Submitted by Patty Fryer, DESSC Chair

Since September, the DESSC has acquired two new members to replace Hugh Milburn and Carl Wirsen, who rotated off after the June meeting. The replacements are Bill Ryan of Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and Bob Embley of NOAA.

Cruises of the R/V ATLANTIS since September, 1998 included 78 scheduled ALVIN dives for:

1) Urabe et al., a ridge flux project on the Southern EPR (16-19°S, 112-114°W) that involved seafloor measurement using in-situ sensors, fluid and rock sampling, and recovery of monitoring instruments;

2) Lilley/Von Damm et al., investigation of the gas and fluid chemistry of hydrothermal systems on the superfast-spreading region of the Southern EPR; Manahan et al. for biological sampling on the northern EPR; and

3) Vrijenhoek/Lupton for biological and water sampling at multiple sites on the southern EPR and geological reconnaissance.

4) Sinton (cruise now in progress) geological and petrological investigations of several sites from 17S to 21S on the EPR

These cruises represent the first time that ALVIN has dove south of the Equator and the first NSF funded science using ALVIN on the Southern East Pacific Rise. The only dives which were lost occurred during the Urabe leg which unfortunately experienced bad weather at the beginning of the leg. A total of 7 dives were lost. All the other science programs accomplished all of their dives and science objectives.

ROV and tethered vehicle operations since September, 1998 included the very successful deployment of the H2O Observatory with Jason/Medea by A. Chave et al., and mapping of the Puna Ridge, the submarine continuation of the East Rift Zone of Kilauea, off the Big Island of Hawaii using DSL-120 and Argo II by D. Smith.

R/V ATLANTIS has been operating continuously throughout the northern and southern East Pacific Rise since Fall of 1998, consequently no major changes to the ship facilities have been carried out. The next planned maintenance period is scheduled for June in San Diego. WHOI circulated a questionnaire at the DESSC meeting soliciting input from users regarding both vehicle and ATLANTIS facilities improvements that could be considered by the NDSF operator for future worklists. Only limited responses have been received by the UNOLS office and DESSC plans to remind the community about the need for providing input to the operator.

WHOI personnel discussed the progress on many of the current ALVIN/Jason upgrade proposal items which is proceeding well. These are detailed in the DESSC minutes. WHOI has submitted a ROV and tethered vehicle upgrade proposal to the federal agencies (NSF as the lead agency with copies to ONR and NOAA). The proposal has been briefed to DESSC and includes WHOI cost share of ~$750K. It is envisioned to be a two-year program that includes the following major components.

WHOI is currently working on the Sea Cliff Engineering Study funded by NSF to evaluate various options regarding use of Sea Cliff equipment and integration of the submersible facilities to improve the human occupied vehicle (HOV) capabilities of the NDSF. Barrie Walden, Dudley Foster and J. Brown of the DSG traveled to France to visit with IFREMER engineers and discuss with them the status of their HOV (NAUTILE) and other deep submergence facilities. The meetings were very productive and will be augmented by additional meetings with other foreign HOV operators and vendors. This information will be compiled and analyzed as part of the engineering study which is ongoing and expected to be completed later this year.

In late October, Patty Fryer attended the MOnitoring the Mid-Atlantic Ridge (MOMAR) meeting in Lisbon as the representative of DESSC. Fryer reported on the state of the National Facility assets especially as regards long-term sea floor observatories. Although manned submersibles are preferred for some tasks in deep ocean research, tethered ROVs with high-resolution imaging, mapping and manipulative capabilities have gained increasing acceptance for use in scientific research on the sea floor in the last few years. In the near future, ROVs and AUVs are likely to play an increasingly important role in deep submergence research projects that require routine access to the deep ocean for time-series experiments involving sea floor observatories and instrument arrays. The MOMAR meeting stressed an interest in possibly establishing a cabled (to the Azores) observatory on the Lucky Strike segment of the MAR. Discussion of developing long-range AUV instruments to be permanently located at the observatory was met with particular interest. A need for more robust ROVs for servicing this observatory facility was also stressed.

