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Right in his wheelhouse
Capt. Dan Simon serves as commander of NOAA’s largest oceanographic research vessel, the Ronald H. Brown. The ship calls the port of Charleston home, even though it spends months and even years at sea, often oceans away from South Carolina.
Photo by Mic Smith
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In a class by itself
Ronald H. Brown, a global-class oceanographic and atmospheric research platform, was commissioned July 19, 1997, in a Charleston ceremony. NOAA’s largest vessel is 274 feet in length, with a breadth of 53 feet, and displaces 3,250 tons when fully loaded.
Photo by Mic Smith
He could have taken a cushy, conventional job working in a private-sector lab in Pennsylvania after he finished his master’s degree in environmental studies. But he chose adventure instead, signing up with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Corps for a career that has already taken him to the ends of the Earth.
These days, Capt. Dan Simon serves as commander of NOAA’s largest oceanographic research vessel, the Ronald H. Brown, which calls the port of Charleston home, even though it spends months and even years at sea, often oceans away from South Carolina. And sometimes when he looks out on the horizon, he thinks back to the job he turned down, and remembers the window overlooking a highway in what would have been his office.
“The view from the (ship’s) bridge is amazing,” the 44-year-old commander says with a smile while leading a tour of the Ron Brown as it’s docked at the old Navy base in North Charleston during a travel break earlier this year. “I made the right choice.”
For Simon, that choice goes beyond the view and the exciting unpredictability of what might happen next on the high seas, where the ship might collide with monsoons, hurricanes and even modern-day pirates. His main purpose is enabling NOAA’s critical research and data collection to further the understanding of oceans, fisheries, global weather and climate—all hot topics these days. “I enjoy being a part of the science,” the commander says. “I love NOAA’s mission.”
Around the world and back
In March 2017, the Ronald H. Brown wrapped up a record-setting deployment for a NOAA ship of 1,347 days—more than three years and nine months away from Charleston. With that voyage, the ship participated in a multi-agency rapid response mission to observe the 2015–16 El Niño weather phenomenon, took water measurements from the Arctic to the Antarctic and surveyed 353,975 square miles of seafloor to map the U.S. Extended Continental Shelf, including a Pacific Ocean project near Kingman Reef and Palmyra Atoll.
Slightly less than a year later, in February 2018, the ship headed back out for what might seem like a quick spin by comparison, returning home to Charleston in mid-October. In fact, the ship circled the globe in 243 days, traveling a total of 44,289 miles, while packing in research and activities that led the crew to ports of call in South Africa, the tropical Seychelles islands, India, Australia and Hawaii.
“When I talk about the last year—what did we accomplish? Scientific goodwill is a big part of it,” says Simon, who assumed the role of commander in June 2018, around the midpoint of the voyage. Simon, whose previous assignment was at NOAA headquarters in Maryland, actually joined the Ron Brown a month before he took over, just in time for a landmark cruise of the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea that allowed exploration of a “rarely studied region” by the United States. “The last time there had been a comprehensive survey of the ocean in that area was 1995,” Simon says. In fact, the ship discovered a previously uncharted undersea mountain by surprise while there.
One of the Ron Brown’s primary objectives in that sector was placement of three new data buoys to be maintained by the Indian government, helping fill in gaps in climate data with global implications, for example, shedding light on the Madden-Julian Oscillation, which leads to extreme weather in the U.S. Afterward, the ship docked in Goa for a colloquium of scientists from the U.S. and India, and invited schoolchildren on board for tours.
During that cruise, the ship at times braved 13-foot monsoon waves and otherwise steered through waters known for pirates, at one point sounding the alarm for a potential attack while more than 200 miles off the Maldives.
Simon recalls spotting the oncoming vessel, which looked from a distance like a fast attack boat. Multiple attempts to hail the suspicious vessel went unanswered as it got closer, ultimately coming within 100 feet of the NOAA ship, by Simon’s estimates. But by that point, the 50- to 60-foot boat appeared to be more of a fishing operation, and by the motions of the sailors on board, it seemed they were only looking for food or smokes. The crew of the Ron Brown outwardly ignored them, while getting ready for the possibility of hostile action. Eventually, though, the smaller boat went on its way.
“We were prepared for it,” Simon recalls, “but that didn’t make it any less tense.”
Never-ending science
During any voyage, the ship turns into a beehive of around-the-clock activity as everyone strives to maximize the hard-to-come-by research and exploration opportunities afforded by a rare global-class research operation like the Ron Brown.
There’s room on board for 60. That breaks down to 30 scientists and 30 crew members, including six commissioned NOAA Corps officers, like Simon, who direct the operation with support from the NOAA civilian mariners, like Reggie Williams, a Berkeley Electric Cooperative member who has made Goose Creek his home on shore in recent years.
