NOAAS Thomas Jefferson (S 222) is a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) hydrographic survey vessel in service since 2003. The ship was built for the United States Navy as USNS Littlehales (T-AGS-52) serving as one of two new coastal hydrographic survey vessels from 1992 until transfer to NOAA in 2003 when she was named after Founding Father and third U.S. president, Thomas Jefferson.
USNS Littlehales The thirdThe first Littlehales was the former USS PCS-1388 launched in 1943, named and designated AGS-7 in 1945. That ship supported landings from Iwo Jima through Okinawa and then surveyed world wide until decommissioned 12 October 1949. The second was the converted lighter YF-854 built at the end of the war and activated and commissioned as USS YF-854 until renamed and redesignated 14 February 1959 as Littlehales (AGSC-15). That vessel surveyed the Atlantic coast until being assigned to the Atlantic Undersea Test and Evaluation Center (AUTEC) from 1962 until decommissioned in 1968. hydrographic survey vessel to be named for mathematician, oceanographer, and civil engineer George Washington Littlehales, was laid down as the United States Navy USNS Littlehales (T-AGS-52) on October 25, 1989, by Halter Marine, Inc., at Moss Point, Mississippi. Launched on February 14, 1991, she was delivered to the Navy on January 10, 1992. The ship was operated by the Military Sealift Command with a contract crew for the Naval Oceanographic Office which assigned a military and civilian hydrographic detachment to conduct coastal surveys. The ship was the second hydrographic survey ship of the type, the first being .
The two ships were replacements for the much larger Naval Oceanographic Office coastal hydrographic survey vessels and . The new vessels were about half the length of those large survey ships with two rather than four survey launches. Contract crew size was 24 instead of 70 for the larger ships and the military and Naval Oceanographic Office civilian hydrographic detachment could be decreased from 80 to 10. With reliance on the Global Positioning System (GPS) for navigation and modern multibeam shallow-water sonar (SIMRAD EM100) and updated computer hardware and software for data processing the ships were expected to operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week collecting more soundings per mile than the older ships in coastal areas at depths up to .
Operations Littlehales conducted hydrographic surveys in domestic waters in support of Navy missions and in international and foreign waters in support of the Mapping, Charting, and Geodesy (MC&G) requirements of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and its predecessor organization the Defense Mapping Agency. Those MC&G requirements support all military operations and also civilian mariners with products outside the U.S. territorial waters that are the charting responsibility of NOAA.
Examples of such hydrographic surveys that involve collection of tide and current information as well as depths include completion in 1994 of surveys of the coast of Albania that proved valuable for naval operations during the wars following the breakup of Yugoslavia. In 1999 the ship surveyed the Jordanian coastline including detailed surveys of the Port of Aqaba. During 2001 Littlehales surveyed the harbor and approaches Dakar, Senegal and experienced petty piracy early in the morning of 14 May when the watch noticed a small boat with eight persons which sped off with subsequent discovery that six mooring lines were missing.
Examples of operations in domestic waters include surveys from 29 October 2001 to 28 January 2002 of the area of King's Bay, Georgia and St. Marys River approaches. Unclassified extracts of the classified surveys done for the Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay were provided to NOAA which surveyed to fill gaps. The ship was also involved in test and evaluation of new systems. An example is work involving the Deep Ocean Logging Platform with Hydrographic Instrumentation and Navigation (DOLPHIN), a diesel powered semi-submersible for surveying. The Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) was tasked to evaluate the vehicle in conjunction with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Naval Oceanographic Office and the Canadian Hydrographic Service. Littlehales, NOAAS Whiting (S 329) and DOLPHIN surveyed parts of the Norfolk Canyon off Cape Charles, Virginia.
Transfer to NOAA The ship was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on February 27, 2003, and transferred to NOAA on March 3, 2003.
NOAAS Thomas Jefferson The ship was commissioned into the NOAA Atlantic Fleet as NOAAS Thomas Jefferson (S 222) on July 8, 2003, at Norfolk, Virginia, as a replacement for the NOAA survey ship NOAAS Whiting (S 329). Thomas Jeffersons home port is Norfolk.
Thomas Jefferson, "The Most Productive Survey Vessel In The World", is designed to collect hydrographic data from depths of between 10 meters (33 feet) and 4,000 meters (13,123 feet). She has of laboratory space and of scientific storage space. She carries Global Positioning System and a computerized data-collection system. She has a roll stabilization tank and a collision avoidance system.
Thomas Jefferson has of deck working space. Her deck equipment features two winches; two fixed, telescopic, 7-ton-capacity cranes; and a C-frame.
Thomas Jefferson is equipped with an intermediate depth multibeam swath survey system. The vessel carries two aluminum survey launches equipped with multibeam swath and single-beam echo sounders and a hydrographic data acquisition system. There is an additional rigid-hulled inflatable boat which serves as a fast rescue boat.
Among the scientific equipment are conductivity, temperature, and depth (CTD) sensors, three side-scan sonar units, and sediment sampling equipment.
Thomas Jefferson utilizes Kongsberg EM2040, EM710, and Klien 5000 Side Scan Sonar
The ship has a total of 36 bunk spaces. Capacity for 22 people to eat at time can be found in the mess rooms.