DESSC held its December public meeting met at the Cathedral Hill Hotel on Saturday the 5^th immediately before AGU. The meeting began with a brief change of command ceremony with thanks to Mike Perfit (out-going Chair) and the presentation of a few memorabilia. The DESSC and the deep submergence community thank Mike for his efforts over the past three years. Patty Fryer stepped in as Chair of the Committee at this meeting. The meeting had a very full agenda with reports from users as well as reports from operators (WHOI and others). The details of the meeting and copies of the overheads presented by various people are included in the minutes of the meeting. The new archiving guidelines, which have been approved by the federal agencies, for data collected using National Deep Submergence Facility vehicles was presented at the meeting with generally positive response from the community. A presentation of WHOI’s preparations for submitting a Jason Upgrade Proposal was met with interested discussion and positive feedback from the attendees. At the end of the meeting the Chair announced plans for a UNOLS Deep Submergence Science Workshop for 1999. NSF, DESSC members and UNOLS have been discussing the possibility of holding a Deep Submergence Science Workshop to assess the future of deep submergence science, bringing together the diverse community of scientists and engineers with expertise in deep submergence. The focus of the workshop would be to address the compelling scientific problems that need to be addressed in the coming decade and beyond. As part of the discussions, it is hoped that scientific priorities, investigative methodologies, new directions in deep submergence technology development, and the facilities needed to accomplish this work would be addressed. The agenda for the meeting is currently undergoing final drafting and it is hoped that the meeting can take place in the Summer of 1999.

At the December DESSC meeting the representative from the NURP West Coast and Polar Research (WC/PR) Center's reported a change in NOAA funding that will affect the 1999 ship schedules. At the June DESSC meeting, Dr. Cindy Van Dover as the NURP representative to the June DESSC meeting, had appraised DESSC of the WC/PR Center's intent to fund a Gulf of Alaska field program, with $500K from the DC NURP Office plus support from the Center's budget. The promised NOAA commitment was for the support of 67 ALVIN dives and 5 ROPOS lowerings. NOAA funding changes will now apparently support only 19 dives and none of the ROV work. The reductions allotted to the WCPR/NURP Center severely impact the 1999 ALVIN schedule. The status of the CY1999 season is still in limbo as of early Feb. 1999 as NURP continues to prioritize its funding commitments. It is anticipated that the likely outcome will be that the Gulf of Alaska work (Doudna - 17 July to 18 Aug.) will be canceled or significantly shortened. Some adjustments in the remainder of the NDSF schedules will then be necessary.

Proposal pressure and funded proposals that await cruise slots to use the NDSF vehicles continues to be strong. DESSC will continue to work with the community and the NDSF operator to foster deep submergence research. WHOI has also made progress in working with users and improving science liaison to help scientists in preparing proposals and once funded, to aid in implementing the necessary equipment and vehicles to carry it out. The new WHOI Marine Ops. coordinator, Mr. Jon Alberts, started in October 1998, and he has primary responsibility for these activities.

Submitted by John Freitag

The Annual RVTEC meeting was held on 19 October at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, CA. The meeting was compressed into a one-day session because of the subsequent INMARTECH98 symposium.

The morning opened with the Chair giving reports on UNOLS Council and other committee activities. The RVOC report was given by Annette DeSilva from the UNOLS office. This was followed by reports from the various representatives present from the funding agencies. Sandy Shor (NSF) reported on the NSF budget that had been recently signed. There is an overall 9% increase that will translate into a 5 to 6% increase for Ocean Science. Sandy also reported that specialized technician support would be a new component of the Technician proposals. It is the overall policy of the agency to roll more and more services into the Technician proposals making these costs transparent to the scientist. Dick West’s retirement was announced and Sandy outlined the interim plans for division of his duties. Tim Pfeiffer (ONR) rose to make the announcement that he had transitioned from the Ship/Tech world to a position at ONR under Sujata Millick. As it was only his 3^rd day on the job his report was brief. Jon Berkson reported on HEALY from the Coast Guard perspective. He announced that delivery had been slid to 30 June of next year, also he announced plans for a 30M coring system for HEALY. Jon also addressed the various science funding issues. Dale Chayes (LDEO) reported on his work with the SCICEX submarine program and projections for future possibilities.

Following was a discussion of shipboard e-mail procedures and cost recovery schemes. The Chair presented a potential plan which will be run on an experimental basis in 1999. Sandy Shor said that the NSF would provide some measure of reasonable support for science e-mail through the tech proposals.

The morning session concluded with a report of HEALY science trial progress and a discussion about the surrounding issues.

Following lunch, Woody Sutherland led a discussion on the NAVO work being carried out on UNOLS vessels. The 1999 schedule has 434 days at sea with funding of $5,761k. Bob Knox (SIO) gave a short presentation of the future of NAVO work and the political realities of the potential of such work in the future.

Greg Beers of Jamestown Marine Services gave a short presentation of the NSF inspection program to date and made several suggestions for institutions potentially undergoing inspection. Sandy Shor made the point that inspections are a good way of justifying equipment requests.

