Teacher at Sea: May 21, 2004 Log

Leveling a Tide Guage

Curtis Watkins, NOAA Teacher at Sea

Line of sight check associated with calibrating tide gauge with sea level.

We awoke to a cloudless day in Sitka with Mt. Edgecumbe looming across the harbor. Jennifer, Ken, Mark and I spent the rest of the day working though the maintenance checklist for the gauge which is located at the Sitka Sound Seafood Cannery. This involved doing a lot of tests using the laptop. The afternoon was spent doing the survey work which started with the Kukamakii Test which is a collimation (line of sight) check of the transit. Basically, the instrument is checked for being level. Then the leveling of the tide gauge with the benchmarks was done to determine if there has been a shift in the sea level and calibrate the level of the gauge. The vertical accuracy had to be within millimeters over a distance of over 250 meters. They passed the tests.

Acoustic tide guage.