Steve Appleton, 1960 - 2012

Our hearts go out to the family and friends of Steve Appleton.   He was an amazing guy.   We had the good fortune of working with Steve, documenting a number of his adventures, from aerial stunts to off-road races.   We’ll miss you, Steve.   Thanks for taking us along on the ride.

If you want to see a great example of Steve in action, click the “Bad Apple Racing” image to view a sample of the documentary we produced in 2010 on Steve’s winning run in the Baja 1000.

Scientists and crew of the Kilo Moana research vessel are safely back on shore today in Honolulu.   The ship returned to harbor yesterday afternoon, after Pacific divers repaired a hole in the ship’s starboard hull.

Wide Eye DP, Tom Hadzor safe on shore in Honolulu

Wide Eye’s own Tom Hadzor is one of those crew members, glad to be back on solid ground.   The NBC station in Honolulu managed to grab an interview with him yesterday afternoon.   You can see the story, here:

Research Vessel Returns Home Safely

We are very thankful to the U.S. Coast Guard.  Their quick action kept the situation under control… a situation that could have easily turned out much differently.   Last October, Tom and Producer David Cuoio were on board the same ship for a two week research mission far off the coast of Samoa in the middle of the South Pacific.  If the same thing had happened there… it would have been a much worse situation.     With no Samoan Coast Guard to speak of,  they crew most definitely would have ended up in life rafts.

We’re very glad Tom and David and the entire research crew are safe and sound in Honolulu.

The Kilo Moana listing heavily to starboard. A hole in the ship's right hull was taking in 400 gallons of water per hour.

A 20-person oceanographic team from the University of Washington and a Wide Eye Productions documentary crew were 75 miles north of Oahu Jan. 6 on a science expedition when the trip took a sharp departure from the planned itinerary.

Instead of completing the planned experiments to learn more about water conditions and waves that occur deep beneath the ocean surface, the group learned that the 186-foot Kilo Moana research vessel was taking on water and would have to return to port in Honolulu.

The first sign of trouble for the science team came at about 1 p.m. Friday, Jan. 6., when one of the crew told several of us in the lunchroom area that the ship had sprung a leak. I had noticed about 7 a.m. that morning that the stern was dipping unusually close to the water’s surface, but thought nothing of it.

Tom Hadzor, co-owner of Wide Eye Productions and cameraman for the expedition, had mentioned earlier in the morning that something felt wrong and we should watch for signs of trouble.  We heard a ship-wide announcement at 2 p.m. that there was a problem and we all should don our life jackets.

A US Coast Guard helicopter drops long-lines down to the ship's deck.

We were told a Coast Guard helicopter would be arriving soon and it showed up a short time later.  Two Coast Guard rescue swimmers were lowered from the chopper to the deck while Coast Guard C130 airplane circled overhead.   The rescue swimmers boarded the ship and three pumps were delivered on board.

About 3:15, we heard an announcement directing us to assemble in the lounge with our life vests. All of us knew that something serious was happening, but we hadn’t been informed officially what that might be. Captain Rick Meyer joined us in the lounge area and announced that the ship was taking a lot of water on one side.  But he assured us that the Coast Guard pumps were working.  He was also compensating by flooding the ballast compartments on the other side of the vessel so that the listing did not become critical. But, he added, this means the stern is getting very low in the water. He said he had assured the Coast Guard that the ship was not foundering, and that we were not in any immediate danger of sinking.

He added that the Coast Guard was in command of the ship and might direct all passengers to get into the lifeboats if the situation became more serious. He also said we were slowly heading back toward Oahu, about 75 miles to the south.

The mood was calm but somber, especially among the scientists, who had their research work cut short before successful completion. They had all invested time, money, and a big part of themselves in the work, and it was extremely unfortunate that this fluke occurrence should end their research.

Coast Guard cutters escort the foundering Kilo Moana back to Honolulu

The Kilo Moana is an oceanographic research vessel based out of Honolulu and designed to operate in coastal and blue-water areas.
A Coast Guard contingency including a C130 airplane,  a Coast Guard helicopter, and three Coast Guard cutters came to the vessel’s rescue.

The Kilo Moana crew and Coast Guard worked throughout the night to ensure we remained afloat. The ship limped slowly toward Honolulu with two Coast Guard ships for company, and we arrived about 7 a.m., dropping anchor about two miles from Honolulu as the sun peeked above the city’s famous Diamondhead landmark to the east.

Two Coast Guard divers almost immediately went into the water to survey the damage, which turned out to be a two-inch-wide hole apparently caused by rust.

By 9 a.m., the divers had patched the hole and we seemed to be well on our way to a resolution of the situation, at least from our point of view. For the crew of the ship, they would have dry dock and then have an indeterminate period of time on shore to think about the strange events of the past 24 hours. Apparently, the crew knew something was wrong early in the morning, but the captain waited to inform the passengers until he had been able to fully assess the situation.

At 9:30 a.m., the captain announced that the emergency was over.    We headed slowly for shore about 11:30 and it appeared that we were in the clear, thanks to the professionalism and clear-headed action of the Kilo Moana crew and the contingent from the U.S. Coast Guard.

The CTD/lowered Doppler profiler/Crush Cam system about to be lowered into the main part of the Samoan Passage. These will be the very first velocity measurements ever inside the main part of the Samoan Passage.

After days of seafloor mapping, we are finally lowering the instrument package as I write into the deepest part of the Passage.  This is an important moment in our cruise since while velocity has been measured “upstream” of the main passage, it has never been measured in the narrow parts, where the constriction should accelerate the flow like a nozzle on a hose.  We expect strong, turbulent flows.  We are excited!