Dale Chayes brought us up to date on the state of the SeaNet program and informed the group on the state of procurement of systems for those institutions chosen to receive the first round of systems.

Sandy Shor made a detailed presentation on the changes he is implementing on the format of the shipboard technician support proposals. There was discussion of several aspects of the revised program.

The Salary survey resurfaced as the previous attempt last year met with poor response. The upshot was to try one more time.

Rich Findley gave the report from the long range instrumentation planning sub-committee and made a presentation of his involvement with a science program on a new Royal Caribbean cruise vessel. Basically the program is a cooperative program involving NOAA and U.Miami in an underway science program on board a working cruise ship.

Tom Wilson brought the group up to date on his On-Line Resources activity, RVTEC Homepage and links to various useful sites. The consensus was to make the site better known in the science community, as it would be very helpful to scientists planning programs and proposals.

As Don Moller's replacement, Jon Alberts was asked to serve on the cable committee, which includes Rich Findley as chair and Mike Webb (NOAA-PMC). Tom Althouse and John Freitag will also be asked to serve on the committee.

The meeting concluded with the election of the Chair position. John Freitag was reelected to serve another 2-year term.

In the last business of the session the University of Texas was selected as the site of next year’s meeting.

The RVTEC Meeting was followed by a highly successful INMARTECH98 meeting at the SIO campus. INMARTECH was hosted by Scripps and a great deal of effort was expended by Woody Sutherland and his crew in making the meeting a success. INMARTECH98 ran from Tuesday, October 20^th through Thursday, October 22^nd. There were nearly 120 participants from 12 countries. Two concurrent technical sessions were run during each of the mornings and afternoons. These sessions covered various technical topics determined by an interest questionnaire sent out during the spring to potential participants. In total there were 30 technical presentations ranging from Acoustic Doppler Current Profilers to Underway sampling. INMARTECH98 was based on a similar conference held two years earlier in Europe and much of the credit for the early organizational legwork goes to Annette DeSilva (UNOLS Office).

The cooperative work between RVTEC/UNOLS/AICC in the design and execution of the HEALY Science trials continues as the June 30^th date of delivery draws closer. This effort is a great example of cooperation between governmental agencies, institutions and the UNOLS committees. The UNOLS based testing team will participate in the initial spin-up and acceptance for the multibeam Sonar, the ADCP and Computer Data Network and will continue in the evaluation of all shipboard systems through the Warm water trials next fall and the dedicated Science Testing Phase the following spring. Plans for the testing procedures have been submitted to and evaluated by the AICC and now that the schedule is beginning to solidify budgets are being prepared. Chief Scientists from the AICC has been designated for the various portions of the science testing. Part of the end product is a graphic presentation intended to show HEALY scientific capabilities to prospective scientists as the vessel begins her official scientific career in 2001.

