Jeff Schilling's blog

CMOP Field Team from left to right: Nate (volunteer), Greta, Katie, and Michael

We are in the Columbia River estuary performing CTD measurements during slack tide. The weather for the research cruise has been sunny with calm seas. All that good weather is something the CMOP field team isn't use to. They are more accustomed to gray skies and rain, the typical working conditions around Astoria.

Fact is that Astoria ranks number one as the cloudiest city in America. The area has 240 cloudy days per year. They also rank third as the wettest city with 191 days per year of rain. (Source: The Weather Channel)

So when we entered the Columbia River estuary and it was a miserable rainy day, the field team felt right at home.

A mooring is a collection of devices that are connected to a cable and anchored on the sea floor. The CMOP mooring launched on Friday has a CT sensor mounted on the bottom side of the buoy, below the waterline. CT is an acronym for conductivity and temperature. The benefits of this mooring is the ability to continuously gather salinity (conductivity) and temperature data over the next six months.

Phoebe, CMOP's underwater glider, was deployed off the R/V Wecoma near Grays Harbor today. She is on a mission to cover the area between the Queets River and the Grays Harbor line looking for hypoxic water. View her latest observations.

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This photo is an example of biofouling on the scientific instruments attached to the Sitka mooring.

Biofouling or biological fouling is the undesirable accumulation of microorganisms, plants, algae, and/or animals on wetted structures.

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The acoustic doppler current profiler (ADCP) stopped working because it was completely encased by gooseneck barnacles. They were so dense that the ADCP could not produce a record of water current velocities.

I am aboard the Research Vessel Wecoma heading west on the Newport Hydrographic Line to document the retrieval of the mooring called Sitka.

The importance of being brief was one of the take away messages from today's NSF Workshop on Science Journalism.

Science journalist, Cheryl Lyn Dybas from NSF hosted the workshop at the 2010 Ocean Science Meeting in Portland. She presented interesting insight into scientific communication.

The center released the new Virtual Columbia River web site today.

The Virtual Columbia River includes self-redundant long-term simulation databases of 4D (space-time) circulation, designed to characterize contemporary variability and change.

The site contains an amazing Columbia River Climatological Atlas.

I was quietly writing an article when two high school interns entered my office. Avilash and Tanner wanted to make a CMOP video and needed my help. Being game for something fun, I said sure. This is what we came up with. Enjoy.

The centers best and brightest take a break for a game of soccer.

Soccer Match - Nirzwan and Chelsea square off