Mrs. Curtin the fourth graders at Noxon Road
Elementary School, Poughkeepsie, New York asked:
1.How many people are in your crew?
There are approximately 43 crew members divided among seven departments: the
Deck, Yeoman, Engineering, Survey, Stewards, Electronics, and Quartermaster
Departments. The Deck Department has several different jobs: they keep the
superstructure of the ship painted and clean and free of rust, load and
unload equipment, help with operations, and stand both inport and underway
watches as lookouts and helmsmen. The Yeoman Department is responsible for
keeping up all of the paperwork required to run the ship and take care of the
personnel. The Engineering Department has the important job of keeping the
engines and other mechanical systems operating. Survey Department personnel
are responsible for helping with the collection of data for the scientists
and maintaining the scientific computing system (SCS) where all of the data
are stored. The Stewards Department cooks the food, cleans some of the
interior compartments on the ship and washes the linen. Next to the
Engineers, who keep the ship running, the Stewards are probably the most
important people on the ship. They keep the people running with good food,
clean rooms, and clean laundry.
The Electronics Technicians keep complex
electronic systems running and work with ship to shore communications. The
Electronic Technicians also make sure that our several VCRs are working so
that we can watch movies every night while we are at sea, as there is no TV
reception out in the middle of the ocean. Lastly, the Quartermaster
Department works with maintaining navigation charts and publications that the
ship needs to get from one location to another and they stand both inport and
underway watches.
Along with the crew, there are 9 National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA) Commissioned Corps Officers and 1 Public Health Service
Officer to provide for our medical needs while we are at sea. There is the
Captain, who is responsible for everything that occurs on the ship, from
operations to paperwork. It is not an easy job and requires long hours of
work to insure that things run smoothly. The Executive Officer is second in
command and is basically an administrator working with paperwork and the
crew. The Operations Officer helps the scientists get their research done by
finding out what they want done and working out how it can be done
efficiently by the ship. There is also a navigator and he maintains the
tracklines on the charts. He is also responsible for the charts themselves,
providing the Captain with the ship's location, and ensuring that the ship is
navigated safely and is not in danger of running aground on reefs or other
dangers to navigation.
The Medical Officer is needed to keep everyone
healthy on long voyages like the one that we are on now. The Medical Officer
also serves as the ship's morale officer, organizing activities like games,
and tours to make life a little more interesting at sea and during our short
and few port calls. Lastly, there are 5 Junior Officers. Their most
important job is being the Officer Of the Deck (OOD). This means that when
they are on watch (which means they work 4 hours on and have 8 hours off,
round the clock, seven days a week), they are responsible directly to the
Captain for the safety of the ship and her personnel and all of the
operations that are being conducted. The Junior Officers do most of the
actual "driving" of the ship. They are the ones who get to have most of the
ofuno steering and maneuvering the ship.
The ship can also carry up to about 30 scientists for a total berthing of 83
people. But more about the scientists later. Actually, if you've been
reading the pages of MidLink, you should know quite a lot about the
scientists that we have on the MALCOLM BALDRIGE already.
2. How big is your boat?
Actually, we prefer to call ourselves a ship. I guess the real distinction
between a ship and a boat may be in the eye of the beholder. It's similar to
the difference between a hill and a mountain. A boat is a boat, if it is
small enough to be hoisted aboard and cradled on a ship. It would take a
pretty big ship to hoist the MALCOLM BALDRIGE aboard and cradle us on its
deck.
The MALCOLM BALDRIGE is 273 feet (about 84 meters) long, with a beam (width)
of 51 feet (about 16 meters), a draft (depth below the waterline) of 18 feet
(about 6 meters), and a displacement (weight) of 2963 tons when fully loaded.
3. How old is your boat [ship] and who was the real Malcolm Baldrige?
The keel of the ship was laid in 1967. In 1968 the ship was launched, and
the ship was commissioned as a United States Government vessel in 1970. The
ship was originally christened the RESEARCHER, named after the schooner
RESEARCH, which served in the Philippines with the U.S. Coast and Geodetic
Survey from 1875 to 1910. In 1988 the ship was renamed the MALCOLM BALDRIGE
in honor of the U.S. Secretary of Commerce who served with distinction from
January 20,1981, until his death on July 25, 1987.
