Daniel M. Simon, a 1993 graduate of Exeter High School who has served with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for 14 years, has been named commander of the NOAA Ship Hi’ialakai that’s moored just off Howland Island in the South Pacific to map and assess the reefs in the area.

The promotion for the 39-year-old son of Ronald and Lorraine Simon of Exeter Township came in October and makes him among NOAA’s youngest commanders.

“I didn’t expect to be promoted in rank or sea assignments as quickly as I have,” Simon said in an email interview.

Once stationed in cold outposts such as Greenland and the South Pole, Simon said the Hawaiian island of Oahu where the Hi’ialakai is based is better.

“Oahu really is a beautiful place,” he said. “It’s pretty far removed, although nothing like the South Pole, but the weather is always great and a beach is never far away.”

The 224-foot Hi’ialakai was built in 1984 for the Navy as the USNS Vindicator that hunted Russian submarines until the end of the Cold War. The ship then was turned over to the Coast Guard and recommissioned by NOAA as the Hi’ialakai in 2004.

With up to 50 crew and scientists, it works in the tropical areas of the Pacific Ocean.

Simon said among its main missions are conducting coral reef ecosystem mapping, and coral reef health and fish stock studies.

“Much of the data is collected by divers that we deploy on small boats,” he said, noting that by project’s end in May, the crews will have made about 2,500 dives.

The reef assessments will occur around the islands of American Samoa, Johnston Atoll, Howland Island, Baker Island, Jarvis Island, and Palmyra and Kingman Reefs.

Simon had a hands-on part in data collection during other assignments, but noted his scientific role now is smaller because he has to make sure the ship and its systems are working, allowing the crews to work safely.

“However, I was able to look off the ship and watch dolphins chase tuna this morning,” he said. “If that’s the role I have to play in the science, I’ll take it!”

In 2002, on his first sea assignment on the NOAA Ship Miller Freeman, Simon met a deck hand named Shelagh Baird from Big Sur, Cal.

He said they became friends but both traveled a lot. However, they met again in Seattle in 2006. They married in 2010, and have two boys.

Simon said he’d taken more adventurous trips when he was single.

“Getting married was definitely worth the change,” he said. “But in the end, as I look out my porthole on to the Amelia Earhart Memorial on Howland Island surrounded by endless ocean, I’m not sure this is less adventurous.”