NOAAS Thomas Jefferson (S 222)

NOAAS Thomas Jefferson (S 222) is a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) hydrographic survey vessel in service since 2003.

Construction, U.S. Navy career, and acquisition
Thomas Jefferson was laid down as the United States Navy hydrographic survey vessel 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. She served in non-commissioned status in the Military Sealift Command and was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on February 27, 2003.

Littlehales was transferred to NOAA on March 3, 2003. She 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 Jefferson's home port is Norfolk.

Characteristics and capabilities
Thomas Jefferson is designed to collect hydrographic data from depths of between 10 meters (33 feet) and 4,000 meters (13,123 feet). She has 700 sqft of laboratory space and 2300 sqft of scientific storage space. She carries Global Positioning System and Loran-C receivers and a computerized data-collection system. She has a roll stabilization tank and a collision avoidance system.

Thomas Jefferson has 1500 sqft 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.

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
As the Littlehales, the ship conducted hydrographic surveys in foreign waters that were not charted adequately for support of wartime missions.

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 United States Geologic 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 Jefferson's survey resulted in the discovery of many unknown and forgotten small wrecks in Rockaway Inlet.

On April 6, 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. As of May 26, 2010, Thomas Jefferson was underway on a mission to deploy United States Navy ocean monitoring instruments near the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill.