10 Meter MOCNESS Towing Procedure For Globec Broadscale Cruises

MOC-10 tows are double oblique from surface to ~10 meters from bottom or a maximum tow depth of 500 meters. The winch rates for retrieval is ~5m/min. Try to filter at least 4,000 - 5,000m**3 of water per depth stratum sampled (this inclues net #0 - the "down net"). To achieve this, a step-oblique tow profile during retrieval may be necessary. Try to space the varioius 'steps' equally within each depth stratum

Nets are tripped "on the fly" and the computer command is initiated at ~3 meters from the next designated depth strata to be fished. Note that the computer program command to "Step Stbd Net" must be activated twice (allow steps 1-3 to occur then mouse click for steps 1-3 again) as the cam on the MOC-10 frame is set at six clicks. After the second command to stop net is executed, watch for a large (several degree) wire angle change on the monitor, then manually increment "NET #" displayed on screen.

At the completion of the tow, when the MOC-10 is at the surface, any nets not fished must be tripped and released before the sampler is brought aboard the vessel.

When entering station/tow information in the MOCNESS windows program before a cast is made, the format in designating a file name is similar to the following example
```
                     M01001.pro   
```
where:
M01 = Identifies the gear to be fished, in the example M01 represents the 1-meter MOCNESS; if the 10-meter MOCNESS is to be fished, enter M10
001 = consecutive haul number for the gear (either for MOC1 or MOC10) fished for the cruise
If a MOCNESS tow is aborted and a retow is made, delete the files (*.pro, *.raw, *.tab, where * represents the file name for this tow). Use "File Manager" in Windows to accomplish this.

Last modified:
April 1, 1996
February 2, 1996
February 2, 1995