Getting ready!

After many months of preparing for and looking forward to this trip to sea, it is almost time to go! We will be flying to Reykjavik, Iceland to meet the R/V Neil Armstrong and then will have a few days in port to get everything ready before we sail off into the Irminger Sea.

This is the fifth summer in a row that a team from the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) has visited the same site in the Irminger Sea, where their program maintains an impressive array of oceanographic platforms and instruments. These platforms include Surface Moorings, which have a big floating thing at the top (the surface buoy), an anchor on the seafloor, and a whole string of oceanographic sensors in between, two sub-surface moorings, and gliders (i.e. underwater robots) that swim between the different moorings while profiling up and down between the surface and 1000 m.

Since September 2014, this OOI array has been continuously collecting data on the physics and biogeochemistry of the Irminger Sea. This is a particularly exciting accomplishment, because this is a notoriously cold and stormy place in winter so there are very few year-round measurements in this region. The OOI team returns every year to deploy new platforms and instruments and recover those that have been out collecting data for the past year and are ready to be refurbished back on shore.

A small boat with two people wearing personal flotation devices approaches the OOI Irminger Sea Surface Mooring during the 2016 cruise. The mooring has solar panels and meteorological sensors visible in this photo that stick up into the air above the blue and yellow flotation material at the water surface. Most of the mooring is hidden below the water, extending all the way down to the seafloor 2,700 meters below. Photo by Sheri White © Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. 

For the past two years, I have been analyzing data collected by the OOI Irminger Sea array and using it to understand how biological processes absorb carbon from the atmosphere and store it in the deep ocean. One of my favorite types of data are measurements of dissolved oxygen, which tell us about the balance between the rate of photosynthesis (which adds oxygen, when plant-like organisms called phytoplankton use sunlight to convert carbon dioxide into organic carbon) and respiration (which removes oxygen, when that organic carbon is eaten by other organisms...anything from bacteria to whales!). The data collected so far have allowed me to study how the phytoplankton take up lots of carbon when they bloom at the surface in spring time, as well as how the dead decaying organic carbon is consumed as it sinks through the water column and later mixed back up to the surface in winter. But I also discovered that there is even more we could learn about the exact rates of these processes if we could measure the oxygen more accurately and precisely. So this year, our team is joining the cruise along with the experienced team from OOI with the goal to improve the calibration of the oxygen measurements from this coming year's data. We'll also be collecting lots of samples to give us a better picture of the biogeochemical processes in this region and the connections between physical processes, biological production, and the carbon cycle.

We've already shipped most of the scientific equipment we will need ahead of us to meet the ship in Reykjavik, and many of the engineers from the OOI team are already in Reykjavik getting everything ready for the new moorings and gliders that we will be deploying on the cruise.

PI Hilary Palevsky (me!) points to a large pile of boxes packed with all of the scientific equipment that our team will need for our research during the cruise. Every box is labeled with its contents, and with identifying information about our team and cruise, to keep track of it on the journey from Woods Hole, MA to the R/V Neil Armstrong in Iceland.

Our first task on board the ship will be unpacking all of our equipment and making sure that everything is working and ready to go by the time we head out of port! We will be writing updates to this blog as we get ready and once we are out at sea, and are excited to bring you with us virtually on our voyage! Please feel free to write to us with comments and questions about the experience of doing science at sea, the research we are conducting, or anything else that sparks your curiosity!