After a few days of rough weather and waves that made work impossible on the Nansen, everyone is finally feeling back to normal.
Wednesday was the first day we were able to deploy the full suite of pelagic sampling gear during our transit to the Madagascar Ridge. There are two instruments used on this leg of the Nansen survey that were not used on the previous leg.
The first, the Lowered Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (LADCP) is used to measure current direction and speed through a profile. The second, the Continuous Plankton Recorder (CPR) is used to capture plankton in the upper 10 m of water.
This equipment requires the ship to reach at least 10 knots, and due to the rough weather, we could not deploy it earlier.
We have deployed the Manta trawl at every station since our departure from Mauritius. So far we have found plastic at every station sampled.
Today we used the multinet to sample zooplankton at 5 different depths: 600-400 m, 400-200 m, 200-100 m, 100-50 m, 50-0 m. Zooplankton were found at all depths, the deepest at 600 m! A tiny squid was also found between 600-400 m.
Tomorrow we are testing the Video-Assisted MultiSampler (VAMS). Stay tuned!! Additional questions about our sampling? Ask us. We’re happy to field your questions.
23/07/2015