are able to harness sunlight as an energy source due to photosynthesizing symbiotic dinoflagellates in their tissues, deep-water precious corals live in near-total darkness and are completely dependent upon capturing plankton from the water column with their tentacles.

Raita Bank is just west of Gardner Pinnacles. The crest, or top, of Raita Bank is about 60 feet from the ocean surface. Bottom habitats of relatively shallow banks such as Raita tend to be barren when compared with more sheltered coral reef environments. Recent surveys revealed less than 1% live coral cover in the shallow portions of Raita Bank, with the bottom scoured by wave action and strong currents. Raita is one of the larger banks in the NWHI, and there is much yet to be discovered about this area.

Maro Reef spans 50 kilometers in length and 30 kilometers in width. Maro Reef is almost completely submerged with very few areas above sea level. The Hawaiian name for Maro Reef is Nalukākala. This name, translated as wave (nalu) and surf comber; to form combers; to blow in gusts (kākala), references the rough seas encountered here.

Maro Reef was named for the Nantucket whaling ship Maro which was the first American whaler to cross the mid-Pacific. This atoll is a hazard for navigators because the lack of visible landmarks makes it difficult to avoid grounding a ship on shallow areas of the reef. On October 8, 1957, the oil tanker USNS Mission San Miguel ran aground while running at full speed and sank here.

Photo by: Greg McFall/NOAA Office of National Marine Sanctuaries

A banded spiny lobster / ula (Panulirus marginatus) and a black spiny urchin / wana (Echinothrix diadema) at Maro Reef in Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument.

Maro, or Nalukākala, has the largest extent of coral reef habitat in Papahānaumokuākea and is one of the most ecologically rich locales in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. The shallow waters consist of patch reefs and elongate structures called spur and groove formations. The reefs support numerous butterflyfish and surgeonfish species. Grey reef sharks, galapagos sharks, whitetip reef sharks, trevally, jacks, and other apex predators are also numerous. Sharks and other apex predators play an important role in maintaining balance within marine ecosystems by regulating the populations of other species lower in the food chain. In the Hawaiian culture, manō are honored as akua (gods) and ‘aumakua (family guardians).

Feelin' Groovy

Europa has completed about one-third of her voyage north as she continues to cruise across deep ocean basins between the shallow banks, islands and atolls of PMNM. We monitor her health and download audio files and pictures of the sub daily. So far, we have posted some pretty interesting audio files. Below are some pictures of Europa’s sub showing the umbilical with tension and some slack. We painted one side of the umbilical so that we can tell if it gets any twist. Looking pretty straight now!!

Europa sub (PMNM)

Europa sub (PMNM)

Meanwhile, back in Puako, we were able to capture some pretty cool pictures off our Wave Glider, Metis, which is towing a hydrophone and streaming live whale song off Puako. These are of a bottlenose dolphin swimming around the sub, perhaps just curious or trying to catch one of the many fish that hang out around the vehicle. Something very similar has likely happened to Europa while transecting the environmentally rich waters of PMNM. Our hope is to get lucky enough to capture some images like these off Europa during her voyage.

Metis sub (Puako)

Metis sub (Puako)

Metis sub (Puako)

Metis sub (Puako)

Take a look and listen to the audio we captured at the moment when the bottlenose dolphin is hanging out with Metis.

Spectrogram of audio clip below

Bottlenose dolphin with humpback whales chorusing in the background

Welcome to Mokumanamana

Image of Mokumanamana (aka Necker Island) taken by Google Earth

Europa has been making good headway the last few days traveling between 1.5- 3 knots in swells up to 11 ft and wind gust up to 13 knots. As she approached and traveled just outside the 200’ contour line on the southwest side of Mokumanamana (map), humpback whale song chorusing increased dramatically.

Mokumanamana (Necker Island) is about 237 miles northwest of Nihoa Island. It is a small basalt island about 1.1 km long and 0.3 km wide and over 10 million years old.

Photo of Mokumanamana by: Kaleomanuiwa Wong, 2010

The Hawaiian name translates to island (moku) of exponential spiritual power (mana). Mokumanamana is shaped like a fish hook and the emergent land mass is all that remains of a shield volcano that may have once been as large as the island of O‘ahu. In 1786, less than a decade after English explorer Captain James Cook discovered Hawai’i for the Western world, explorer Jean-Francois de La Pérouse visited Mokumanamana and named it Necker Island after Jacques Necker. During the Hawaiian Kingdom era, Mokumanamana was annexed in 1894 by the Provisional Government of Hawai‘i.

Terrestrial animal life on Mokumanamana includes 16 species of nesting seabirds, land snails, wolf spiders, and 15 endemic insects. The island supports five native terrestrial plants, including three Hawaiian islands endemics.

Marine life includes gray reef sharks, manta rays and sixteen species of stony corals. Hawaiian monk seals are seen on the island's rocky shores. A great abundance and diversity of sea cucumbers, sea urchins, and lobsters are found in Shark Bay. Below the shallow reef are extensive deeper "shelves" that extend many miles from the island, especially to the southeast.

Photo of Hawaiian Monk Seal by: Mark Sullivan, NOAA Fisheries, 2007

The significance of Mokumanamana goes far beyond the plants and animals that inhabit the island and waters. This island is culturally significant for numerous reasons.

