SUNRISE - Updates from the Gulf of Mexico

Greetings from the Gulf of Mexico!

The crews aboard the Point Sur and the Pelican are sampling away, running all sorts of zig zag patterns and repeat lines in the Gulf of Mexico with various instruments in the water trying to cross fronts and capture small scale variability in the ocean. That means we have some form of sampling happening 24/7 and we work in 12h shifts to always have a group of people in charge of instruments. Big thanks goes to the LUMCON (Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium) based ships and crew for taking good care of us and putting up with our ever changing plans chasing fronts and other cool features.

Deployment of a Wirewalker mooring

Why are we out here?
The SUNRISE, or Submesoscales Under Near-Resonant Inertial Shear Experiment, project is a collaboration between Oregon State University, SIO, Stanford, Texas A&M University, Cambridge, UK, with the goal of looking into mixing and water exchanges as a result of various physical processes in a complex coastal environment in the northern Gulf of Mexico. A better understanding of what drives the mixing of different water masses with different properties (temperature, salt, oxygen, different biological properties) will help protect this region, a dynamic and productive environment, critical for the success of fisheries, tourism, and local economies.

Shrimping vessel in the Gulf of Mexico.

In order to identify various properties of the water and the flows we are using a smorgasbord of sensors that can measure temperature and salinity (CTD) as well as velocities (like an ADCP, Acoustic Current Doppler Profiler) and various biological sensors that can measure things like chlorophyll, dissolved organic matter, oxygen and more. We’re also using a VMP (Vertical Microstructure Profiler) to measure the microstructure flows, aka turbulence, which is a sign of mixing.

MOD’s Devon ready to deploy the VMP

The VMP is deployed using a fishing reel and a block on the ship’s crane. We need a fan and a steady supply of ice to cool down the winch in the heat.

Since the waters are very shallow, typically 30-50m or less, we’re using a rather unconventional approach to sampling the whole water column. We’re literally dropping our instruments all the way down to the bottom and then pulling them back up again. The instruments have crash guards attached to them to protect the sensors (which are all on the bottom facing end of the instrument) from slamming into the seafloor. This way we can get vertical profiles of different variables every 100-200 m with the ship going at about 3 knots.

Why the top of the VMP instrument looks a little like a toilet brush? It’s for making the fall rate optimal and make sure the profiler falls vertically.

Sometimes the crash guards catch seaweed that needs to be removed since it influences the flows (turbulence) around the sensors.

24/7 deck operations means both sunrises and sunsets…

Follow along with more live updates on Instagram @mod_at_scripps.

Sea you later!

Text and photos by Kerstin Bergentz

SUNRISE 2022 edition - We're off!

Ahoy there,
We’re checking in to announce that the SUNRISE 2022 cruise is officially underway!

The SUNRISE 2022 crew that will be split between the RV Pt Sur and RV Pelican.

After a few days of packing and loading things onto the ships down at the LUMCON facilities in Cocodrie, Louisiana, RV Point Sur and RV Pelican have left the dock. We’ll spend the next 2.5 weeks or so chasing fronts and eddies in the Gulf of Mexico using all sorts of fun instruments to capture the microstructure in very high resolution. Onboard we have everything from Wirewalkers, to VMPs (Vertical Microstructure Profilers), and highly equipped zodiacs that can be controlled remotely. Other essentials include sun shades and cold tubs, the Gulf gets very hot and humid in June…

Below are some photos from day one at sea which was spent dolphin watching, instrument testing and getting adjusted to the shift work times. Half of the science party will be in charge 3am-3pm and the other half 3pm-3am and we’ll keep some of the profiling instruments running 24/7. Most of the MOD crew can be found on the Pt Sur.

MOD members Devon and Jonny on the bow supervising the navigation through the Louisiana wetlands out to sea.

RV Pelican as seen from RV Pt Sur

Dolphins joining us on the way out to sea

Oregon State personnel doing small boat ops

Sunsets on SUNRISE on point (Sur).

Stay tuned for more updates from the SUNRISE crew!

Text and photos by Kerstin Bergentz

Jennifer MacKinnon championing equity at Scripps

Professor Jennifer MacKinnon, third from right, was acknowledged for her work in cultivating belonging among early career scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Photo by Wesley Ruan

The MOD team’s own Jennifer MacKinnon has been appointed the new Associate Dean of the School of Marine Science for Faculty Equity. In addition, she was recently honoured at the UCSD annual Inclusive Excellence Award along with 13 other individuals at UCSD recognized for their outstanding efforts to celebrate cultural differences and promote fairness across campus. Read more here. 

