38,000 Mile Service in Vancouver

On 24th November Jon Campbell flew to Vancouver to spend two days servicing the SNOMS system. The Pacific Celebes has sailed more than 38,000 nautical miles since the system was last serviced in Livorno. Jon was able to catch up what had been happening to the ship since then and also was able to introduce the system to two visitors from the local Institute of Ocean Sciences on Vancouver Island- Jim Christian and Marty Davelaar. The team at IOS have many years experience in investigating processes controlling concentrations of carbon dioxide in the North Pacific and were very interested in the new approaches being used in the SNOMS system on the Pacific Celebes.

Engineering cadet Erjun Ren in the picture below has been collecting our daily seawater samples and provided Jon valuable assistance with the servicing. He is shown here with the ProOceanus CO2Pro freshly removed from the SNOMS tank
On the second day it stopped raining and Jon was able to work on the outside equipment and take this picture of Vancouver across the harbour
The ProOceanus CO2Pro sensor was reluctant to be opened so some of the Celebes’s engineers are seen below applying a little ‘persuasion’ to get it open.

Normally all we find in the tank is water and a little mud on occasion, but this time some unfortunate little fish had found their way into the SNOMS tank during the short voyage from the Columbia River to Vancouver.

Robert Cutler from Swire Education Trust tours NOCS and meets new Vice-Chancellor

From left to right: Boris Kelly-Gerreyn, Robert Cutler, Joanne Donahoe, Ed Hill

We were delighted to welcome Robert Cutler from the Swire Educational Trust to NOCS on Friday 11th September 2009. Robert toured the centre with Professor Ed Hill (Director of NOCS), Joanne Donahoe (Associate Director, Development Office) and Dr Boris Kelly-Gerreyn (Project Manager of SNOMS). Part of the tour included a video conferencing session with our partners at the University of Xiamen (China). Robert was introduced to Professor Minhan Dai and the new Swire PhD student, Zongpei Jiang. The Swire Educational Trust are generously funding Zongpei's 4 year PhD studentship which will bring him over to NOCS for his first three years to work on SNOMS data. This marks the start of an excellent collaboration between Southampton and Xiamen.

During the tour, Robert was joined by Dr David Hydes (Chief scientist of SNOMS) and Professor John Shepherd FRS. After the tour, Robert met with the new vice-chancellor Professor Don Nutbeam.

The visit was deemed a great success by all involved.

New route and new collaboration

When she gets to Singapore later this month the Pacific Celebes will start work on new route between west coast Canada and USA and Australia and New Zealand.

At the end of October she will arrive on Tauranga for the first time. The new route has resulted in new collaboration for the SNOMS project with Dr. Kim Currie from NIWA.
Kim is very keen to be involved, and is looking forward to the next step - perhaps a ship visit at Tauranga at the end of October.


Kim is an expert in the high-precision in situ pCO2 determination in surface seawater, and general carbon dioxide chemistry of seawater in the NZ region. Her work is part of a joint University of Otago-NIWA programme investigating, the CO2 chemistry of the New Zealand oceanic region. It aims to develop a better predictive capability for the role of this oceanic region as a sink for fossil fuel CO2.

Work in Livorno August 2009

Tuesday 18th August 2009

The Pacific Celebes arrived in Livorno where Jon Campbell and Mark Hartman were waiting to service the SNOMS system. During a very busy 10 hours on board most of the system’s sensors were replaced with new or re-calibrated units.

Mark replacing the temperature, conductivity and oxygen sensors in the lid of the SNOMS tank.

Engineers Ren and Guo checking the seawater samples with Mark.

A new Vaisala air temperature, pressure and humidity sensor was installed on the bridge top.

A vast array of marine organisms are to be found in Livorno’s famous fish market!

The Pacific Celebes is now well on its way across the Atlantic and is about 10 days away from Camden. Chief Engineer Liang Chuan has just sent this picture of the current sampling team
From left to right
E/cadet -- Xie Yao Yun
C/E -- Liang Chuan
2/E -- Fan Yue Jun
5/E -- Guo Hong Sheng

Sailing on its new route the MV Pacific Celebes has just rounded the Cape of Good Hope for the first time. She should have passed with in sight of Cape Town and Table Mountain yesterday.

Data from the Indian Ocean show in water pCO2 levels about 20 mico-atmospheres lower than expected from the predictions of the Taro Takahashi’s global atlas of surface pCO2 values (Takahashi et al., Deep Sea Research II; doi:10.1016/j.dsr2.2008.12.009).

Position of MV Pacific Celebes Updated at 06:50UTC On 12 Jun 2009 (Day 163).

We are very pleased to say that the Swire Educational Trust has agreed to support a PhD student to work with the SNOMS project. The student will come from the University of Xiamen in China and be based for his degree at the University of Southampton. He will be co-supervised by David Hydes and Toby Tyrrell (at NOC) and by Minhan Dai (MEL, Xiamen).

The student Zongpei Jiang is currently writing his MSc thesis in Xiamen and will start his studies in Southampton in October.

Image: SNOMS student Zongpei Jiang at work in the University of Xiamen

The MV Pacific Celebes, sailed from Jakarta on its new route which will take it to the Gulf of Mexico via the Cape of Good Hope. This will take about 38 days.

Each day the MV Pacific Celebes is at sea the crew collect a water sample which is stored on board and then sent back to NOC. At NOC the sample is analysed to measure the total alkalinity (TA) and the total amount of carbonate (DIC) compounds dissolved in the sample. From this data the pCO2 value of the water can be calculated.

This data is interesting in its own right as it provides information on the oceans capacity to absorb CO2. Initially we are using it to validate the performance of the underway measurements of pCO2. In April we completed a scientific paper on the performance of the system, this has been submitted to the scientific journal Deep Sea Research.

Image: Rebecca Garley working at NOC with the equipment that measures TA and DIC.

Jon Campbell visited the MV Pacific Celebes when she was in St John, Canada to check the system and fit a set of freshly calibrated sensors. The visit went well even if as the photograph below show work on deck was chilly.