OREOS & MILK: shipwrecks and underwater caves

OREOS & MILK

Save The World Series - Ocean Engineering (a STEM book).

© Copyright 2023 Stephen L. Wood, Ph.D., P.E.

All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, website, or broadcast.

ISBN: 979-8-9890262-2-7

eBook ISBN: 979-8-9890262-0-3

Audio Book ISBN: 979-8-9890262-9-6

Published and Printed in the United States of America

STEM books by Dr. Wood

Acknowledgments

I wish to acknowledge the young adults who spent valuable time critiquing the Save the World Kids series of books: Suzanne Dixon, Parker Baillon, Stephen Coster, Christine Coster, Gabor Papp, and my wife, Gisela Suzanne-Bahr Wood, who inspired me to start writing these novels.

Save the World!

This series of novels is about a family that tackles various societal issues: Father Sam Jones, age 39; Mother Suzanne Jones, age 35; daughter Diane, age 11; son Ben, age 6; and dog Freddy, a 55-pound female golden retriever. This book includes deep underwater caves, aquifers, shipwrecks, drug smugglers, and hurricanes. It covers the design of an autonomous underwater vehicle, called an AUV, and how middle school students can collaborate with college students to do great things. All ocean engineering undergraduate and graduate students are real, although they may not have worked on the OREO project.

Ocean Engineering

A multidisciplinary field of technology applied to the ocean environment that integrates oceanography, materials science, mechanical, civil, computer, software, marine, chemical, electrical, electronic engineering disciplines, naval architecture, and applied physics.

Ocean engineering is a rapidly growing and dynamic field with opportunities that are expanding as people turn to the oceans for food, transportation, and energy. One of the great things about ocean engineering is that many different types of engineers can work together to find solutions for ocean infrastructure, research, and utilization.

In addition to creating ROVs, ocean engineers develop underwater structures, oil rigs, and wave buoys for data collection, and they are hard at work developing ways to capture the energy of waves and turn it into electricity. They develop transportation systems, plan new uses for waterways, design deep-water ports, and integrate land and water transportation systems and methods. They are concerned with discovering, producing, and transporting offshore oil and developing new ways to protect marine wildlife and beaches against the unwanted consequences of offshore oil production and storm erosion.

Ocean engineers study all aspects of the ocean environment to determine the influence of people on the oceans and the effects of the ocean on ships and other marine vehicles and structures. Their work is global and has never been more important because these professions connect people and places in a way unmatched by other engineering careers. Think of Earth as one big web of biodiversity connecting us to all living things. Many may say that the Pacific Ocean separates the United States and Japan. However, in the maritime industry, they say that the oceans connect them.

Table of Contents

PREFACE

THE BAHAMAS

THE TEAM

INTO THE DEPTHS

HOT CHICKS – COOL DUDES

DANCE THE NIGHT AWAY

ROCKETS TO THE MOON

CHECKLISTS

SEAWORLD

DRUGS, SUBS, AND BUGS

POOL TESTING

LAKE TESTING

WES SKILES PEACOCK SPRING STATE PARK

THE SPIEGEL GROVE SHIPWRECK

SPIEGEL GROVE DIVE DAY

DEAD BODY!

SEARCH FOR TREASURE

MISSING!

FLIGHT TO THE BAHAMAS

BLUEHOLE

POSSIBILITIES

FOLLOW THE UNKNOWN TRACK

THE CHASE

THE CAPTURE

HURRICANE DORIAN

PREFACE

Note from the author: With a few exceptions (Thomas, Dean, Zack, Sergeant Mitchell, Sam, Ben, Svetlana, and the drug smugglers), the people in this book are based on real people. None of the locations are fictional. Only the drug smuggling story about importing drugs from Abaco Island to Florida is fictional. All the other stories are true. The OREO AUV exists and is being built for cave and shipwreck exploration at the Underwater Technology Laboratory at the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Florida.

Characters

Diane Jones is an energetic twelve-year-old girl with an extreme interest in everything electronic, especially robots. She also has a deep passion for the oceans and marine life. She has had visions of being a dolphin trainer or a rescuer of manatees or sea turtles. Her dad, Sam, is a mechanical engineer with his own company designing robot systems for various industries. He suggested to Diane that she investigate the ocean engineering profession to combine her passions of electronics, mechanics, and marine biology.

Thomas O’Conner and Dean Bond, 12 years old, are Diane’s techie friends. Whenever something comes up in the tech world, these two jump in and learn everything they can about it.

Zack Fernwood, Diane’s friend - Diane met Zack, 15, a few months ago during her investigation of global warming, sea level rise, and the impacts these two phenomena have on coral reefs off the coast of Florida. Zack has lived in the Florida Keys his whole life, and even though he is only twelve, he can scuba dive and run any motorboat in the Florida Keys. His dad, a ship marine engineer, taught Zack everything about motors, pumps, and what it takes to care for and repair small boats.