Associate Dean for Faculty Equity is a new academic position at Scripps created with commitment to the UC San Diego Principles of Community, in particular to equitable practices for recruitment, retention and evaluation of faculty. The title is given to the SIO Faculty Equity Advisor (FEA), with hopes of enhancing the ability to recruit and retain excellent faculty and evaluate them in a fair way by having a ladder-rank faculty member specifically tasked with equity concerns in regards to these activities.

The new Associate Dean is not alone in the quest for fairness but will collaborate with the SIO coordinator for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) initiatives, and will be backed up by an Alternate FEA that will step in whenever the ocean calls the Associate Dean away on field work.

Professor MacKinnon is currently the Primary FEA, and her position as Associate Dean for Faculty Equity extends until June 2021, but is eligible for renewal.

Way to go Jen!

Look out Fast CTD!

The Fast CTD encounters ice for the first time.  

Arctic Aloha

We've spent the last few days in Nome, Alaska, loading the R/V Sikuliaq and preparing to set sail. We have been gifted with unusually warm sunny weather, and are celebrating with Aloha Friday.  We set sail tomorrow morning for points further north, wish us luck!

Photo: Members of the MOD group Jen MacKinnon, Giulio Meille, honorary member Ben Barton (Bangor U.), Effie Fine, Jonny Ladner, Sara Goheen, Nicole Couto, San Nguyen, and Mike Goldin. 

Ready.....set....

8 members of the MOD group are gearing up to head to Nome, Alaska next week,  with a dozen colleagues from other universities, to embark on a month-long expedition to study the Arctic Ocean.  The project is an Office of Naval Research funded experiment entitled the "Stratified Ocean Dynamics of the Arctic (SODA)". One of the main goals is to understand what processes set the amount and distribution of heat in the Arctic ocean, and how that accumulated ocean heat might or might not be responsible for the observed accelerating rate of Arctic sea ice loss.  We'll add a series of posts once we get underway with more details of the science, instruments, people, and maybe even a polar bear sighting!  Bu to start us off, here's an image from the the National Snow and Ice Data Center (http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/).  It's a map of the Arctic Ocean as would be seen from above (satellite).  The white area is where there is currently sea ice as of today, August 24th.  The orange line is where the sea ice extent used to be, on average.  There's a lot less now, which has significant implications for not only the Arctic ecosystem and the human population surrounding it, but the global climate as well.  We are hoping that some of the secrets we uncover will help us not only understand what's happening now, but more accurately predict how this will play out as the earth continues to warm.  Stay tuned!  

Iceland cruise: survived

Team MOD successfully deployed two wire walkers, the fast CTD and two epsi-fish microstructure profilers in challenging conditions (up to 50 knot winds and 8-m seas) on R/V Armstrong.

We learned much about the generation of internal waves and the modulation of mixed-layer turbulence by the wind - and the effects of the wind on the ship and its scientists!

MOD PIs chair first-ever Gordon conference on Ocean Mixing

Last week, the very first Gordon conference on ocean mixing took place in Andover, NH.  167 participants from all over the world learned about the state of the art of our field and its impact on other fields.  It was enlightening, inspiring and a lot of fun!

Inner Shelf extravaganza gets underway!

Scientists from ours and other groups at Scripps, as well as other institutions around the country, are gearing up for a major initiative to better understand the "inner shelf".  This is the region just offshore of the surf zone (yes that is the technical term) but still in the relatively shallow water of the coastal ocean.  This area is governed by unique but complex physical processes, including wind-driven circulation, upwelling, breaking waves, wakes and instabilities, and internal waves (that ride on density interfaces below the surface).  Funded by the Office of Naval Research, we will spend the next couple months observing and trying to detangle the complexities of this system using a combination of mooring and ship-based observations.  Befitting the complexities of this part of the ocean, we are attacking with with everything but the kitchen sink, including a staggering 119 moorings(!), 7 ships (!) working in concert, arrays of drifters, dedicated scientific aircraft surveys, and more.  We're just loading up gear right now, more details once we get underway!  https://scripps.ucsd.edu/projects/innershelf/readying-gear-on-the-rv-sally-ride/

Bringing it all home

Sea-going oceanographers, like those aboard the R/V Sikuliaq today, have a cautionary principle that they always keep in the back of their minds.  When an expensive piece of scientific equipment, the vital infrastructure that makes up most of the budget for an ocean research team, goes over the side of a ship and into the sea you can’t expect for certain you will ever see it again.  The oceanographer designs every effort, makes every plan, and works every day to get the equipment and data back, but should never take as given that what goes in the sea will all return.

