Arfin Sudirman and I were classmates in both middle- and high-school. He is now a Professor of International Relations, studying Maritime Law at Padjadjaran University (UNPAD) in my hometown of Bandung, Indonesia. I was beyond thrilled to see Prof. Arfin again and honored to be invited to discuss our work at UNCW with the UNPAD Fisheries and Ocean Sciences faculty and Dean. As they expand research into coastal sciences, I hope to have further opportunities for collaboration.
A HUGE thanks to all our new and returning sailors for TEAL-SHIPS4! We made it out and back, and sampled all of our stations nestled between two storms. among other things, we went fishing for PAR!
Also, a fascinating surface picture from our 3 days at sea, as near-winter time cold coastal conditions sat next to our tropical offshore neighbor. Here, the coherent, strong eddies from TS 2 and 3 are replaced with a dynamic frontal soup out there. It will be interesting to tease these apart from our mid-depth profiles. Bottles are dry and resting for the next one! Latest updates found here.
What fun this week to see a rocky shores experiment in the UNCW wave flume. With help from our students and volunteers, we have tried to recreate a scaled version of a rocky shoreline in the wave flume. Preserving a/h and kh is not easy, so we will see what we can reproduce in wave friction and how we might incorporate these results into future wave models.
What an eventful surfzone experiment out on Bald Head Island! As part of the Frying Pan Shoals study, we sample the nearfield with an array of pressure sensors and ADCPs. For this round, our beach RTK work was also done in conjunction with the jet ski survey group of Katherine Anarde at NCSU. As always, we had some excellent student participation and thank you very much to our hosts at the Bald Head Island Conservancy.
Bald Head Island is a remarkable spot on the coast: Within ~500 m, one side fires up while the other is flat calm. We also have both sunrises and sunsets over the ocean daily. The shifting orientation of the base of Frying Pan Shoals is fascinating. Courtesy of Google’s image archive, here is our sampling on a basemap (the shoals looked like the left, but the waves looked like the right):
This was the final recovery of our lander + Spotter wave array deployed around Frying Pan Shoals. We got a great day from the weather gods and terrific assistance as always from our CMS operations staff and student volunteers. Some excellent stories to come based on these last two years of our sampling periods around the Shoals, but first pictures from this last day on the water:
I have been periodically checking in on the pairs of wave drifters we deployed during TEAL3. Although the wave data and other parameters collected as Hurricane Erin passed by 2 weeks ago will be an interesting story itself (8 m waves offshore!), here are just a few snapshots of the buoy drifts released from our four offshore stations. At each station, we deployed a pair of drifters (magenta diamonds) that remain close together for the first couple of days after release. They begin to have noticeable separation after about 7 days. The Gulf Stream influence is remarkable as the station 5C and and 5B drifters are essentially in the North Atlantic over a 2 week drift. The “inshore” pair, released at station 4 (600 m water depth) have turned into Long Bay and are floating at around the ~30 m isobath. The offshore pair, released at station 6 (1400 m water depth) are basically still around the latitude of Wilmington and are still a pair! I will be very curious to see the fate of these drifters as time moves on. Special shout-out to Dr. Martha Schonau and the SIO Lagrangian Drifter Laboratory for sending these to us. I hope to do more releases of this kind.
Our third TEAL-SHIPS cruise on RV Cape Hatteras concluded this weekend. We finally completed all of our stations with terrific collaboration and hard work by all parties (no surprise there!). Some memorable aspects of this cruise include: drifter deployments courtesy of the Lagrangian Drifter Laboratory at SIO, on-board Winkler titrations, space creature shrimp trawls, and out-running the rain bands. Until next time, Gulf Stream!
A rosette water sampler is an essential piece of oceanographic equipment. It allows real-time controlled water collection at specific depths and/or water class targets. It is also a very cool piece of engineering. Yesterday, Dave Wells (UNCW) and Bill Davis (CFCC) helped us figure out where we can plug in an ECO chlorophyll-a fluorometer. This will hopefully remove the need for our sampling protocol that involved multiple CTD units alternately being attached and detached (and repeat) from the rosette while we are underway.
Many firsts for me on this latest cruise. I had never sampled 1400 m water, nor sailed to the other side of the Gulf Stream, nor deployed a mooring in 250 m of water. What a great time out on the open seas with all of our enthusiastic and ever-ready TEAL-SHIPS 2 participants. Thank you for making this cruise a memorable one!
Congratulations to Dr. Arnaud Valcarcel on his publication in Ocean Science! Although Cook Strait, NZ is deep (~ 200 m), turbulent boundary layers can connect if the forcing is strong enough. Arnaud’s study used a turbulence package-attached autonomous glider to “fly” through some pretty strong wind and tidal flow conditions. Combined with a weakly stratified interior, this paper identifies some conditions where boundary interaction occurs. Check it out!
Seasick Suanda 