Office of Coast Survey

By Edward Owens
In a previous post, Edward shared his initial experience on board the Canadian Coast Guard vessel Louis S. St-Laurent as they traveled from Halifax, Canada, toward Tromsø, Norway. Today, he provides an update as well as a look at some of the features they found on the seafloor along the way.

It is a Sunday and our transit across the Atlantic on board Canadian Coast Guard vessel Louis S. St-Laurent  is nearly complete. We’ll arrive in Tromsø, Norway, on Tuesday morning where we’ll rendezvous with a pilot boat to complete the final leg of our internationally coordinated hydrographic mission, as the latest contribution to the Galway Statement on Atlantic Ocean Cooperation.
Continue reading “Coast Survey participates in international Arctic survey project – Part 2”

By, Melissa Volkert
Meet Valerie Rennoll, the Office of Coast Survey’s first Ernest F. Hollings (Hollings) Scholar on a NOAA vessel.
Originally from Glen Rock, Pennsylvania, Valerie discovered the Hollings Scholarship from a professor at American University while working toward her double major in physics and audio technology. She found that the scholarship program aligned well with her interests as she learned of NOAA’s extensive work with underwater acoustics.
Continue reading “Coast Survey hosts Hollings Scholar”

By Edward Owens

Hello to all from the Canadian Coast Guard vessel Louis S. St-Laurent (CCG LSSL), affectionately called the ‘Louis.’ She is an impressive 120 m long, 24.5 m wide with a cruising range of 23,000 nautical miles and carries two CCG helicopters. There are 86 cabins with 100 bunks and today she currently sails with 77 souls on board. I’ve gotten lost, turned around, and confused while navigating my way through the labyrinth of neat and tidy stairways, corridors, and doorways on numerous occasions. Luckily, I’m beginning to find my way around thanks to all the artwork and placards mounted on the walls which I’ve depended on as landmarks to help me get where I’m going. Everything is arranged on five main decks. I am berthed on the 300 level or the flight and boat deck conveniently near the acoustics science lab. The galley is three decks down and as long as I can find it, I’ll be just grand.
Continue reading “Coast Survey participates in international Arctic survey project”

This week, hydrographers from 11 different countries traveled to Silver Spring, Maryland, to attend a workshop on nautical chart adequacy. Workshop participants included scholar students from the General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans Organization, and participants from Israel, Malaysia, South Korea and United Kingdom. The workshop, developed and hosted by Coast Survey and the Joint Hydrographic Center, University of New Hampshire, trained the hydrographers on procedures to assess the adequacy of their respective nautical charts using publicly-available information.
Continue reading “NOAA holds international workshop for nautical chart agencies”

Well before the invention of the computer and the following onslaught of digital data, S.R. Ranganathan in his 1939 book, “Theory of Library Catalogue,” described in detail how a library catalog should work and be prepared. Since then, the way we develop and maintain information databases and archives has dramatically changed. The format has morphed beyond traditional books and journals to large amounts of digital data.
The Office of Coast Survey alone produces digital data on order of several terabytes a year, and much of this data is collected by NOAA hydrographic survey vessels. In order to make the data easily accessible and available to the public, it is formatted and submitted to the National Center for Environmental Information (NCEI) ocean data archive. Here, the basic principles of library cataloging apply – find the appropriate information quickly and in the location it is supposed to be stored.

Continue reading “Over 35,000 conductivity, temperature, and depth profiles added to public oceanographic database”

To mark the deployment of NOAA ships Fairweather and Rainier as they begin a summer of hydrographic survey projects in the Arctic, NOAA hosted a ceremony at the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) base in Kodiak, Alaska.
The ceremony opened with a joint USCG and NOAA color guard while the national anthem was sung by retired USCG Chief Aviation Machinist Mate, Joe Symonoski. Rear Admiral Gerd Glang, director of the Office of Coast Survey, gave opening remarks.

“Characteristically, we are quite modest about the missions and accomplishments of our NOAA ships. But today, we are taking the time to recognize the planned deployment of both ships to undertake hydrographic surveys in the U.S. Arctic,” Glang said. “It is important for us because of the renewed investment NOAA is making in this region at a time when the Arctic has become more accessible to marine transportation.”
Continue reading “Ceremony in Kodiak, Alaska, marks the deployment of NOAA ships Fairweather and Rainier”