4. Where do you sleep?
The ship is able to go out for more than 30 days at a time, so everyone needs
some space for themselves. Of course, with a ship the size of the MALCOLM
BALDRIGE, sailors no longer have to sleep in small, uncomfortable hammocks or
pipe-rack bunks. Everyone but the Captain lives in a single or double person
stateroom. An average stateroom is 8 feet by 14 feet and is usually shared
by two people. In that space there is a sink, medicine cabinet, two closets,
two bunk beds, and two chests of drawers. This does not leave much space for
people to stand or walk around in. It also doesn't leave too much room for a
lot of personal possessions for the crew members and officers who live on the
ship permanently, year round. The Captain lives in the Cabin. This is a
combination of three rooms, each about the size of a stateroom. In the Cabin
there is the Captain's stateroom where he sleeps, his office, and a day room.
5. Is your boat [ship] a sailboat?
No. Most of the large sailing vessels, and all of the sailing oceanographic
research vessels have been replaced by modern and more efficient ships
powered by diesel engines. The wind is not always a reliable source of power
for a ship like the MALCOLM BALDRIGE that travels to many different parts of
the worldAs ocean and must maintain a reasonable schedule to complete
operations. The MALCOLM BALDRIGE spends time in the horse latitudes (30 -35
degrees north and south of the equator). The horse latitudes are regions
with weak pressure gradients and correspondingly light, variable winds. In
these regions, sailing vessels have always had difficulty making headway on
sails alone, often drifting for many weeks without even a ghost of a breeze.
The horse latitudes received their name because sailing vessels of old which
transported horses to the West Indies often had to throw horses overboard
because of water shortages resulting from delays due to low or no winds.
The MALCOLM BALDRIGE is propelled by two 1,600-shaft horsepower main diesel
engines, each driving a controllable pitch propeller. A 450-horsepower
retractable bow propulsion unit (BPU), which rotates through 360 degrees,
assists in holding the ship's heading during on-station operations and
enhances maneuverability during docking and undocking. With the shipAs
engines, we can steam at about 14 to 15 knots (about 16-17 mile per hour)
continuously, 24 hours per day, for just about 30 days before we have to go
into port to refuel. The ship can carry almost 200,000 gallons of diesel
fuel, and we make all of the fresh water that we need each day.
6. What are you studying, why, and what have you found out?
Scientists aboard MALCOLM BALDRIGE have studied a large variety of things
during this past year: plankton, myctophids (small fish), marine mammals,
seabirds, ozone, carbon dioxide, polluting aerosols and chemicals in the
atmosphere, ocean circulation, radioactive elements in the water, salinity,
oxygen dissolved in the water, nutrients in the water, and the El Nino
phenomenon.
NOAA, the organization that operates the MALCOLM BALDRIGE, studies the
oceans and the atmosphere with the goal of understanding how they operate and
the forces that drive their circulation patterns. Also, NOAA tries to
understand man's impact on the environment. By understanding our environment
we can predict long-term changes in weather, predict hurricane paths, and try
to determine what could cause global climate change. Understanding man's
impact upon the environment allows us to set limits on fishing to save the
world's fisheries, find out which chemicals are harmful to the environment,
know which air pollutants destroy the ozone layer, determine where the carbon
dioxide goes when we burn fossil fuels, and estimate how much carbon dioxide
can be injected into the atmosphere before we have more serious problems with
the greenhouse effect.
"What have we found out" is an interesting question and somewhat difficult to
answer. Yet it is the answer to this question that justifies NOAA's
existence. We have learned much, but it is difficult to apply some of what
we know. Take the example of the hole in the ozone above Antarctica. NOAA
scientists found the hole, but was it always there?, did it recently form?,
is it getting bigger?, did man-made chemicals cause the hole or is it part of
a cycle?, and why isn't there one over the Arctic?, or is there?
We do not know the complete answers to these questions since we have just
started to investigate phenomena like that. It is like measuring the
temperature outside for the first time ever. What do you know about the
temperature in the past? What do you know about the temperature in the
future? Nothing. You must make a series of measurements in order to predict
the future. You must have a history of what has happened previously to see
how things are changing now.
Part of the oceanographic studies that we are doing in the Indian Ocean this
spring, summer, and fall, and in the Pacific Ocean later this year are
designed to establish the baselines for oceanic and atmospheric circulation
in the Indian Ocean, so that we will be able to identify and later predict
the differences in the ocean circulation and biological patterns between
seasons, years, and decades. We have had some big successes, for example, in
understanding and predicting El Nino events. Now we are able to recognize
that an El Nino event is about to occur by measuring the shift of warm water
from Indonesia east to the coast of South America, by watching the changes in
temperatures and currents that are measured by the buoys that we maintain
from our ship in the Equatorial Pacific Ocean. When this happens in the
Equatorial Pacific Ocean, major changes occur in weather patterns, even in
the eastern United States. Yes, even your weather in eastern New York may
actually be affected by changes in the ocean, thousands of miles away.
