SIOC 218/Del Mar

Continuous, long-term monitoring of physical-biogeochemical variables at the Del Mar site is providing a multidisciplinary dataset which enables detection of both short-term events, and their relation to seasonal and interannual variability. This dataset is enhancing our understanding of complex coastal processes (e.g. Ekman transport, tides, alongshore currents, coastal trapped waves and internal waves), and interactions with basin-scale climatic variability such as the El Niño Southern Oscillation and Pacific Decadal Oscillation. Moreover, the data contribute to current ecological research in better understanding issues such as hypoxia, massive fish kills and bird population decreases. The Del Mar mooring was originally developed in 2006 in collaboration with the Scripps Hydraulics Laboratory as part of the Southern California Coastal Ocean Observing System (SCCOOS) . Instrumentation includes a suite of meteorological sensors, and sensors for water temperature, salinity, oxygen concentration, fluorescence, nutrients and currents. In addition to providing a valuable real-time coastal timeseries for these parameters, the platform has also served as a testbed for developing technologies both in-house at SIO and with partner organizations such as the Environmental Sample Processor (MBARI) and Imaging Flow Cytobot (WHOI), and since 2011 has provided hands-on training for a university class on observational techniques.