Stephen Pierce's blog

Our expert crew on the Bridge will keep us out of harm's way, avoiding big ships like these.

We begin a Columbia River entrance 25-hour time series transect, right across the maw. The southern end of the transect crosses the major shipping lanes feeding into the Columbia. Shown here on our navigation display is the R/V Wecoma about to cross the shipping lanes.

We were so intrigued by the SlowDrop data,
we felt compelled to violate policy and touch the screen!

We were able to locate a remarkably sharp plume front (pictured), where fresh water ebbing out of the Columbia meets salt water. We SlowDropped here and found thin layers associated with this front.

Chris at SlowDrop mission control station.

Oscar helping to prepare the SlowDrop vertical profiler for deployment.

Continuing to survey the plume. All is well with the boom-mounted ADCP.

Crack in ADCP boom has been quickly repaired, welded by Chief Engineer Hank Hazen. He made it look easy, but really this is quite a skill. Thank you Hank!

We have been surveying the Columbia River plume with CTDs and boom-mounted ADCP.

We were disturbed to find that the steel boom for the ADCP was starting to crack, in fact had almost completely cracked off (see photo). This boom is subject to surprisingly large forces in rough weather.

Heading out to sea with the argos glider. Timed the crossing of the Columbia River bar at time of slack tidal current. Deployed drifter at 46 11.83 N, 124 14.09 W, a few miles outside of the river mouth.