The Sailing School Vessel (SSV) Robert C. Seamans, which has been in the territory since August 11 to conduct educational outreach by inviting local members of the community onboard, has also spent time conducting scientific research of Pago Pago Harbor.  The research was led by Jan Witting, a Professor of Oceanography with the Sea Education Association (SEA) group.

 The SEA group sailed the SSV from the Phoenix Islands Protected Area to the territory last month and has conducted several outreaches in collaboration with the National Marine Sanctuary of American Samoa (NMSAS).

The SSV Seamans also took college and high school students out for short trips to experience life at sea. The young students were given a chance to experience nautical and marine science, including marine engineering, oceanography, navigation, marine biology and other subjects related to the ocean and to sailing.

The findings of the scientific research that was conducted in the harbor during the Seamans day sails, was shared during a presentation to the public by Witting this past Tuesday at the Tauese F.P. Sunia Ocean Center.

“Five weeks ago, our organization’s ship came here to Pago Pago, and during the first week we held a number of community events, with the assistance and help from the National Marine Sanctuary.  As part of those outreach programs, we sampled the harbor with our scientific equipment onboard,” said Witting.

He said that the harbor has plenty of nutrients and that there is quite a bit of both phytoplankton and algal blooms, however he said that these things change very rapidly with tidal cycles and sometimes change within a week.

“This is really just a snapshot that we can offer,” he noted, “as we will be doing further samplings as we leave and hopefully in years to come, provide a much better picture of what is going on.”

The SSV Seamans has been dubbed the most sophisticated oceanographic research sailing vessel ever built in the United States.  It will be departing the territory tomorrow, September 26.

Phytoplankton is a tiny plant that grows in the ocean and is the beginning of ocean’s food chain—a good thing.  However, an Algal Bloom is a rapid increase in the density of algae in an aquatic system. Algal Blooms are sometimes caused by natural phenomena, but their frequency, duration and intensity are increased by nutrient pollution, such as runoff from the piggeries up in the mountains.