The Long and Winding Road

Supersucker has now completed two north and two south transits of our transects.  The data keeps streaming in. 

The pictures above shows the type of water column complexity we are encountering and how it varies as we yo-yo up-and-down at ~6m/min moving forward throught a period of major ebb.  The data displayed on the screen of command central include: pressure / altimetry, T, S, pO2, fluorescence, transmissometry, plus a few other properties.  In the wetlab, screens display results from analysis of nutrients (ammonia, nitrate, silicate), pCO2/TCO2 and methane, all monitored continuously in very high resolution.

Although 'Old Man Trouble' may still be 'behind some tree' aboard Wecoma, this supersucker mission has already gathered enough to be a success.  But, I hope things continue moving forward smoothly (knock on wood), so that we can have ~3d of unprecedented, continuous hydrographic, optical and water chemistry measurements across the mouth of the Columbia River estuary during a neap-to-spring tide transition.  That data, combined with the 120KHz ADCP data that is being acquired with the boom mounted instrument, will allow us to live up most commendably to some of the goals that we left dock hoping to achieve.

And, on that note, when we left dock (when was that? time is getting all scrambled), we had a science interview with KGW Channel 8 News.  In that sound bite, we tried to convey in relatively general terms why it is that we are doing this major, multidisciplinary CMOP campaign.  If you are curious and haven't seen it somehow already, the URL for that sound bite is:

http://www.kgw.com/video?id=99913699&sec=547977

Fred Prahl, Chief Scientist