Ahoy!
The SUNRISE cruise is soon wrapping up its second week and we are keeping ourselves busy with deploying various instruments like autonomous small boats and Wirewalkers, and almost nonstop profiling with microstructure and CTD instruments.
This week in particular we’ve been using OSU’s small remotely controlled RHIBS that are equipped with a bunch of sensors that can measure currents, temperature and salinity. They have been driving around us on the Pt Sur while we’ve been making repeat transect trying to capture the time evolution of a front under the influence of varying wind and while it’s also moving inertially. We bring them back on board every two days or so to download data and refuel them.
Deploying a small boat
One of the autonomous boats at sunrise
We currently also have two Wirewalkers moored in the water and continuously profiling to try to capture any interesting watermass features that wafts by. They’re equipped with ADCPs (acoustic doppler current profilers), CTDs (conductivity or salinity, temperature and depth sensors), and sensors to measure chlorophyll, CDOM (colored dissolved organic matter), turbidity, oxygen and the microstructure using temperature. Together with the sampling we’re doing going around the Wirewalkers with the ships and the small boats, this gives us a very high resolution picture of how the ocean is moving around us.
A happy Wirewalker buoy in the Gulf of Mexico
MOD’s Devon recovering a Wirewalker. We later put this one back out again
We’re seeing a lot of cool things out here. Besides the science, like fronts and filaments and various interesting patterns in shear, chlorophyll, oxygen and dissolved organic matter, we’re often accompanied by everything from dolphins to spinner sharks to flying fish and pelicans. And sunrises and sunsets of course. In addition we’ve had the two ships, the Pelican and the Pt Sur, meet up a couple of times to transport personnel and supplies between the ships using one of the small boats.
Small boat transfer from the Pt Sur to the Pelican
A pelican at sunrise
One of the particularly striking fronts we’ve seen this week.
There’s plenty of oil rigs out here, at night they sparkle like Christmas trees
It is hard work continuously sampling but we’ve also taken the time to have some fun. There is almost always music playing on deck while profiling (best way to stay awake in the wee hours of the morning), and last weekend we celebrated Swedish Midsummer on the Pt Sur. There was a little arts and crafts session making paper flower crowns plus a MacGyvered maypole made with some old PVC pipe, spare tubing and discarded VMP profiling line. In traditional fashion we danced around the maypole singing a song about “the tiny frogs”. (A Swedish midsummer 101 can be found here). Much fun.
Swedish Midsummer celebration aboard the Pt Sur
The last few days have also offered plenty of thunderstorms and rain showers that sometimes come out of nowhere. Being soaked without warning is not always fun, but the magnificent cloud scapes definitely are.
We have about another week of sampling out here before heading back to Louisiana. On the schedule for the next few days we have everything from more transects and a day or two when the students aboard get to be chief scientists, to celebrating both Canada Day and 4th of July. Stay tuned!
Ending this transmission with a silly ocean joke of the day:
- What lies at the bottom of the ocean and twitches?
- A nervous wreck…
Text and photos by Kerstin Bergentz