7. How long have you been on this boat, and how long do you plan to stay?
I have been on the ship for about a year and a half and I plan to stay until
this cruise is over, which is 8 more months. That answer was from Ensign
Wetzler.
Now, as the Captain, I took Command of the ship in April 1994, so I have been
aboard the MALCOLM BALDRIGE for just a little over 14 months. I will be on
the ship for at least another year, before I am transferred to a shore
assignment, and a new Captain will take my place. I have been an officer
with NOAA for almost 24 years. During that time, I have been to sea for over
8 years, IAve served on five different NOAA ships, and now IAve sailed in the
all the major oceans of the world. - From Captain Nelson
8. How do you cook, and what do you eat?
There is a galley on board. A galley is a kitchen about the size you would
find in a restaurant and contains the same equipment. We also have two large
chill boxes, or refrigerators down below in the hold where we keep fresh
vegetables and fruits and dairy products, and a huge freezer, where we have
stored enough frozen foods to keep us supplied for almost the entire year
that we will be away from the United States. The cooks in the Stewards
Department prepare 3 meals a day, including desserts. Actually, for dessert,
we most often have soft freeze ice cream, which is almost like having our own
Dairy Queen stand on the ship. The cooks prepare a wide variety of food,
from steak and potatoes to Mongolian barbecue and rice. Vegetarian meals are
also available.
9. Where do you live when you are not sailing?
My wife and daughter live in Arkansas. When we are not sailing I try to take
some time off and visit them, or they come to the ship and visit me. - From
Ensign Wetzler
Since I was assigned to the ship, most of my time has been spent on the ship,
either at sea or in port. I do get to take leave during the year, and that is
when I go home to visit my family, who lives in Rockville, Maryland, and
often we will travel to Upstate New York, near Rochester to visit my wife and
parents. For almost all of 1995, I will be aboard the ship, so the MALCOLM
BALDRIGE is really my home now. - From Captain Nelson
10. What do you do for entertainment? Do you have electricity, TV, or a
radio?
There is a lot to do on the ship. On board we have a photo lab where black
and white film can be developed, people play instruments, build models, play
games, and write letters. The ship has three generators which provide
electricity to all of the ship's systems, and our TV's and radios. As the
movie officer, I am responsible for maintaining our extensive movie library
(over 700 movies) and seeing that they are played. There are 6 video
machines connected to our TV system. This means we have 6 channels to
choose from. Each night we watch at least 4 different video tapes.
Most of
the movies that we have aboard ship aren't the first run movies that you get
to see at the theater as soon as the movie companies release them. But, the
movies usually aren't too old, we have a lot to choose from, and the best
part is that they are free and we can watch them anytime that we want to. We
cannot pick up stateside TV from satellites because the ship rolls and
pitches when we are out to sea and would not allow a satellite antenna to
track a satellite. As for radio, we can pick up short-wave radio
transmissions from all over the world. Broadcasts like the BBC, or Voice of
America are common. We also get a very short newspaper transmitted to us
each day over our satellite communications equipment, so that we can keep up
with some world news, U.S. news, and of course, sports.
11. How does it feel living on a boat for so long?
Being on a ship is peaceful. My "rush hour traffic" consists of walking from
the galley, after lunch, to the Bridge. This takes all of a minute. At the
end of a workday the return to my stateroom is even shorter. There are very
few things to distract you out here. After being out to sea for a long time
the jobs become routine, so there is little stress. Going out to sea is the
perfect way to "get away from it all". Of course, being at sea does have one
drawback. You can't get off, and there's no other place to go if you get
tired of it, while the ship is at sea.
12. Do you ever go diving off this boat?
Yes, we do have some divers who use SCUBA equipment to dive off of the ship.
These are my working divers, who will dive on the propellers and shafts and
check the hull for problems. Also, they have made dives with some of the
scientists who also use SCUBA equipment to collect fragile marine animals
that would have been destroyed if they were caught by a net.
Well, I hope that weAve been able to answer all of your questions
satisfactorily. I know that it's late in your school year, and that you must
all be very excited about summer vacation. But if you do have access to a
computer this summer, and can access MidLink, please keep reading about our
voyage around the world, as I will continue to provide updates on our
progress on the pages of MidLink.
See you next school year.
Your Friends,
Ensign Mark W. Wetzler, NOAA
Captain Craig S. Nelson, NOAA
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