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USGS Sea-Floor Mapping Group Assists Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Searching for Airplane Wreckage
George F. Baker III, a philanthropist and important supporter of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), disappeared while attempting to land his twin-engine Beechcraft Baron BE55 airplane at the Nantucket, Mass., airstrip under a cloudy drizzle on December 1, 2005. He was 66 years old and an experienced pilot who had been flying since he was 18. Weather conditions are believed to have contributed to the crash. The cloud deck was very low, 300 ft or so; it may be that Baker dipped below this to gain visibility of the airstrip and became disoriented. Although the roof of his plane was recovered on the beach and U.S. Coast Guard divers recovered a first-aid kit and a tube of aviation grease, search efforts were called off before the plane and Baker's body could be found. On December 5, personnel from WHOI made a second attempt to find the wreckage using REMUS (Remote Environmental Monitoring UnitS), an autonomous underwater vehicle. REMUS supports various instruments: sidescan sonars (600 and 900 kHz), acoustic Doppler current profilers (ADCPs), and a conductivity-temperature-depth sensor (CTD), to name a few. The REMUS team was unable to locate the wreckage at the site offshore where the plane was believed to have entered the water, indicating that it might be elsewhere to the north or west. After the REMUS search, Dick Pittenger, WHOI Vice President for Marine Operations (Ret.), contacted the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and asked the Woods Hole Science Center's Sea-Floor Mapping Group to survey a larger area, using sidescan sonar to locate the wreckage so that it could be recovered.
When the weather permitted, on a cold and clear December 8, 2005, USGS personnel Bill Danforth, Chuck Worley, Emile Bergeron, Wayne Baldwin, and Ann Tihansky set out to conduct a broad sidescan-sonar survey of the area where the plane was believed to have crashed, offshore of the Nantucket Island airfield. The equipment, a Klein 3000 dual-frequency (100 and 500 kHz) sidescan sonar, was deployed from WHOI's new 60-ft coastal research vessel Tioga, crewed by Captain Ken Houtler and mate Ian Hurley. Together, Bill Danforth and Ken Houtler used the known locations of existing wreckage, previously searched areas, and their familiarity with the dominant winds and water currents to predict where the wreckage would most likely be resting. They began with a large search pattern, running parallel to shore both east and west of the Nantucket airstrip, with the sidescan sonar set to insonify a 200-m swath. Two large items were identified in the 500-kHz sonar images of the sea floor in approximately 30-ft water depth at the eastern end of the designated search area. One piece was approximately 30 ft long and the other approximately 24 ft long. The images and positions were provided as an ArcView project with supporting text and graphics to Dick Pittenger of WHOI, who shared them with the Massachusetts State Police. Police divers investigated the debris, but the identified targets did not contain evidence of a plane crash. The sidescan-sonar imagery revealed no other debris in the area large enough to warrant investigation by the divers. A much larger search would have to be conducted to try to locate and recover the airplane wreckage.
WHOI and the Baker family were grateful for the assistance provided by the USGS. Robert B. Gagosian, president and director of WHOI, wrote in a letter to William Schwab, team chief scientist at the USGS Woods Hole Science Center, "I can assure you that the Baker family deeply appreciated these efforts and was reassured that everything possible was being done to find George's plane." He also commended USGS staff efforts: "Although the recovery is not yet complete, the professionalism and compassion which the staff of the USGS Woods Hole Science Center demonstrated during this operation reflects well on both them and the USGS."
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in this issue:
Submarine Groundwater Discharge Study USGS Assists in Search for Airplane Wreckage
Falmouth Science Teachers visit USGS Woods Hole Sea-Floor-Mapping Systems Described on New Web Pages
Multiple Award Winner in USGS Photography Contest
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U. S. Department of the Interior | U.S. Geological Survey
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