Tag: Oceans

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Titanic sub takes to the water with a new name

Titan submersible
OceanGate’s Titan submersible sits on its mobile platform at the port of Everett. (OceanGate Photo)

Don’t call it Cyclops 2: The five-person submersible built by Everett, Wash.-based OceanGate has been renamed Titan, befitting its role as a vehicle designed to get up close to the Titanic’s shipwreck.

Today OceanGate announced that it has launched Titan for its initial rounds of in-the-water tests at Everett’s marina. Shallow-water trials are due to continue in Puget Sound through March.

Titan is scheduled to undergo deep-sea certification dives in the Bahamas in April. That will be when OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush first pilots the vessel to Titanic-level depths of 4,000 meters (13,000 feet).

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Science ship returns to duty after midlife makeover

Thompson research ship
University of Washington oceanographer Ginger Armbrust boards the newly refurbished R/V Thomas G. Thompson at a university dock. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

The University of Washington’s biggest research ship is getting loaded up with scientists, supplies and an underwater robot after an extensive multimillion-dollar makeover that’s designed to add 25 more years to its current quarter-century of operation.

And the crew of the 274-foot R/V Thomas G. Thompson can hardly wait to set sail.

“It’s been a long 18 months in the shipyard,” Brian Clampitt, one of the UW crew’s able-bodied seamen, told GeekWire today. “We’re looking forward to getting back to work.”

Clampitt and his mates never stopped working during the refit, most of which was done at Vigor Marine’s Seattle shipyard. But the crew’s duties on land can’t compare with getting back to the sea.

“We’re a bunch of sailors. We’re dying to get underway,” said Jenny Nomura, one of the crew’s marine technicians.

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Wild winds and waves wow Northwest watchers

Waves
Waves wash over Grays Harbor Bar on the Washington coast. (U.S. Coast Guard Photo / Steven McDougal)

Thirty-foot waves swept over seas off the Pacific Northwest coast on Jan. 18, producing deadly awesomeness for onshore videos and presaging a wild weather weekend.

Northwest weather guru Cliff Mass, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Washington, explained in his blog that the waves were caused by a “HUGE, intense and slow-moving storm” over the northeast Pacific Ocean.

“I mean a stunningly big storm,” Mass added.

The National Weather Service reported waves as high as 33.5 feet on the afternoon of Jan. 18. That height, which is twice the norm, was recorded by a buoy off the coast of Washington near Grays Harbor.

The crashing waves made for a stormy display in videos captured by the Coast Guard as well as civilian wave-watchers.

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Titanic sub’s launch pad is ready for liftoff

OceanGate platform
Workers install an air tank on the mobile subsea platform that OceanGate will use to deploy its Cyclops 2 submersible. (OceanGate Photo)

Construction work is complete for an essential part of the dive system that’s due to carry scientists and amateur adventurers down to the world-famous Titanic shipwreck this summer.

The nearly 11-ton mobile subsea platform will be used to launch a five-person submersible into the depths of the Atlantic Ocean, and bring it back to the surface at the end of each dive.

Everest Marine. a division of Burlington, Wash.-based Penn Cove Shellfish, spent five months on the custom fabrication of the 38-foot-long aluminum platform. It’s designed to be used with the Cyclops 2 deep-sea submersible that’s been assembled by OceanGate at its headquarters in Everett, Wash.

The submersible and its platform are due to go through a round of shallow-water dives in Puget Sound this month, followed by deep-water testing in the Bahamas in April.

Those tests will lead up to the inaugural Titanic campaign in June, which will make a series of dives to the ship’s remains, 13,000 feet beneath the surface of the North Atlantic.

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OceanGate wins more funding for Titanic sub

OceanGate team with Cyclops 2
OceanGate’s workers get into the holiday spirit as they work on the Cyclops 2 submersible at the company’s Everett headquarters. (OceanGate Photo via Twitter)

OceanGate is in the midst of a $5.1 million investment round aimed at pushing the Everett, Wash.-based company closer to a Titanic undersea adventure.

The round was reported today in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Joel Perry, OceanGate’s director of media and marketing, told GeekWire that the privately held company’s existing investors have already filled out much of the funding. He declined to identify the investors.

The money will give OceanGate “a little more runway” as it finishes work on its Cyclops 2 deep-sea submersible, Perry said.

OceanGate’s team has nearly completed construction of Cyclops 2 at the company’s Everett marina workshop. Perry said the pressure vessel underwent testing this week to make sure there were no leaks.

“It’s a perfect seal,” Perry said.