The instrument package consists of two large underwater battery packs called Sea Batteries, connected to downward looking and upward looking ADCP’s.  These measure the velocity, as described before, and are a standard technique these days.  The new part of our system is that we send the data from one of the ADCP’s back up the wire to the ship – as opposed to the old way where the data had to be offloaded after each cast.  Since the casts take many hours and we often do many casts without bringing the instruments on board, this is a big advantage.

Finally, the system has version 2 of Crush Cam, which features a new light system and better attachments.  We’re filming another styrofoam cup going all the way to the sea floor – 5000 m this time instead of 500 m for the first cast a couple of days ago.  Oh, and very important – about 8 gummy bears are on their way down as well.  Will it crush?

The display from the EM122 multibeam bathymetry mapping system. Redder colors mean shallower; bluer means deeper.

We have now completed the first part of our bathymetric survey and are working on mapping the main part of the passage.  Our first goal was to map out the western portion of our region, shown below.  This is done by sending a fan of sound beams beneath the ship and listening for the reflection of that sound off the bottom.  The travel time at each gives a “swath” of the seafloor depth that we map out as we steam along.  The previous bathymetry (seafloor topography) measurements were a patchwork of satellite gravity and an early version of our current system from 20 years ago.  The left side shows our new measurements, which we have made by steaming along the track shown in blue.  The right side shows the old measurements.  By comparing contours of where the bottom is 4300 m deep in both the old (green) and the new measurements (red), we can see the errors we are correcting.  A valley and a ridge in the old measurements disappeared – artifacts of the old data.  These are very important as they govern the path the flow takes as it makes its way through the region.

A frame from "Crush Cam" as it enters the water. It will film the compression of the styrofoam cup.

Inspired by a viral Youtube video series called “Will it Blend?,” my sister-in-law Jane Boatman Geller inspired the analogous “Will it crush?” this summer in Nantucket.  Only a few months later, we filmed the first episode of Crush TV.

The pressure at the bottom of the sea is over 500 times what it is at the surface.  Even getting the camera and lighting to survive these massive pressures takes planning – we did it in a semi-ghetto fashion (as can be seen in the photos) for the first time – but it basically worked.  The light didn’t quite work on the first cast, but otherwise it was great.  We’ll post a video soon to show the great first results – a simple styrofoam cup.  Stay tuned for soda cans, a phone, and a styrofoam wig head.

Matthew holding CrushCam, simply a Go Pro camera housed inside a 6000-m-rated glass sphere.

We think this is a pretty intuitive and fun way to get people more involved with ocean research and some of its challenges – as well as to learn about the ocean.  We aim to broaden the concept to allow kids to suggest items to be crushed, and to guess what will happen to them.

UW Grad student Kevin Tempest, who built the first lighting sphere for the system, adjusts the cup to be crushed. The camera is to the left (not visible), the lighting is from above, and the item to be crushed sits below a clear cylinder to be filmed.

Wide Eye Productions just wrapped up a shoot in the South Pacific on board an oceanographic research vessel.  The shoot documented a study of the Samoan Passage, a deep underwater canyon and “choke point” in the Pacific Ocean.   University of Washington Oceanographer Matthew Alford contributed this report about the voyage. You can read more of his Samoan Passage blog, here.

Filming the instrument package with the go-pro camera affixed to a pole - the ship is in the background.

We launched the small boat today to get footage for our outreach videos of the ship and the lowered ADCP/CTD/camera system going in the water.  David and I snorkeled with video cameras while Tom shot the whole thing from the boat.

Swimming in water 5,000 m deep (over 3 miles) was something I have wanted to do since I started going to sea, and it finally happened today after 18 years.  It was a magnificent feeling – the water is so blue it is almost purple – and so clear you can look down into deeper and deeper blue until it finally turns black far beneath you.  At that point the deepest water you see is probably only 100 m deep – 2% of the way down.  It really makes you feel the size of the ocean.

Oh – and the water was about 86 degrees.  Such a nice day for a swim in the middle of the Pacific.

Read on to hear about “Will it crush?!”

University of Washington Oceanographer, Matthew Alford departs from Samoa on the Samoan Passage research voyage.

We are now underway toward the region.  Our goals on this cruise are several: first, we must use the ship’s multibeam system to map out the seafloor to ensure there are no additional paths besides the main Samoan Passage where the water could escape into the North Pacific.  This would impact the way we design the first part of our main experiment, which will take place next summer aboard R/V Revelle.

Next, we plan to test our new lowered ADCP system at a few locations.  Unlike most such systems, which are self-powered and internally recording, our system has underwater battery packs and a real-time feed, so we can be sure that the system is working well as we sample.  The system will also sample oxygen and Noble gases for research being conducted by Steve Emerson, Roberta Hamme and Kevin Tempest.

The system also hosts the first version of our newest outreach enterprise, “Will it crush?”  – which features a video camera and light capable of going all the way to the sea floor at 6000 m depth.  There, the pressure is literally crushing – over 600 times that at the surface.  We aim to film various objects as they deform and become impacted and crushed on their downward descent.

Finally, we have two videographers on board – Tom Hadzor (Wide Eye productions) and David Cuoio (Giant Stride productions), who are obtaining a large amount of video on our cruise with the goal of making outreach videos.  They are currently in touch with National Geographic about making a pilot or a short series documenting our Samoan escapades.