Devin Ratelle

Annual Maintenance of SPCs Complete!

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The time has come yet again for the annual overhaul of the SPCs. With volunteers from the Scripps diver community, the cameras were removed from the pier piling, hoisted to the pier deck, and thoroughly cleaned. The cables and underwater wipers were replaced, and then the refreshed instrument was lowered down and reinstalled. Many thanks to the hard work of our divers Natalia, Rex, Rich, and Taylor!

  • Whew! That’s a lot of growth!
  • The rear of the SPCs is heavily fouled as well!
  • Stowaways were quickly returned to the sea!
  • Khalil prepared to hoist the refreshed SPC.
  • There were SPCs under all that fouling!
  • The rear of the SPCs looks much clearer as well.
  • Divers retrieve the SPC from the hoist.
  • Taylor and Rex hard at work reattaching the SPCs.
  • Taylor and Rex float after a job well done.

SPCs Undergo Annual Overhaul

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Early in November, the SPCs were pulled from the pier and brought back to the lab for a full overhaul. One of the internal computers had suffered thermal damage from a damaged cooling fan, so after some replacements, upgrades, and realigning, the SPCs were successfully remounted yesterday. They are once again onine!

SPC Cleaned and Serviced

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Recently, biofouling on the ports began ot cut off the field of view, showig that it was time for another cleaning. Scripps divers were able to clean off the ports, as well as replace a cable that had ceased to function. Thanks to their hard work, the SPC is once again capturing and saving live data. How does a cable break happen? Generally it starts with a small hole in the jacket from a barnacle. All it takes is a smal gap for seawater to access one of the conductors in the cable. In this case, it was the ground line that got exposed. Once open to the water, galvanic corrosion sped along by the operating voltage then make short work of the exposed conductor.

SPC Site Undergoing Maintenance

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The backend of the SPC website is undergoing some sorely needed upgrades and revitalization as the servers are being updated and replaced with more secure systems. Sadly, the plankton viewer will be down until this work can be completed. The data is safe, and the viewer will be back up as soon as possible!