Ocean research cruise blog of Jonathan Sharples
We deployed the last of our gliders yesterday afternoon. This one is
being piloted to patrol between the shelf edge and our mooring site, 100
km further onto the continental shelf; it will do this continuously
from now until earl March when it will be picked up during another
cruise. We then had a very successful night looking for particles.
Starting just before sunset we deployed our two “Stand-Alone-Pumps”
(SAPS). These pumps are lowered on a wire to a fixed depth, and
programmed to pump water through large, dinner-plate sized filters
typically for 1 or 2 hours.
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| Clare and SAPS |
Clare Davis, from the University of
Liverpool, will analyse the filters to measure the ratios of carbon,
nitrogen and phosphorus in the tiny organic particles caught on the
filters – a vital part of the story of how carbon and nutrients are
cycled through the sea, ultimately supporting the marine food chain and
also absorbing carbon from the atmosphere. We also tried the large
Marine Snowcatcher again, this time after some modifications carried out
by the Ben and Tom the National Marine Facilities Engineers. It worked
at last! Both the SAPS and the Marine Snowcatcher were deployed, first
close to the sea surface and then at a depth of about 100 metres. This
is quite a relief for us – knowing the make-up of the particles in the
ocean is a vital part of what we are trying to measure.
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| SAPS over the side |
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