by Ensign Brittany Anderson, Junior Officer, NOAA Ship Thomas Jefferson
The NOAA Ship Thomas Jefferson wrapped up her field season last week.
After 193 days away from home, the hydrographic survey vessel completed 14, 768.9 linear nautical miles of survey. This covered 352 square nautical miles of area in Long Island Sound and Block Island Sound. Due to this work, 38 dangers to navigation (DTONs) were issued, protecting maritime traffic in the area.
Additionally, the Thomas Jefferson was in prime position to respond to the devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy in October and November. The U.S. Coast Guard requested assistance from NOAA after New York Harbor was closed to all traffic, preventing crucial goods and services from reaching the citizens of New York City. The Thomas Jefferson and her two launches ran 170.74 linear nautical miles of side scan sonar and multibeam echo sounder operations (MBES), while also surveying 53.82 linear nautical miles of object detection MBES.
Thomas Jefferson has returned to homeport for the winter. On November 9, after an exceedingly successful field season, the ship and her crew arrived at NOAA’s Marine Operation Center – Atlantic in Norfolk.
See WAVY-10 TV coverage of the Thomas Jefferson arrival at Norfolk, with some great explanations of their work responding to requests for help following Hurricane Sandy.
Also see earlier posts, Thomas Jefferson finds two divers in Block Island Sound and Thomas Jefferson mapping Long Island Sound.
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