After leaving the U.S. Navy, Williams joined NOAA in 1991, and has served on the Ron Brown since 1997, the year it was commissioned, making him one of two “plank owners” still on board. “It’s an old nautical reference,” Capt. Simon explains. “When somebody was there when the ship was built, they could pick their plank to sleep on at night.”
During his service as a civilian mariner, Williams has handled a variety of jobs, including operating the crane that places and retrieves buoys that measure ocean and atmospheric conditions. “I believe everything we do on the ship, or any other ship, is important,” he says. His travels also allowed him the opportunity to meet his wife in Chile, where the Ron Brown used to visit regularly as part of its work maintaining a buoy off the coast there.
Tending to large data buoys that are typically 2 meters in diameter with dozens of attached instruments is a common task for the Ron Brown; removing and replacing one buoy can be an all-day event. “What takes so long is putting all the lines and the instrumentation below it because the instrumentation goes down to 500 meters,” the captain explains. “It’s a lot of work by a lot of people to get one of these things into the water or take it out of the water.”
Another important endeavor for NOAA crews is assisting scientists in mapping the seafloor, a specialty of Associate Professor of Geology Leslie Sautter at the College of Charleston. She recalls taking four students on a two-week mapping cruise on the Ron Brown in 2009.
“We mapped from Charleston all the way up to Nova Scotia along the Continental Shelf edge,” she explains. Ultimately, three of the students went on to work with NOAA, including her son, who now monitors changes to coral reefs. “His first experience was on the Ron Brown.”
Sautter leads BEAMS, an innovative College of Charleston undergrad program designed to develop a qualified workforce of ocean surveyors. Less than 5% of the planet’s deep sea floor has been mapped in great detail, she explains. That makes exploration opportunities on NOAA ships like the Ron Brown and the Nancy Foster, which is also homeported in Charleston, invaluable. “The NOAA vessels are very critical in understanding our own planet.”
A year with extra Charleston time
Once described in Stars and Stripes as “the military for geeks,” NOAA Corps celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2017. It is one of the nation’s seven uniformed services, and also the smallest with a total of 300 officers and no enlisted personnel. The ranking structure is the same as the Navy and the Coast Guard.
NOAA Corps officers typically cycle through assignments that put them to sea for two years and on land for three. Capt. Simon started his NOAA career at the age of 25 and spent much of his first assignment on NOAA ship Miller Freeman in Alaskan waters surveying fisheries. Other early NOAA endeavors took him to labs and projects in the South Pacific, Greenland and Antarctica, where he spent a frigid 13 months at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. In more recent years, he served as associate operations director for Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle, and as commanding officer of the NOAA ship Hi'ialakai, based out of Hawaii.
He got to know South Carolina’s Lowcountry when he served as executive officer of the Nancy Foster from 2008–10 and was glad he could call Charleston his home port again when he left NOAA headquarters last year to become captain of the Ron Brown. His wife and two elementary-school-age sons actually relocated to the area ahead of him, greeting him when the Ron Brown returned home one night in October, the boys waiting in pajamas at the dock.
In 2019, the Ron Brown is taking relatively short trips from Charleston, for example, a five-week mission off the western coast of Africa to deploy four buoys that will help with hurricane forecasting, followed by a retooling to use the famous Jason ROV—a remotely operated vehicle for underwater terrain. While the Jason ROV may be best known for its role in locating famous shipwrecks like the Titanic, the Ron Brown is using it for a project looking at deep sea corals along the shelf of the coast of the Carolinas and Georgia.
The ship will also undergo repairs this year, allowing the crew more time in their home port. As much as he enjoys his NOAA adventures, Simon is making the most of extra family time as he plans for the November departure of what looks to be an eight-month voyage.
“This year we are based out of Charleston, and that doesn’t happen too often,” he says. “We’re pretty excited about it. It’s kind of a rarity.”
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Fast facts: Ronald H. Brown
A global-class oceanographic and atmospheric research platform operated by NOAA's Office of Marine and Aviation Operations under the U.S. Department of Commerce.
Home port: Charleston.
Namesake: Department of Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown, champion of the NOAA fleet, who was killed in a 1996 government airplane crash. Prior to his death, the ship was expected to be named Researcher.Commissioned: July 19, 1997, in a Charleston ceremony that also memorialized the commerce secretary.
Dimensions: NOAA’s largest vessel is 274 feet in length, with a breadth of 53 feet. Displaces 3,250 tons when fully loaded.
Power: Two 3,000 horsepower propulsion motors can drive the ship to 15 knots. Cruising speed, 11 knots.
Maximum complement: 30 commissioned officers/crew and 30 scientists.
Science labs: Five with nearly 4,000 square feet of dedicated space and additional space on deck to support up to nine laboratory vans.
Endurance: 60 days without refueling.