Monday, November 15, 2004 Matthew A. Russell has been an archeologist with the National Park Service Submerged Resources Center since 1993. He serves as Project Director for the USS Arizona Preservation Project.

Fortune and Friends

Our day began inauspiciously, but steadily improved due to good fortune and good friends. First off, we had a couple new team members join us that I’d like to introduce. John Wehrle, from Northrup Grumman Mission Systems, in Lakewood, Colorado, is joining us for his second field season. John’s office, along with Tim Smith from the NPS Washington Office Geographic Information System (GIS) Program, is helping us develop a comprehensive GIS database that will allow us to integrate thousands of original USS Arizona plans into an electronic, searchable, interactive archive. John became so interested in the project that he flew to Hawaii on his own dime last year to volunteer with us on the project. We’re happy to welcome him back for a second year. Also joining us today was another member of the USS Arizona Memorial dive team, Commander Mike Freeman, US Navy (Ret.), a former commanding officer of Mobile Diving and Salvage Unit One, based right here in Pearl Harbor. Mike has been a steady, reliable presence on the park dive team for many years, and has joined us on many projects – he’s one of those people that we can plug into any aspect of the project and we know we’ll get excellent results. That became abundantly clear today.

Former CO of MDSU1, Commander Mike Freeman, inspects our u/w HMI light system to insure we don't electrocute ourselves. Photo by Matt Russell, NPS.

This week we’re shifting to our third phase of the project, interior scientific measurements using the VideoRay ROV. The VideoRay has become an integral part of our research program since we were first introduced to it in 2000. Because we will not enter Arizona with divers, the ROV becomes our eyes and hands for investigating what’s happening inside the battleship – it’s small enough to fit into portholes, hatches, vents and other tiny openings, but robust enough to fit with a variety of different sensors and probes. This week we’re going to use the YSI multiparameter probe to measure pH, temperature, dissolved oxygen, etc. on the third deck – the lowest areas of the ship we’ve found interior access to – and we’re also going to measure corrosion potential (E_corr) with the GMC reference electrode. Both these instruments will be mounted on the bottom of the VideoRay.

Art Ireland hands an HMI light to John Wehrle, the newest member of our dive team. Photo by Matt Russell, NPS.

The first task of the day was to attach the YSI instrument to the VideoRay, then adjust the weight to ballast the whole package properly. That done, we prepared to launch our handy little ROV, but noticed the video acting finicky.  This glitch was quickly explained by the presence of about an inch of water sloshing around inside the bottom of the dome ports. Oops. Water inside the ROV is never a good thing. As we pulled off the dome port to drain the water and investigate further, we noticed one of the ports was cracked under the bracket that attaches it to the VideoRay’s body. For this, I think, we can thank FedEx. The project’s third phase suddenly looked bleak.

Matt Russell works with VideoRay tech support on the mobile phone while Brett Seymour inspects the cooked ROV boards.
 Photo by Mike Freeman.

After a brief moment of despair, we set the wheels in motion to salvage the situation. This is where the good fortune and good friends part comes into play. A call to Marcus Kolb and Erick Estrada at VideoRay in Exton, Pennslyvania started the process. As it was already 5:00 pm on the east coast, Marcus made a couple of quick calls and just made the deadline to get a replacement VideoRay and dome ports to UPS for overnight delivery. They’ll be here tomorrow afternoon – but if we can get our unit back up and running by tomorrow morning, we’ll only have lost one day rather than two. So next Marcus walked us through the procedure to completely dismantle the ROV. Luckily, we have a spare computer board (the ROV’s brain) – the saltwater fried the original – so we just had to freshwater rinse and dry everything else inside the VideoRay. As twisted as it may sound, I’ll have to admit there is something just a little amusing about hosing off the inside of your $15,000 ROV with fresh water, then dunking it in rubbing alcohol. The next order of business was to find a dome port to replace the broken one (unfortunately we didn’t have a spare dome port). Erick made some calls and found that the US Navy’s Regional Dive Locker, Pearl Harbor has two VideoRay ROVs. This is where Commander Freeman came in handy – he called over there, spent a few minutes chatting with some former colleagues, and then announced they’d be willing to lend us one of their dome ports. Brett, Mike and I made a quick boat trip across Pearl Harbor to the Regional Dive Locker, and returned with our prize.  Special thanks go to Chief Petty Officer Keller and Petty Officer Ohalek from the Regional Dive Locker, Pearl Harbor, for helping us out of this jam. We’re going to let the ROV’s parts and pieces dry overnight, but if everything goes as planned, we’ll be back up and running first thing in the morning, thanks to our good friends Marcus and Erick at VideoRay, our new-favorite volunteer Mike Freeman, and our new friends at the Regional Dive Locker.

A interior photograph of the ever-elusive "mung" from the overhead of an Arizona cabin. Photo by Brett Seymour, NPS.

The rest of the afternoon, Brett, Mike and John Wehrle made one dive with the Hydroflex lights to try to capture some interior images of the microbial film (“mung”) clinging to the oil in the second deck cabin overheads. It took some time and patience, but I think we got some pretty compelling images.