Operational history 2003–2010
In April 2003, after her transfer from the Navy to NOAA but before being commissioned into the NOAA fleet, the ship conducted surveys of the approaches to the Chesapeake Bay.
In 2004, Thomas Jefferson deployed her survey launches to participate in a survey by the United States Geological Survey of the sedimentary characteristics of Great Round Shoal at the far eastern edge of Nantucket Sound.
Thomas Jefferson got underway from Norfolk in 2005 for the United States Gulf Coast, where she played an active role in the response to Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita by surveying port areas for obstructions. She surveyed the approaches to the Pascagoula and Gulfport, Mississippi, ship channels, and repaired the tide gauge at Pascagoula. She then conducted post-Rita surveys of the approaches to Galveston, Houston, and Port Arthur, Texas.
In 2006, Thomas Jefferson, in collaboration with the University of Rhode Island and the Institute for International Maritime Research, conducted a ten-day marine archaeological survey in a 74-square nautical mile (254-square kilometer) area off the coast of the Virginia-North Carolina border, employing side-scan sonar, a multibeam echosounder and a magnetometer in the hope of discovering the wreck of a ship that sank in the area in the early 17th century, the existence of which had been suggested in 1983 when fishermen hauled up a 400-year-old cannon in the area. The team identified approximately 200 targets in all, with 20 to 50 having the most promise of being the remains of a wooden ship from that period. It also documented numerous previously unknown dangers to navigation, including three unidentified shipwrecks.
In the autumn of 2006, Thomas Jefferson conducted hydrographic survey operations in New York Harbor, deploying her two survey launches to update the nautical charts for the area. Most of the project area was previously surveyed prior to 1982 and parts had not been surveyed since 1927. The work was challenging for the launches because of the busy shipping traffic in the harbor and currents from the Hudson River, East River, and Atlantic Ocean. Thomas Jeffersons survey resulted in the discovery of many unknown and forgotten small wrecks in Rockaway Inlet.
On 6 April 2010, Thomas Jefferson departed Norfolk bound for the Gulf of Mexico to conduct a five-month-long effort to map the seafloor, searching for hazards to navigation. On 26 May 2010, Thomas Jefferson was underway on a mission to deploy United States Navy ocean monitoring instruments near the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
2011–2020
Thomas Jefferson conducted a 193-day deployment in 2012 which concluded with her return to her home port at NOAA's Atlantic Operations Center in Norfolk on 9 November 2012. During the cruise, she surveyed covering of Long Island Sound and Block Island Sound, pinpointing 38 dangers to navigation. While surveying off Block Island on 26 August, she received a distress call at 09:04 reporting two divers missing in waters only a few hundred meters (yards) to her north. Thomas Jefferson suspended her surveying operations at 09:08 and began a search while embarked hydrographic survey personnel updated the divers' estimated position based on current set and drift. She sighted the divers at 09:52 and indicated their location to a United States Coast Guard rescue boat which pulled them from the water safely at 09:55. After Hurricane Sandy struck the coastal Mid-Atlantic region of the United States in late October, Thomas Jefferson also was in position to respond to a U.S. Coast Guard request to provide assistance in assessing damage in New York Harbor so that the Port of New York and New Jersey could reopen to traffic. Suspending her operations in Long Island Sound, she arrived at New York City early on 1 November, and she and her two survey launches began work immediately. Thomas Jefferson and her launches used sidescan sonar and multibeam sonar to survey of the harbor, including of object detection using multibeam sonar. They completed their New York survey work on 3 November.
On 21 June 2013, Thomas Jefferson observed World Hydrography Day by holding a wreath-tossing ceremony on the 153rd anniversary of the sinking of the United States Coast Survey steamer , which sank after a collision on 21 June 1860 in the Atlantic Ocean off New Jersey. It was the first commemoration ever held for the 20 men lost in the sinking and an additional crewman who died of his injuries the following day, the largest loss of life in a single incident in the history of NOAA and its ancestor agencies. Lacking exact locating data for the wreck, Thomas Jefferson held the ceremony in the general area where Robert J. Walker sank. Later in the day, Thomas Jefferson used multibeam sonar and sidescan sonar to identify with 80 percent certainty the exact location and identity of Robert J. Walkers wreck for the first time. NOAA divers confirmed the wrecks identity on 23 June 2013.
In 2014, Thomas Jefferson completed the survey of Long Island Sound that she had begun in 2005. During this final deployment of the multi-year project, she surveyed of eastern Long Island Sound, Fisher Island Sound, and western Block Island Sound. The work included surveys of essential habitats in Fisher Island Sound and a continuation of the post-Hurricane Sandy survey project begun in 2013. Upon completion of the year's survey work, she had updated hydrographic data for 95 percent of Long Island Sound and all of Block Island Sound since beginning the project in 2005. She interrupted this work briefly to call at City Pier at New London, Connecticut, on 12 and 13 September to take part in the 2014 Connecticut Maritime Heritage Festival. She hosted judges and the announcer during the festival's lighted boat parade on 12 September and held an open house on both days which attracted 500 visitors.