August 8, 2002

8:00 a.m.:  The Revelle has finished the investigation of the eddy feature and is continuing north again to the Newport line area.  Work on the samples collected lasted well into the early morning hours.  It was a very long day for the team in the main lab.  We will be doing more station work and deploying additional drifters today.   The image below shows the route traveled by the Revelle so far and the location of the 5 stations sampled across the eddy feature.

12:15 p.m.:  We are now headed east on the Newport line using the Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP).  Later this afternoon more drifters will be deployed and station work will begin.  This will include deploying the rosette and the bio-optical profiler as was done on Wednesday. 
After lunch today we had another fire drill.  The science team met in the main lab for roll call and then watched a safety video in the lounge.

4:00 p.m.:  It was a quiet morning but a busy afternoon on the Revelle.  Starting at 3:00 p.m. three optical drifters were deployed near the eastern end of the Newport line.  Like the drifter launched in the eddy on Wednesday, these drifters will be transmitting their data and location to the Argos satellite which will relay the signal to a ground station and then on to OSU.  Shown below deploying the drifters are Ricardo Letelier, Mauricio Andrades, and Kasey Legaard guided by resident technician Tami Baiz.  The weather was extremely nice bringing many of the crew out to enjoy the view of Newport and Yaquina Head lighthouse.

After the drifters were successfully deployed, the Tethered Spectral Radiometer Buoy (TSRB) was launched.  This buoy is designed to float away from the hull of the ship for approximately 20-30 minutes and then be retrieved by a hand line.  Data from the TSRB is used to calibrate satellite imagery of the ocean surface.  Shown below is Ricardo Letelier deploying the TSRB.

After the TSRB is recovered the plan is to lower the bio-optics profiler package, the CTD/rosette, and then the HTI.  The SeaSOAR will be back in the water at midnight at the start of the fine-scale survey.

7:45 p.m.:  Chief Scientist Daily report for 7-8 August 2002

After completing the Mesoscale 1 survey, the R/V Roger Revelle turned
northwest, still towing the SeaSoar and HTI bioacoustics instrument, in
search of the cyclone offshore flow feature that we'd measured offshore of
Cape Blanco. On Wednesday morning we found the counterclockwise "eddy"
and the deep subsurface chlorophyll feature on its offshore side. We used
the SeaSoar to refine our choice of sampling stations and radioed those
locations to the New Horizon. We spent the rest of Wednesday completing
five deep stations across the eddy from east to west. Our first station
on the western edge of the "eddy" sampled through the 90 m deep subsurface
chlorophyll feature. We did a traditional CTD/rosette cast to 1000 m to
investigate the deep physical structure of this feature. Water was
obtained from various depths for chlorophyll and nutrient analysis.
Ricardo Letelier and Amanda Ashe collected water from the subsurface
chlorophyll maximum in order to run a C14 growth rate experiment. This
will tell us about the viability of this deep phytoplankton population,
especially since at those depths there is very little to no light.
Getting this biological information about the subsurface feature will add
to what we learned about deep chlorophyll features during the 1993 EBC
experiment. The bio-optics package was deployed at this same station and
then again at the center and eastern edge of the "eddy." We are in the
process of analyzing the deep CTD data in an effort to see how deep these
coastal features penetrate once they leave the continental shelf.

After our 1-day "eddy" study, the Revelle steamed north at 12 knots and
arrived on the Newport hydrographic line at about noon Thursday 8/8. We
steamed inshore measuring the subsurface currents using the shipboard ADCP
and mapping the crab pots. An upwelling jet core was found near NH-5,
about 5 miles offshore of Newport. Three bio-optics drifters were
deployed in this feature and we are presently conducting station
operations near the drifters. This includes deployment of the TSRB and
multiple vertical profiles with the bio-optics package. Also planned is
an intercalibration test between the HTI bioacoustics instrument and the
TAPS bioacoustics instrument deployed from the bio-optics package.

It's absolutely amazing the number of research vessels that are in this
region now! In addition to our GLOBEC project using the R/V Roger
Revelle, the R/V New Horizon and the F/V Frosti (deputized as an "R/V"),
the drill ship Joides Resolution is working off Newport. I believe I saw
the German research vessel the R/V Sonne working near it today. When I
was calling the R/V Elakha today to arrange for a possible meeting, the
R/V Thomas G. Thompson called in. I believe that earlier the R/V Atlantis
and the R/V Ewing were in the area too. Wow!

At midnight tonite we'll deploy the SeaSoar and HTI off Newport and tow to
the south on the Fine-Scale North grid over Heceta Bank. We have a quick
meeting with the R/V Elakha planned for Friday 9am off Newport. If the
weather holds and the seas aren't too rough, we'll receive some science
and ship supplies from shore and transfer one of the scientists to shore.
After this we'll continue south on the Fine-Scale North grid. We'll be
SeaSoaring for Friday and Saturday, and will be down on the Heceta Head
(44N) Line when the New Horizon (and hopefully F/V Frosti) joins us down
there on Saturday. Sunday we plan to find the bio-optics drifters and
work by them for a few hours. Then we'll proceed to the Southern
Fine-Scale survey around Cape Blanco. I know the top trophic observers
are excited to resample that area where they saw large numbers of birds
and whales.

---Jack Barth, Chief Scientist R/V Roger Revelle
filed 1945 PDT August 8 2002
 

9:00 p.m.:  Work continues into the night at our station on the Newport line.  The CTD/rosette has been recovered and the main lab is working on the water samples.  Guido Corno is shown here collecting water samples and purging the CTD instruments.

The HTI has been put into the water by Steve Pierce while Chris Wingard and Ricardo Letelier ready the Tracor Acoustic Profiler System (TAPS).

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