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OceanGate gets Titanic sub ready for the holidays

Cyclops 2 sub viewport
A scale model of the Titanic luxury liner sits on the other side of the clear acrylic viewport and titanium dome that’s due to be installed on the Cyclops 2 submersible at OceanGate’s headquarters in Everett. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

EVERETT, Wash. — Almost all the pieces are in place for a Yuletide delivery of Titanic proportions: the completion of a multimillion-dollar underwater craft that’s due to explore the world’s most famous shipwreck next year.

Cyclops 2, a five-person submersible that takes advantage of the latest in marine engineering, is taking shape at OceanGate Inc.’s headquarters on Everett’s waterfront.

“The goal is to have it in the water by the end of the year,” said Stockton Rush, OceanGate’s CEO and co-founder.

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Wave and UW team up on ocean observatory’s links

Cabled Array
A high-definition camera built by the University of Washington’s Applied Physics Laboratory is trained on the 13-foot-tall, actively venting hot spring called Mushroom at the summit of the Axial Seamount, about a mile deep in the Pacific off the Oregon coast. (UW / NSF-OOI / CSSF Photo)

Wave Broadband is coming out in the open about its partnership with the University of Washington to provide broadband connectivity for the Regional Cabled Array, an undersea observatory that’s part of the federally backed Ocean Observatories Initiative.

UW operates and maintains the Regional Cabled Array, which collects a torrent of scientific data from the floor of the Pacific Ocean off the Oregon coast. More than 150 scientific instruments measure seismic activity, fluid flow, chemical composition and other phenomena in areas such as the Southern Hydrate ridge and the Axial Seamount volcano, lying as much as a mile beneath the ocean surface..

Electrical power and data flow 24/7 via a 323-mile-long cable that runs between the instrument array and a shore station in Pacific City, Ore. Keeping up with the real-time data stream requires a network that can handle transport speeds of up to 100 gigabits per second.

That part of the job gets handled by Wave, which is headquartered in Kirkland, Wash.

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Meet the Mariana snailfish, the sea’s deepest fish

Mariana snailfish
The Mariana snailfish is the deepest fish collected from the ocean floor. (UW Photo)

They look like ghosts of the abyss, but the wispy, pinkish-white, smooth-skinned creatures at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean’s Mariana Trench have a distinction of substance: They’re the deepest fish ever brought up from the deep sea.

Now the species known as the Mariana snailfish has its official scientific name: Pseudoliparis swirei, a Latin-inspired designation paying tribute to Herbert Swire, a navigator on the 19th-century expedition that discovered the Mariana Trench.

A researcher at the University of Washington’s Friday Harbor Laboratories played a key role in Pseudoliparis swirei’s discovery. UW’s Mackenzie Gerringer is the lead author of a paper on the species’ discovery, published today in the open-access journal Zootaxa.

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Robots are readied to study Antarctic ice shelves

Antarctic robot research team
Members of the research team stand on the deck of the R/V Robertson with two Seaglider drones on the left, plus a drone and a float on the right. The team includes UW’s Jason Gobat, Craig Lee, Knut Christianson and James Girton, plus Spencer Reeder of Paul G. Allen Philanthropies. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

Researchers from the University of Washington and Columbia University are getting ready for an unprecedented months-long campaign to study Antarctica’s ice shelves from the ocean below, with backing from billionaire philanthropist Paul Allen.

The results are expected to lead to a better understanding of how ice retreats, and how climate change could affect the loss of polar ice sheets and the resulting rise in sea levels.

It’s a high-risk mission — but in this case, robots, not humans, are taking the risk.

“All of these instruments could be lost underneath the ice shelf,” said Spencer Reeder, director of climate and energy for Paul G. Allen Philanthropies.

Reeder said that’s a big reason why Allen, one of Microsoft’s co-founders, is funding the expedition to the tune of just under $2 million. The risks are too high for the traditional funders of polar research, but Allen’s backing could help UW’s Applied Physics Laboratory prove that its devices can do the job.

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Peek inside OceanGate’s Titanic sub factory

OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush
OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush is framed by a carbon-composite cylinder that will serve as the heart of the Cyclops 2 submersible. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

EVERETT, Wash. — Today it looks like an eight-foot-long section of culvert pipe, but in just a couple of months, the carbon-fiber cylinder sitting on OceanGate’s shop floor will serve as the heart of a five-person submersible that’s destined to visit the Titanic, the world’s most famous shipwreck.

The Cyclops 2 submersible and its future mission represent the culmination of an eight-year-old dream for Stockton Rush, the Everett-based company’s co-founder and CEO.

“The whole project from Day One was to go deep. … Three years ago, it became pretty clear that the real market opportunity was the Titanic,” Rush told GeekWire on Sept.22 during a company open house.

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