Sam Jones, Diane’s dad, a professional mechanical engineer, specializes in designing robot systems. He is skilled in mechanical, electrical, and software engineering, specifically in artificial intelligence, control systems, and navigation. His company designs equipment for various industries, including the NSA, Homeland Security, and NASA.

Suzanne Jones, Diane’s mom, a computer science professor, focuses on large data mining. She excels at solving complicated problems with innovative solutions. A certified scuba diver, Suzanne has enjoyed the ocean since childhood. She has taken a five-year leave of absence to work on a few projects while raising a family.

Ben Jones, 8, Diane’s brother, is in the second grade and always follows Diane around and gets in the way. Luckily for Diane, Ben gets bored quickly and ends up playing with his toys while Diane does her investigations on the computer or her electronics desk, where she has just about every robot mechanism on the market.

Dr. Wood, Professor and Ocean Engineering Program Chair at the Florida Institute of Technology is the head of the Underwater Technology Laboratory, where undergraduate and graduate students conceive, design, build, and test autonomous and remotely operated systems for the ocean. Every summer, he takes his students on multiday cruises on the Florida Institute of Oceanography’s research vessel Hogarth to the Florida Keys and the Dry Tortugas.

Brooklyn, a 22-year-old graduate student in Ocean Engineering, finished her undergraduate degree at the Florida Institute of Technology in Ocean Engineering and is continuing to earn her master’s degree. Her thesis is on autonomous underwater vehicles to map caves.

Tij, a Ph.D. Ocean Engineering graduate student from India is skilled at modeling the actions of any vehicle in or on the water. He led the team in building the Nautilus, a vehicle that can fly or swim.

Brian, a Ph.D. Ocean Engineering graduate student from Tennessee designed an acoustic identification system to detect, identify, and target any acoustic sound in the ocean. His system can tell you if the sound is Bill’s shrimp boat, Peggy’s fishing boat, a blue whale from the Pacific, a bottlenose dolphin from the Atlantic, or an enemy submarine passing by just by listening to the sounds of a ship’s propeller or other marine sounds. 

Cody, a sophomore undergraduate student from a small town in central Florida, has been interested in the oceans since he was young. He joined Dr. Wood’s team the moment he arrived at the university. He jumped at the opportunity to become machine shop and 3-D printer certified. It was during this training that he met Derek.

Derek, a college sophomore from a small town in the Pacific Northwest, jumped at the opportunity to join Dr. Wood’s team as a work-study student. He had initially signed up for mechanical engineering but switched after meeting Cody, who had told him about the projects underway in Dr. Wood’s laboratory.

Doug, an engineer, has been a design and test engineer of systems designed for the ocean for more than thirty years. His experience on the sea and in the laboratory is second to none. Taking apart and repairing a SideScan SONAR, current meter, or REMUS autonomous underwater vehicle is what he calls fun. With experience with naval acoustical systems, deep-sea diving (to 300 feet depth), and underwater archaeology in the Netherlands and Sweden, Doug’s abilities rival those in the best institutes worldwide.

Svetlana, an adventurer and archaeologist, was educated in the Ukraine in the small city of Mykolaiv just east of Odesa on the Black Sea. Her base studies were in naval architecture, but when she emigrated to the United States, she applied to a university in Texas to become an underwater archaeologist. After completing her degree, she worked on underwater projects throughout the world.

Arthur, a Government Official, is good friends with Dr. Wood; Arthur received a graduate degree from the University of Miami, where he was known for his Calypso music. Years later, Arthur and Dr. Wood meet during this adventure.

Sergeant Mitchell, a very competent police officer who tends to receive all the out-of-the-ordinary assignments. Good-hearted with young people, he volunteers to assist in the search for the lost cave divers.

Rob and Leanne, Dr. Wood’s friends from Saskatchewan, Canada, have known Dr. Wood since they were in graduate school at the University of Miami.

Mr. Rodrigues, a drug smuggler, is in command of the ‘Bahama Mamas.’ Mr. Rodrigues is a ‘drug cartel lord’ with links to a Colombian cartel and has been smuggling drugs into the US for several years.

Miguel, a drug smuggler, second in command of the ‘Bahama Mamas,’ is in a drug cartel associated with a Colombian cartel and has been smuggling drugs into the US for several years with Mr. Rodrigues.

Carlos, drug smuggler, Mr. Rodrigues’ number one henchman.

Luke is the pilot of a drug smuggler submarine.

THE BAHAMAS

You went ashore! You are lucky you didn’t get shot! exclaimed Randy, a fellow sailboat owner.

Wait! What? This is the Bahamas! Leanne said in confusion. Leanne had been telling Randy about how they noticed the new development in Crab Cay.

Typically, tourists think of the Bahamas for its beautiful beaches, warm crystal-clear waters, friendly hospitality, and the sailing that can be done in the area. Scuba tourists think of the incredible coral reefs and the numerous wrecks they can explore. Then there is the adventure diver, who likes to enter caves. Like many other islands, the Bahamas is composed primarily of limestone. The Bahama Plateau was affected by sea-level changes during the Pleistocene Ice Age, which ended 11,700 years ago. During this time, the change in water level encouraged the development of the caves. So, the Bahamas has numerous caves and sinkholes, especially Abaco Island. Because of their principal coloration, these caves are known as ‘Blue Holes.’ These ‘holes’ are common in shallow waters, such as ‘The Guardian Blue Hole System’ or the ‘Bight of Old Robinson’ near Little Harbor, which has several openings in its shallows that are accessible by boat and make for exciting snorkeling for those who are not cave divers. Diving these holes is only for the most experienced divers.

