RIOceanographer

[mikswi]

Ok, I looked at your Bio................Ya gotta tell me what that contraption is. Is that some kind of sled/scooter?

http://www.scubaboard.com/member.php?find=lastposter&t=113610

 

[ScubaSarus]

Yea. What is that? How come you never bring it along on the dives ?

 

[RIOceanographer]

That is my job!

It is an oceanographic instrument belonging to NOAA called the Shuttle. We tow it around Narrgansett Bay once month as part of an on going monitoring program that we have been doing since 1998. It has several instruments such as a CTD to measure temperature and salinity, a dissolved oxygen sensor, a fluorometer to measure chlorophyll concentration and tell us amount of phytoplankton in the water, a thing called a fast reptition rate fluorometer that lets us study photosynthesis by phytoplankton, an optical plankton counter that counts and measures the size of zooplankton particles in the water, a light sensor that tells us how much light is penetrating the water for photosynthetic organisms to use, and a continuous plankton recorder that catches zooplankton from the water and stores them so we can study them in a lab.

We actually have an upgraded version of that thing we are going to start using in the next couple of months that also has an instrument for measuring nutrients (nitrate, nitrite, ammonia, phosphate and silica).

We fly Shuttle from computers on the ship that are connected to it by a conductor wire. It has a wing on it so we can fly it up and down as we are towing it and measure the entire water column underway. We tow it at about 8 knots and go as deep as 20 meters with it. During each cruise we do a loop of Narragansett Bay that takes about about 10 hours.

I worked on that project while I was in grad school at URI and did my doctoral dissertation focusing on the fast repetition rate fluorometer data. After I finished my doctorate they gave me a job to keep working on the project. Basically, my job is doing field work with that instrument, and working up the data from it.

If you want to see some examples of the data we post some simple plots of our data on the internet after every month's cruise.

http://www.narrbay.org/d_projects/nushuttle/shuttletree.htm

 

[RIOceanographer]

As a side note.... when you are browsing the forum and you see a thread named after you it causes a sort of "What the?!?!?!" moment....

 

[Diesel298]

As a side note.... when you are browsing the forum and you see a thread named after you it causes a sort of "What the?!?!?!" moment....

Eh.
your just a popular guy

 

[Jeff Toorish]

That is my job!

It is an oceanographic instrument belonging to NOAA called the Shuttle. We tow it around Narrgansett Bay once month as part of an on going monitoring program that we have been doing since 1998. It has several instruments such as a CTD to measure temperature and salinity, a dissolved oxygen sensor, a fluorometer to measure chlorophyll concentration and tell us amount of phytoplankton in the water, a thing called a fast reptition rate fluorometer that lets us study photosynthesis by phytoplankton, an optical plankton counter that counts and measures the size of zooplankton particles in the water, a light sensor that tells us how much light is penetrating the water for photosynthetic organisms to use, and a continuous plankton recorder that catches zooplankton from the water and stores them so we can study them in a lab.

We actually have an upgraded version of that thing we are going to start using in the next couple of months that also has an instrument for measuring nutrients (nitrate, nitrite, ammonia, phosphate and silica).

We fly Shuttle from computers on the ship that are connected to it by a conductor wire. It has a wing on it so we can fly it up and down as we are towing it and measure the entire water column underway. We tow it at about 8 knots and go as deep as 20 meters with it. During each cruise we do a loop of Narragansett Bay that takes about about 10 hours.

I worked on that project while I was in grad school at URI and did my doctoral dissertation focusing on the fast repetition rate fluorometer data. After I finished my doctorate they gave me a job to keep working on the project. Basically, my job is doing field work with that instrument, and working up the data from it.

If you want to see some examples of the data we post some simple plots of our data on the internet after every month's cruise.

http://www.narrbay.org/d_projects/nushuttle/shuttletree.htm

Fascinating...how do you use this data?

 

[RIOceanographer]

Fascinating...how do you use this data?

Well, there are lots of things done with it, and the data is made available for any researchers that want it so we aren't the only people that use it.

One example is that Narragansett Bay has had some hypoxia and fish kill events during the summer time in recent years, the most severe of which was in Aug 2003. We have used this data to study the spatial extent of hypoxia in Narragansett Bay as well as to help develop an understanding of what oceanographic conditions favor low dissolved oxygen. Also when we are on a cruise, and we see hypoxia we will contact RI DEM and report it so they are aware of what is going on.

Another focus is to study phytoplankton productivity in the bay, because phytoplankton are an important source of food for the fisheries, and they are an important component of the hypoxia issue I mentioned above. We want to know when there are phytoplankton blooms, and to understand when and why the blooms occur in the bay, as well as why they don't bloom at certain times.

There is also a long term interest in studying how the Bay changes over time, both due to natural cycles and human influences. For example in the upcoming years there are plans to improve wastewater treatment plants in the area and that will reduce nutrient inputs into the Bay and this long term data will help study how the changes affect the ecosystem. Another example is how things like global warming may affect the bay over time.

 

[Jeff Toorish]

Another example is how things like global warming may affect the bay over time.

Do you believe the world is warming up overall...or just in selected placed, with some places actually cooling?

Jeff

 

[ScubaSarus]

Great so when they upgrade we can bring the old one along with us to play around with ?

 

[LobstaMan]

It looks like a secret agent u/w invention of Q from a 1970's James Bond movie.

Lobstaman