March 21, 2002

On Tuesday night, March 19th, the University of the Virgin Islands hosted the captain and crew of the Research Vessel Ronald H. Brown in a reception at Tickles, Crown Bay. The party was in celebration of the just completed, 13th expedition of the Anegada Climate Tracers Study (ACTS). It also celebrated the maiden voyage to the Caribbean of the newest, largest research vessel in the fleet of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The vessel is named after U.S. Secretary of Commerce Ronald H. Brown, who was killed while serving his country in a mission to war-torn Bosnia.

The vessel's captain, Don Dreves, was presented with a resolution from UVI St. Thomas Chancellor Roy Watlington, declaring the ship and its crew "welcome in Virgin Islands waters at any time." Mugs, caps and other memorabilia were exchanged between the ship and UVI personnel. Crowning the exchange was the gift of a retired life preserver from the R/V Ronald H. Brown, bearing the signatures of the captain, of key ship's officers and of the UVI participants. The gift will be hung in the restaurant to commemorate the event.

UVI's purpose in the ACTS project is to study the exchange between the Caribbean and the Atlantic of substances that give indications of global climate change. The project is conducted as a part of the larger NOAA study called the Windward Islands Monitoring Project, which is headed by NOAA scientist W. Douglas.

The expedition itself, in which 13 UVI-related personnel participated, was conducted in two segments and was very successful. Starting on March 10th, the first leg ran from Barbados to St. Thomas and included two UVI scientists and seven students. The scientific crew resurveyed the submarine volcano called Kick 'em Jenny, which was last charted by the same NOAA-UVI team in 1996. In the course of this most recent expedition, the team, aided by volcanologist Jan Lindsey of the University of the West Indies' Seismic Research Unit, was also able to identify and map a pair of previously uncharted submarine volcanoes near Dominica.

Kevin Brown of the UVI Center for Marine and Environmental Studies led the UVI scientific team, while recent UVI graduate Barry Volson took a break from graduate school in Rhode Island to serve as sampling team leader. Student participants were Shenell Gordon, Clark Goebel, Linda Bailey Knoeck, Leukemia Mounce, Jasmine Pierce, Briana Smith, and Amandy Williams. Gordon, Knoeck and Mounce are ACTS veterans, who have experienced two other research vessels in earlier expeditions. Goebel and Pierce are National Exchange Students.

On the second leg, which remained within the waters of Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands, Laurie Requa, also from the UVI Center for Marine and Environmental Studies, joined the Ronald H. Brown with a new group that included exchange students Sarah Bouknight and Victoria Taibe as well as Lincoln Critchley and Aaron Hutchins, both participants from the Virgin Islands Department of Planning and Natural Resources. Critchley is a UVI marine science graduate.

Both Captain Demis and Chief Scientist Wilson praised the UVI students. Wilson remarked that they removed the need for him to do much of the technical work. Watlington, who is also ACTS principal investigator, expressed his gratitude for the opportunity afforded UVI students and staff by being included as partners in a major NOAA expedition. "It's invaluable experience for our students to be there on the maiden voyage of this historic ship and participate in the discovery of new underwater volcanoes." For more information call Roy Watlington at 693-1140.