Submitted by Mike Prince, SSC Chair

1. UNOLS Ship Utilization for 1999 is similar to 1998, down slightly from approximately 5,161 days to 5,095 operating days. Navy and NOAA supported work are both up from 1998. Navy supported work has increased from 916 to 1,263 days. This can be attributed to an increase in traditional ONR and NRL work, another strong year of NAVO work and the addition of several NOPP projects and three LWAD projects. NOAA work includes GLOBEC and several programs in the Pacific Northwest. NSF, Institutional and Other support all declined slightly in 1999. Work that will be added to schedules over the course of the year usually occurs in the other category. Once again the available work is less than required to keep the fleet fully utilized. In 1999 KNORR was scheduled for lay-up, but WHOI has since been able to schedule 74 days worth of Navy support work which will help to offset some of the cost of lay-up. MOANA WAVE has a very light schedule and will be completing work by mid June. Several other ships have less than desirable schedules such as WECOMA, CAPE HATTERAS, GYRE, ENDEAVOR, OCEANUS, LINK, WEATHERBIRD, SEA DIVER and LONGHORN. The retirement of MOANA WAVE has a potential negative impact on the HOTS work and the NOAA/NASA funded MOBY work in Hawaii. KOK and UNOLS vessels passing through the area will have to be utilized. Attached to this report are spreadsheets showing utilization by funding agency for each vessel during 1998 and 1999 as well as a charts to illustrate this data for the fleet as a whole. The information was taken from the latest schedules available to me and may not reflect the best information in the case of some schedules that have not been updated in several months.
2. There are several issues of concern to schedulers and operators. Some of these will be the subject of discussion during the session on scheduling. These include funding decisions that appear to be tentatively made and then modified or rescinded, funding decisions that are made late or delayed due to a cycle that is different than the ship scheduling cycle and other financially driven changes to schedules after they have been "finalized". Examples include the ONR work for REVELLE in the western Pacific, the GLOBEC program and NURP programs on ATLANTIS. Another example is the fact that ALPHA HELIX schedule usually contains OPP programs for which funding decisions are not made until February or March of the operating year, sometimes even later. This happens every year and as of now, the actual status of two cruises for a total of about 87 days is unknown. Informal discussions indicate that only one cruise may be funded for an undetermined number of days. A lot of effort has been made and continues to be made towards building efficient schedules based on solid funding information. This is done in order to accommodate work on the right vessel during the right time period while at the same time keeping the vessels fully utilized so that they are operated in an economical manner. We are modifying the scheduling process this year in another attempt to make it work within the funding timelines of the various agencies. It would also be helpful if some of the procedures or timelines for the funding agencies could be modified so that they were a little more uniform.
3. The modifications to the scheduling process that we are going to try this year include two key elements. The first is that the schedulers will initially submit letters of intent rather than detailed schedules. A draft of the instructions for submitting the letters of intent is attached to this report. These letters will catalog the ship time requests that each operator holds. It will indicate all of the identifying information and important scheduling considerations for each request and whether or not the operator intends to put that work on their vessel. This process will allow us to ensure that we have accounted for all requests and that we have properly identified their needs, constraints and funding status. The second key element to our modified process is that after the bulk of the funding decisions have been made in late June; the full scheduling committee will meet in early July. A pre-meeting may be held for large ship operators or other groups of operators that need to resolve conflicts. A schedule review committee meeting will follow either immediately or the next day. During the remainder of July, August and early September, schedules will be modified, refined and published prior to a scheduling review committee meeting to be held in conjunction with the UNOLS Council and Annual meetings in September. Schedulers for vessels that still have major unresolved issues will be invited to this meeting as well. In the mean time the UNOLS office and Ship Scheduling Committee will continue to work towards improving the process of receiving and accounting for all ship time requests. A goal of getting all PI's to use the online system will be pursued.

Encl: Spreadsheets and charts of UNOLS Fleet Utilization
Draft letter regarding ship scheduling process and letters of intent

To: Ship Scheduling Committee
From: Mike Prince

Re: Changes to Scheduling Process for 1999 (2000 Schedules)

At the Ship Scheduling meeting last year it was decided to try a somewhat different method for scheduling year 2000 operations. The changes include a modified schedule of events for the scheduling committee and the use of "Letters of Intent" instead of preliminary schedules for the very early stages of the process. This letter attempts to outline the modified process and to provide guidelines for producing the letters of intent.

SCHEDULING PROCESS

Spring 1999 (No later than early May): Schedulers publish a "letter of intent" and update as needed.

June 1999: funding agency scheduling representatives inform schedulers of funding decisions and provide other guidance regarding the details of the Shiptime requests.

Late June 1999: Scheduler's publish actual draft schedules and track charts.

Second Week of July 1999: hold Ship Scheduling Meeting for all schedulers followed immediately by the Scheduling Review Group meeting. A pre-meeting could be held the day before for large ship operators or others that need to resolve conflicts.

July and August: Scheduler's modify schedules as necessary, large ship operators co-ordinate scheduling changes with one another by email and/or conference calls.

Late August/Early Sept: Final Draft Schedules would be published along with track charts and cost estimates.

September: A Ship Scheduling Review meeting would be held just prior to the UNOLS Council and UNOLS annual meetings. If there were significant issues or conflicts to be resolved the affected ship schedulers would be invited to this meeting.

LETTERS OF INTENT

The following is a draft set of instructions for the letter of intent that discusses how the letter would be organized and what it would contain. These letters would be distributed to fellow schedulers through the normal process and then posted to a limited access Web Page or Kiosk at Omnet. Those details will be worked out so that the appropriate schedulers and program managers can get access to the information without making it available to everyone else.

Please review these instructions for a letter of intent and send any questions or comments to me. Any other comments about improving the scheduling process or the proposed plan for ship scheduling are welcome.