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Dr. Jen MacKinnon and Dr. Matthew Alford wheel a mooring robot off the back deck. (photo: Thomas Moore)

The ArcticMix mooring stands 3452 meters tall in the middle of the Beaufort Sea and when it was deployed early in September the scientists and crew of the R/V Sikuliaq literally watched as they let slip into the deep over half a million dollars worth of technology.  And while there are plans and backup plans for how we will again find this undersea treasure, everyone aboard will sleep better when each meter of wire and scientific baubles are again tied to the deck.  Still there is no better way to measure the ocean across its entire depth over a long period of time than employing ocean moorings.  These hard-won scientific data from the real ocean are essential to formulating and tuning the global climate computer simulations that inform decision-makers and regularly make the headlines

The primary study zone for the ArcticMix voyage is right on top of what the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) has called ‘a striking feature of the late 2015 melt season’, a period that has ended as the fourth lowest Arctic sea-ice minimum on record.  Over 19 days, as the R/V Sikuliaq made additional ocean observations nearby, the ArticMix mooring stood steady listening and learning about its patch of the Beaufort Sea.

The Arctic is a strange place oceanographically, an up-side down version of the normal ocean in that the surface water is cold and fresh while lurking below is a reservoir of warmer, saltier water, heavier than the surface layer due to its high salt content.  One hypothesis in a rapidly-changing Arctic is that increasing open water allows storms to mix this deeper ocean heat upward through the generation of undersea beams of energy called ‘internal waves’, in turn melting more ice.  The peculiar nature of the Arctic is what makes a hypothesis of a positive climate change feedback based on vertical mixing possible.

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Dr. Matthew Alford is ready to hook the float of the undersea mooring. (photo: Thomas Moore)

In the first weeks of of our voyage the ArcticMix oceanographers witnessed remarkable levels of subsurface mixing.  Their sensitive instruments, leashed to the back of the R/V Sikuliaq by high-tech cables wrapped around specialized winches, saw billows of turbulence that looked just like a wave breaking on the beach, but much larger.  These underwater waves could easily reach into these regions of warmer water below the ice, possibly moving some of this heat upward when they break.

While the ArcticMix scientists darted across the Beaufort looking for signs of ocean mixing over wider swaths, the undersea mooring witnessed conditions minute by minute at a single location that serves as a scientific reference for the entire voyage.  The time comes to return to the scientific backbone of the entire experiment and find both the mooring equipment and all the invaluable data stored on many tiny memory cards, not unlike those in your nice camera except they are 3000 meters under the ocean.

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Fair weather in the Arctic. (photo: Thomas Moore)

The morning of the recovery breaks with fair winds and calm seas, the decks of the R/V Sikuliaq awash with sun for the first time since we had left Nome over 3 weeks earlier.  Best of all there was no ice to be seen.  Sea-ice, driven by the wind and currents, was completely out of our control and could easily have moved to cap the sea here, freezing our scientific assets beyond the reach of Sikuliaq.  The ArcticMix team won another calculated roll of the dice, as the risk of mooring a five hundred thousand dollar scientific bet in an ice-filled Arctic looked to be paying off.

A button is pushed and a special transducer puts a coded ping of sound into the water.  Somewhere, well over two miles below the stern of our ship, another device hears the command and releases its grip on the bottom.  The ArcticMix mooring rises slowly to the surface, four feet or so every second, and within 45 minutes it’s at the surface.  The top buoy is hooked and bit by bit and inch by inch the mooring is brought aboard in the Arctic sunshine.  Instruments are quickly washed and rushed back into the science lab for data transfer.  A team of graduate students and scientists swarm over the gigabytes of data filling the ships server and soon the first preliminary plots fill our computer screens.  The mooring has witnessed exactly the kind of wind generated internal waves we’ve been looking for.

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Preliminary analysis of ocean currents measured by an undersea mooring over 19 days.

One of the measurements captured on the undersea mooring is the velocity of currents through a wide range of ocean depths.  When these currents are displayed as a long series over time the clear signature of internal waves can be seen.  These beams of energy, generated by the storm that passed over the Beaufort Sea weeks earlier, descend into the deeper layers of the ocean where they can “break”, and as we observed elsewhere in the Arctic, heat can be mixed into surface waters a bit like hot coffee in cold cream.

What we have seen so far in the Arctic has certainly not refuted the hypothesis there there could be a positive feedback in regional changes in sea-ice cover that could lead to an increased rate of melting.  The marked energetic mixing we have seen here at the heart of the Arctic ice-melt zone could be a key in understanding a potential new climate feedback.  But for now the hard work lies ahead of the ArcticMix scientists for they must carefully untangle the complex processes involved to to distinguish typical seasonal melting from longer term change, with the goal of providing new insights that will help improve the accuracy of climate forecasts for the Arctic region.

[by: Thomas Moore, for the ArcticMix team]