ψ

Rob and Leanne’s lifetime dream was to sail around the Caribbean, and scuba dive the famous blue holes of the Bahamas. These two adventurers were not of the adventuring type, but they liked the outdoors. Rob and Leanne were from Saskatchewan, Canada. They had rented a sailboat out of Freeport and spent their first week exploring. At one of their anchoring spots, they met a couple who told them about a blue hole, which had been wonderful on Little Abaco Island but seemed to have been destroyed by developers. Heeding the warning signs of ‘NO TRESPASSING,’ the couple did not investigate further.

That was enough for Rob and Leanne; they had to investigate, so they headed there the next morning. They anchored in Crab Cay for several nights near where the blue hole should be. On their first night, they noticed no sand on the beach, and everything was covered in fine silt underwater. The jellyfish were so thick that it was almost impossible to be in the water. Jellyfish populations are known to bloom in unhealthy ecosystems; in this case, it certainly felt that way. The place had changed. It wasn’t until they paddled around in their dinghy the next day that they started to put the pieces together. The people they had talked to had visited the area years earlier and had swum a blue hole. Rob and Leanne went off searching for the blue hole but were confused. They had been informed that the blue hole was in the mangroves in a creek at the corner of the anchorage, and it did not look right. They kept looking until they found a small but distinctly dredged channel, which you could only see from head-on. Rob and Leanne dinghied in and saw an array of dredged canals and vegetation. They could not find the mangroves because they were no longer there. It looked like there would be a huge development of some sort. A marina? Condos with slips? But why? The Green Turtle Hotel resort a few miles away could not keep its spaces full, so why build a new harbor facility in an even more remote and not necessarily picturesque location, which is remote by land and water? It didn’t make sense.

Further, they found earth-moving equipment which had not been used for quite some time. Perhaps this was another project out of funds, leaving it to the land to do her best to heal the damage. They looked for the blue hole without luck but found a tower that was placed to see the work site and a couple of old derelict mobile homes. Rob and Leanne climbed up and took a quick peek. What they saw made them sad: all the destruction and decimation of the mangroves. Not knowing what was happening, they decided to head back to their boat and then to a local harbor to ask questions about what happened at Crab Cay.

Randy proceeded to fill Leanne in on the story. It is not a condo project. The Bahamas government approved a deal in which the Export-Import Bank of China would back 41 million dollars to a Chinese company, CHEC, to build a state-of-the-art commercial shipping port in the northern Abaco Island. A friend of mine, Bob, his boat is usually docked at the end of this pier. When Bob poked around, he discovered that the Chinese company had displayed a strong security presence. Here, look at some of these photos.

He showed Leanne some photos that he had taken. One with armed security and a big flag saying China Harbor. Not exactly what they had seen.

Leanne asked. But why? It doesn’t make sense. There are only two settlements close to Cooperstown and Foxtown. A large port is not viable.

Randy continued. A different Chinese company had already built what could be the world’s largest shipping port in Freeport, Bahamas. We all thought that this development would be used to facilitate the export of seafood from the Bahamas to China. People had previously run into suspected poaching fleets off the banks, and last year, a whole Chinese fleet of lobster boats was confiscated for illegal fishing in Bahamian waters. This brought some sense to the project, even though all of this is just wild speculation on our part.

Interesting, Leanne said thoughtfully. But why did they stop construction? Did the funding fail?

Nope, Randy continued. Get this. It turns out that they came across an unexpected blue hole during the excavation. Yeah, that secret one that divers have been enjoying for decades. When researching the area, they found that a complete environmental study still needed to be completed before starting dredging. Therefore, the project is on hold while an environmental study can be conducted.

Yes, I can understand that, said Leanne. Blue holes are fragile ecosystems, and they are linked to underwater caverns. You cannot just fill one in. Especially since there are organisms found only in Bahamian blue holes.

Later that night, Rob and Leanne discussed the hole they wanted to dive into. Sadly, they doubted that it would stop a multimillion-dollar project.

Leanne, this is probably the last opportunity to dive the hole. With construction at the Crab Cay site on hold and the company’s primary construction site further down the coast where the actual port will be, no one will notice if we slip in for an extensive dive into the caves, said Rob.

Rob, before we dive this weekend, let’s find out more to ensure it is okay to dive there. We don’t want to get in trouble..

Yes, but of course, replied Rob with a kiss.

Curious, Rob and Leanne kept asking around. They started hearing reports that a 60-foot-deep channel would be dredged for the new port.

That night, they continued the discussion.

"Leanne, this doesn’t make sense. Marsh Harbor is less