Wecoma report 9-10 June

After finishing bigbox survey #4 at 1000 on Saturday morning, we towed SeaSoar west along 43.75N to relocate a high chlorophyll feature coming off the Bank. We had seen strong backscatter in the HTI and wanted to identify the zooplankton content of that feature. We found the feature with SeaSoar (it was streaming off the Bank) and did a poor man's MOCNESS by making two vertical zooplankton net tows, one to 100m and one to 130m. Lots of copepods were collected and the deeper tow captured some euphausiids confirming their presence in the feature coming off the Bank. Another vertical net tow outside the feature yielded very little zooplankton biomass. We then transited to the offshore end of the CP line and did a day-night MOCNESS comparison, with TAPS being operated for an hour in between the two net tows. On Sunday we did a CTD+nutrients+iron and vertical net tow survey of the CP line from CP-12 to CP-0 (25m of water right on the coast!). During this time the MarTechs reterminated the fiber-optic SeaSoar tow cable due to some broken armor strands. We also removed the ac-9 and FlaskPak fluorometers and replaced them with ISUS, an instrument to measure nitrate.

We plan to start bigbox #5 towing from S to N around 8pm Sunday, finishing in the early hours of Wednesday.

Written 6:15pm, Sunday, 6/10/01

Jack Barth