Category Archives: Gulf of Mexico

Once more for good measure

Posted on September 17, 2010 by planktoneer

It’s been almost two weeks since we were last out on a boat so it must be time again!  On Monday we’ll be loading the RV Hugh R. Sharp for our last trip into the Chesapeake Bay to look at … Continue reading →

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The home stretch

Posted on September 7, 2010 by planktoneer

It’s about 5 am central time, we’re on our last transect of this cruise, Neil Young is ‘Rockin’ in the Free World’, and the Late-Night watch is feeling contemplative. As we turned the corner and deployed the CTD for our … Continue reading →

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Bottom and midwater hypoxia shows up

Posted on September 6, 2010 by planktoneer

Here’s the most recent plot of our Scanfish transects, showing 1) how far east we’ve come on the cruise, and 2) the presence of both bottom and mid-water hypoxia. The second plot shows a blow up of only the last … Continue reading →

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Still here, still collecting data.

Posted on September 6, 2010 by planktoneer

I’ve been quiet for a few days, mainly because of equipment problems that have kept me busy, but we also encountered some inclement weather last night that was not conducive to sitting at a computer. The equipment problems have been … Continue reading →

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Labor Day Weekend Data

Posted on September 4, 2010 by planktoneer

We’re moving further east and knocking down transects slowly but surely. The OPC will get it’s wet test in about 30 minutes, but the deck tests have been successful, so we’re [still] cautiously optimistic we’ve got the problem licked. Below … Continue reading →

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A little less data tonight

Posted on September 4, 2010 by planktoneer

The Scanfish OPC (Optical Plankton Counter) has been doing some funny things, so the Planktoneer is playing electrical engineer in the middle of the night, with some encouragement and help from the rest of the science crew. We noticed some … Continue reading →

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Rigs.

Posted on September 3, 2010 by planktoneer

The last two posts have had some pretty data plots (if I do say so myself) and some science talk, so I thought I’d take it down a notch and just post a few pictures of the kinds of things … Continue reading →

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More data, more stories, less oxygen

Posted on September 3, 2010 by planktoneer

Things got a bit interesting last night when we found our first ‘blob’ of hypoxic water. You can see it in the red colors on the top, middle panel which shows the dissolved oxygen concentration. There were some interesting patterns … Continue reading →

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The data tells the story

Posted on September 2, 2010 by planktoneer

Two transects down and so far so good. I made some preliminary plots of the Scanfish hydrographic data. The instrument actually saves data 32 times every second, so for each of these transects we have more than 30,000 data points. … Continue reading →

Posted in Cruises, Data, Gulf of Mexico | 2 Comments

A Yankee Oceanographer in the Bayou

Posted on September 2, 2010 by planktoneer

The purpose of this blog is to convey our science to as wide an audience as possible. I think I can speak for all of my colleagues when I say that we really like what we do and we have … Continue reading →

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