Mokumanamana is situated in an area known as Ke Alanui Polohiwa a Kāne, the great dark glistening sacred path of Kāne god of the sun, which coincides with the Tropic of Cancer. The Tropic of Cancer marks the northernmost extent that the sun travels annually and nowhere north of Mokumanamana can you observe the sun directly overhead. This boundary divides the Hawaiian archipelago into two regions which are Pō and Ao, or basically night and day. In the Hawaiian worldview, Pō is a place of darkness where gods and spirits dwell and Ao is the realm of light and mortality. Most of Papahānaumokuākea resides within Pō, while the inhabited Hawaiian Islands reside within Ao. According to Hawaiian belief, when spirits transition upon death, they travel from Ao in the east to Pō in the west. This is similar to the islands themselves who are volcanically born from the oceanic womb in the east where the sun rises and extends to the west where the sun sets and islands return to their source.

Mokumanamana was understood as a temple from which ancient Hawaiians were able to calibrate time and space through strict religious ceremonies that were performed during significant solar events such as the solstices and equinoxes. Ancestral Hawaiians lined the ridge of Mokumanamana with upright stones (manamana) that align with the path of the sun and other celestial bodies at specific times of the year. Archaeologists surveying Mokumanamana have documented over 52 religious shrines, cultural sites, and artifacts on the island. This is one of the highest concentrations of Native Hawaiian cultural sites in Hawaiʻi. Stone carvings called ki‘i, resembling humans, were found on the island and are unlike any found throughout Hawai‘i or Polynesia. They are part of this larger cultural landscape and the ceremonies associated with the region. Today, Hawaiian cultural researchers are using both Hawaiian and conventional research methods to revitalize these practices through ceremony and science.

Today Europa traces ancient voyaging canoe paths from Ao to Pō, traveling from east to west through Papahānaumokuākea. Still at the beginning of a long voyage, there is much left to explore.

Europa Arrives In The PMNM

The Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument (PMNM) is located in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands in the central North Pacific roughly 3,000 miles from the nearest continental land mass.

Map of PMNM

The PMNM is one of the largest fully protected conservation areas in the world. It encompasses 582,578 square miles (1,508,870 square kilometers) of the Pacific Ocean – an area nearly the size of the Gulf of Mexico!

The Monument, created expressly to protect an exceptional array of natural and cultural resources, was originally established on June 15, 2006 and expanded on August 26, 2016, both times under the authority of the Antiquities Act. It was inscribed as the nation’s first natural and cultural World Heritage Site in 2010.

This isolation has led to the evolution of many unique plants and animals. A significant amount of species within the Monument are endemic to Hawai‘i, found nowhere else on Earth. This area is also rich in ancient cultural sites and historic shipwrecks and landmarks.

Middle Bank is located between the islands of Niʿihau and Nihoa and straddles the boundary of the Monument. It is approximately 5-7 million years old, geologically, and one of several banks in the Monument that was created by volcanic activity and eventually subsided to the ocean. Middle Bank supports deep sea coral communities and bottomfish. The portions of Middle Bank outside of the boundary are occasionally fished for bottomfish.

Jan 21, 2020 - Europa navigating around Middle Bank

On Jan. 21st, we piloted Europa around the outer edge of Middle Bank along the 200’ depth contour and heard some great humpback whale chorusing. Take a listen below.

Phew…We Made The Crossing!

The Alenuihaha Channel that lies between the Big Island of Hawaii and Maui, is considered one of the most treacherous channels in the world due to the strong winds and high seas that funnel between the two islands’ narrow pass (~26 nm). In the Hawaiian language, alenuihaha means "great billows smashing”, and that it is!! On the day we originally tried to launch Europa, Jan 6th, we were experiencing gale force winds, with gusts over 50mph. We stood by monitoring the weather hourly and were finally able to find a break in the weather on Jan 8th, and successfully launched Europa. However, we were still experiencing gale force winds and seas over 15ft. We decided to not have Europa cross the channel directly from Puako but instead to send Europa 30nm south, off Kailua Kona, in hopes of getting out of the strongest funneling affects. Nonetheless, Europa still faced gusts over 50mph and seas over 15ft. The video below from Windy shows the wind gusts for the channel and Kailua Kona.

Forecast of the extreme sea state that Europa had to travel through at the start of it's journey at the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument. Follow th...

Another reason we sent Europa south to cross the channel is that this avoided crossing the densest part of the shipping lanes coming in and out of the state’s ports. Map below shows the vessels and Europa as the yellow star.

While she had to dodge several ships, there was one encounter that was quite close. When this happens, we get “Proximity Warning” alarms sent to our cell phones (25 of them in the middle of the night!), notifying us of an oncoming ship. Below is the ship Azamara Journey, that was barrelling down on Europa at 15 knots.

Fortunately, Europa has anti-collision software that detects a ship several miles away and when it determines their paths will cross, she takes evasive action to alter her course until the ship has passed by, then gets back on course. At the time of crossing paths, they were 1nm apart (see map below).

Green breadcrumbs are Europa. Grey are Azamara Journey.

Europa’s first sunset

Europa taking on waves in the channel

Europa on a stormy day