DRAFT INSTRUCTIONS FOR SCHEDULING LETTER OF INTENT Ship Schedulers would publish year 2000 Ship Scheduling Letters of Intent as soon as sufficient information was available and no later than early May. These letters of intent would be updated when new information warranted. These letters of intent would consist of a list of Shiptime requests that the institution intended to schedule on their vessel(s). This list of requests would be grouped by funding agency and sorted by PI's last name. Multi-ship Schedulers would further group the requests according to the ship that they plan to schedule the work on. Any requests that could not be accommodated on your own ship(s) would be listed as a separate group. For large ships or ships with expedition like transits it might make sense to also show a chronological order envisioned for the requests being shown. This could be as simple as a separate section for each ship that just lists the requests by PI's last name in chronological order. In the preliminary stages it should not be necessary to go so far as to assign actual dates and ports of call. The idea is to make sure that projects are properly identified, that their funding status is known, that all the factors affecting how a project should be scheduled are known to everyone and to make sure that all requests are accounted for.

The following information should be included for each request. (One idea that is being considered is to have each separate piece of information be listed in the same order and separated by a comma or some other consistent delimiter so that the information could easily be transferred to a database or spreadsheet.)

PI Last Name, First Name, Institution, Title of Proposal or Project,
Form, Date, Identification number of Shiptime request,
Funding Agency, Division or Branch, Proposal or Grant Number, Funding Status,
Ship Requested, Type or size of ship requested, Area of Operations,
Number of Cruises, Number of Science Days, Transit Days, Port Days per cruise, Total Days,
Requested Dates, Alternative Dates or range of acceptable dates,
Restrictions, Unacceptable Dates, and scheduling constraints
Type of work, significant equipment requirements, significant ship requirements,
Any other notes that are significant to the scheduling process

EXAMPLE Letter of Intent

Moss Landing Marine Laboratories has received the following Shiptime requests and intends to schedule them on the R/V POINT SUR if funded and there are no conflicts.

Tentatively planned for the R/V POINT SUR

Navy/ONR projects
Collins, Curt, NPS, Class Cruise OC 3570, Memo from NPS Oceanography Dept, 3/15/99,
ONR,CNMOC,Funding for NPS, Funding requested,
POINT SUR,Small coastal R/V, Cent. Calif. Coast,
2 cruises, 8 science days, no transit, no port, 16 days total
Late Jan and Late July, Jan 21 - Feb 8 and July 21 - Aug 8, Has to be in 3rd to 4th week of quarter,
CTD surveys and Moorings, CTD and Crane,
Part of normal support for NPS Oceanography Dept. by POINT SUR

Wilkes, Gordon, NAVO, NAVO Coastal Oceanography Survey of Central California,
UNOLS Shiptime Request, 4/10/99, ID 19970815132328,
ONR,NAVO,NAVO Funding through NOPP,Funding is waiting on approval by Congress,
Small/Medium R/V, Central Calif. Coast - Point Sur to Point Reyes,
2 cruises, 15 science days, , , 30 days total,

Jan - Mar and Jul - Sep, any two separate quarters, Cruises should be separated by at least three months, CTD surveys, Cores, ADCP surveys, Science party to be supplied by ship operator

NSF Projects

Bruland, Ken, UCSC, Iron in plankton, UNOLS Shiptime Request, 2/15/98, No ID,
NSF,Bio. Ocean., OCE ########, Funded,
POINT SUR, Coastal small or medium, Central Calif. Coast,
1 cruise, 21 science days, no transit, one port day, 22 total days, Jun - Aug 2000, May - Aug 2000,
Cannot be earlier than May 15 due to teaching load, Cannot conflict with Peru Cruise
CTD, Trace Metal Vans (2), U/W clean sampling system from forward crane, Kevlar winch for clean sampling needed,
ave Hutchins at U. Del. is Co-PI
MLML Projects
Faculty, MLML, CLass Cruises No Request form,
SJSU,MLML,None, Funded,
POINT SUR, Monterey Bay,
15 day trips, 15 total days,Half in Late March to Late April and half in late Sept to late Oct,
Must occur during mid semester and not during spring break,
Various sampling equipment, CTD, Nets, Cores,

Tentative order of projects on POINT SUR schedule: NAVO Survey, NPS OC 3570 class cruise, MLML class cruises, Bruland, NPS OC 3570, NAVO survey, MLML class cruises
The Following Projects cannot be scheduled on the POINT SUR
NSF
Bruland, Ken, UCSC, Iron in plankton, UNOLS Shiptime Request, 2/15/98, No ID, NSF,Bio. Ocean., OCE ########, Funded, WECOMA, Medium or Large R/V Coastal Peru,
1 cruise, 30 science days, plus transit, one port day, 31+ total days, After September 2000, Early 2001
Cannot conflict with cruise on POINT SUR,
CTD, Trace Metal Vans (2), U/W clean sampling system from forward crane,
Kevlar winch for clean sampling needed