Feature Articles » Dream Jobs 2004

Jim Newman: Call of the Sea

Age:

44

What He Does:

Designs unmanned submersibles for deep-sea exploration

For Whom:

Self-employed; main client is Robert D. Ballard's Institute for Exploration, Mystic, Conn.

Where He Does It:

Woods Hole, Mass., and Narragansett, R.I.

Fun Factors:

Spends part of each summer at sea and no time in a cubicle

If you've ever tuned into one of those National Geographic specials on underwater archaeology, then you've probably seen Jim Newman's work. You may even have seen Newman himself. No, he's not the charismatic oceanographer discussing the extraordinary 2000-year-old shipwreck that's just been unearthed in the Black Sea—that would be Robert D. Ballard, Newman's boss. But you see that busy guy in the background, checking on data and video feeds and just generally making sure the research equipment is running smoothly? That's Jim Newman.

For the last five years as chief engineer for Ballard's Institute for Exploration, in Mystic, Conn., and more than a decade before that, Newman has been designing remotely operated vehicles, or ROVs, for doing underwater research. His one-of-a-kind machines are used to survey, excavate, and film sites of scientific or historical interest hundreds or thousands of meters below the ocean's surface. Because they're piloted from the ship, via a long cable, ROVs can be deployed where it's too dangerous or difficult for a human diver to go.

Mighty Hercules:: Jim Newman's latest creation is a two-armed excavating robot used for underwater archaeology and ocean science

Water has always been Newman's element. Growing up outside Boston, he summered in Woods Hole, on the southern shore of Cape Cod. He entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology intent on studying ocean engineering and designing sailboats for a living. Though he stuck with the former, earning his B.S. and M.S. in 1981 and 1986, respectively, he soon gave up the latter.

Instead, he started hanging around the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the world's leading research facility for ocean science. As an undergrad, he wrote software for crunching data and helped build instrumentation. Later, he got involved in designing Jason, one of the earliest research-oriented ROVs.

Though no longer employed by the Woods Hole facility, Newman remains close by. He, his wife, and their three kids live down the street from where he summered as a child. Most days, you'll find him in his home office or puttering around the hangar-like structure at the University of Rhode Island in Narragansett where his ROVs are stored.

The hangar has the feel of an auto mechanic's garage, with spare parts and spools of wire scattered about, except that the vehicles up on blocks here are custom-built creations worth hundreds of thousands of dollars each. In the parking lot outside sit several shipping containers; they house a video studio, a computer hub, a repair workshop, and a storage room. Loading the containers onto an ordinary fishing boat transforms it into a floating research lab.

Every summer, Newman goes to sea with Ballard's crew, to places like Turkey, Israel, Malta, Australia, and the Solomon Islands. Exotic travel aside, what Newman really loves about his work is its non-9-to-5-ness. "Everything we do is unscripted," he says. "There are no university classes to teach you what to do."

Putting together a new ROV is a group effort: Newman does the conceptual design and then supervises five to 10 other engineers on the electrical, mechanical, software, and other systems. Each vehicle is a balance of the general-purpose and mission-specific; its potential uses run the gamut from archaeology to oceanography, marine biology, geology, and geochemistry.

A big part of designing an ROV is protecting it from seawater. "You really shouldn't put stuff in the ocean," he jokes. "It's a nasty environment." He points out a junction box on Hercules, a 2-meter-tall, canary-yellow ROV used to excavate deep-sea sites. The electronics are bathed in mineral oil, which is noncorrosive and nonconductive, and an air bladder puts positive pressure on the oil.

Because it's too costly to go to sea just to test a vessel, a lot of bugs get worked out during actual expeditions. Last summer, for example, a hydraulic line on Hercules failed at 500 meters and fried its hydraulic pump. It seemed like a freak accident. They had a new pump flown in, installed it, replaced the damaged line, and sent Hercules back down. At 500 meters, another line blew and the pump failed again. Hercules was now out of commission.

"That's the one I kick myself over—giving in to wishful thinking and not analyzing what went wrong before we did it again," Newman says. Since then, he and a colleague have exhaustively studied the problem; as best they can tell, several small mistakes led to the big one—the choice of hydraulic line, the setting on the hydraulic controls. They're now fixing and upgrading Hercules and the other ROVs.

"In the big picture, nobody got hurt, and I worry a lot more about that than about the hardware," Newman adds. "But the second priority is to have working hardware, and I failed in that." He's not offering a heart-rending confession, mind you, just an engineer's level-headed self-appraisal.

Robert Ballard, for his part, shrugs off last summer's mishap. "Jim Newman is the personification of the professional engineer—he's bright, he's honest, he's unflappable. He designed all these beautiful vehicles, he put the engineering team together, he's the troubleshooter....I can't imagine going to sea without him."

Newman's next project will be an autonomous underwater vehicle, or AUV. Rather than being tethered to the ship, it will be battery-powered and either self-guiding or controlled through acoustic signals. Newman has never designed an AUV but seems confident he can. "Nothing we use is very exotic," he says. "We're just adapting standard technology to a very cool application."

Jean Kumagai

By Photo: Jason Grow