Wecoma daily report, 15 August 2001

WECOMA SEASOARING ON THE BIG BOX !!!!!!!!!

After a port stop in Newport from 0830 to 1600 on Tuesday, 14 August, Wecoma is back doing SeaSoar, ADCP, HTI bio-acoustics and iron sampling along the Bigbox grid. The Chief Engineer and a winch technician worked hard on Tuesday and replaced a couple of parts on the trawl winch to bring it back to life. We also took delivery of a repaired spectrometer for Zanna Chase's iron analyzer so the underway iron sampling is now back online. Another new instrument was the installation of an ac-9 (9-wavelength light absorption and attenuation meter) in Wecoma's 5-m flow thru system. Up until now, the optics group at OSU did not have enough ac-9s to cover their simultaneous three cruises (Wecoma, Thompson and Endeavor on the east coast). We also exchanged two scientists as Tim Cowles and Bill Peterson disembarked and Jennifer Simeon and Julie Keister joined us.

We started Bigbox 3 at 2000 on 14 August at the east end of line 1 and anticipate completing the survey late in the day on Thursday, 16 August at the east end of line 8. From there we hope to conduct joint sampling with the R/V Thompson scientists in the Heceta Bank region.

Before going into Newport to effect repairs, we spent the early hours of Monday, 13 August thru 0600 on 14 August preparing for and working with the scientists aboard R/V Elakha doing the dye injection experiment. We completed at CTD/ADCP section along the Cape Foulweather line (line 3) and posted the results to the web for the Elakha scientists to pick up before they sailed. A nice upwelling front and jet, albeit fairly weak, was located about 15 km offshore. Andy Dale, Murray Levine, Larry O'Neill and Diego Narvaez (visiting from the Universidad Catolica de Chile in Las Cruces, Chile) injected the dye around 1pm at about 30m while Wecoma worked closely behind doing tow-yo CTDs. Anticipation was high as we looked for a spike in the fluoroscein fluorometer onboard our CTD/rosette. Cheers rang thru the lab as the signal came thru beautifully! By the time the Elakha was finished pumping the dye and placing a drifter in the patch it was time for them to head home. Wecoma spent the next 17 hours mapping out the dye patch. Tracking the dye was relatively straightforward combining CTD tow-yos with laying down marks on our navigation computer. It was an enjoyable break from worrying about the trawl winch :) An interesting phenomenon which will deserve further analysis was the observation of "thin layers" of dye arrayed vertically in many spots in contrast to one main dye layer. At 0630 Tuesday morning we headed for Newport and met with the Elakha scientists before they sailed on Tuesday morning. We gave them our data on where the dye patch was located and they successfully found it with the MiniBAT. On Tuesday, the Elakha sailed with a reporter and photographer from the Oregonian onboard. Andy reported that by late Tuesday afternoon the dye had spread to a 2 mile by 2 mile patch and had drifted SW. They have two more days of tracking (Wed and Thurs) scheduled.

Spirits are up on Wecoma and we're looking forward to a busy second half of the cruise.

Submitted at 1130 on 15 August 2001 by Jack Barth, Chief Scientist,
R/V Wecoma