Research

Placement of a neutrino detector in Western Lake Superior

All REU participants will have the opportunity to participate in a research cruise to Tampa Bay for the collection of research samples and deployment of research instruments. The primary objective of this research cruise is to investigate turbidity dynamics in Tampa Bay, assess sediment characteristics at key locations inside and outside the bay, and conduct vibracoring of relict coastal features on the West Florida Shelf. The cruise aims to provide insights into sedimentary processes, water quality, and geological features in the study area.

This ONR-TFO project continues work to improve the understanding and prediction of mid-frequency sound propagation in coastal environments. This will be accomplished via a collaborative effort between UW-APL Ocean Acoustics ( DJ Tang, T. Hefner ), UW-APL Ocean Physics ( R. Harcourt, J. Mickett ), Scripps Institution of Oceanography ( Y-T Lin, W.S. Hodgkiss ), and NRL Stennis (G. Jacobs, J. Osborne). The primary goals of the fieldwork component of this project are to: Quantify the dependence of the large high-frequency variability (scintillation, when under sampled) in transmission loss due to stratification and internal wave spectra along the acoustic path. Collect highly-resolved towed profiler measurements to allow a statistical representation of high-frequency internal waves to facilitate prediction of TL variability at O (10) minute timescales, and to enable a priori assessment of acoustic signal uncertainty. Collect coordiated oceanographic and acoustic measurements to better quantify the impact of nonlinear internal waves---energetic, ubiquitous and regular on the Washington shelf---on mid-frequency acoustic propagation. Both along and across-wavecrest studies will be carried out. Collect microstructure measurements along with towed profiler measurements to improve our understanding of how acoustic ducts are modified by turbulent mixing. Are ocean model lateral and vertical diffusivity levels realistic? Support APL and Scripps Acoustics field experiments by providing comprehensive moored and towed profiler measurements to resolve the dominant variability of the sound speed environment, allow interpretation of changes to this field, and enable post-experiment acoustic modeling.

SIO 125 (Biomechanics of Marine Life) emphasizes the form and function of marine organisms by teaching students about the different types of biological materials that organisms are composed of, how these materials are used to build structures, how materials and structures are adapted to different environments, and how materials influence an organism’s behavior and ecology. This advanced undergraduate/graduate level course has been taught every year beginning 2015, each time including a one-day cruise that has proven to be especially rewarding to the students in the class and other participants. SIO125 is an upper-division EBE Core Course and elective for any UCSD Biology major, with an enrollment cap of 28 students. In addition to course students, there will be graduate student researchers, collaborators at SIO and UCSD Engineering, and experts in fish, invertebrates, and trawling. Any remaining space on the cruise will primarily be allocated to graduate and undergraduate students conducting research, as has been the case in previous years. The primary educational goal of the cruise is to recover and observe deep-sea animals from midwater and continental margin environments. This cruise provides a unique opportunity for students to observe and handle animals common in these extreme environments, and explore how animal form (materials and structure) is adapted to variable water conditions (i.e., pressure, temperature, pH, oxygen) and ecologies (e.g., pelagic, benthic, mobile, sessile). Additionally, animals will be brought back to SIO so that students can study these materials under a microscope and conduct mechanical testing on the biomaterials as part of the course. Specifically, groups of students will use an Instron mechanical testing device (available in the Taylor lab) to examine the mechanical properties of different animal tissues to illustrate how materials are characterized and how they support multiple animal functions by resisting various types of loading. The study of deep-sea animal materials will complement the study of intertidal animal materials to help students understand the link between animal form, function, and environment. This cruise will have the additional goals of introducing students to oceanographic research, demonstrating the different types of instrumentation used to study deep-sea organisms, including the Isaacs kid mid-water trawl and otter trawl, and providing at-sea experience for the diverse students who take this course.

This project will investigate neodymium sources in the Northwest Atlantic, with a particular focus on benthic fluxes from sediments. Neodymium (Nd) isotopes are a key paleoceanographic tracer with the potential to provide information about connections between ocean circulation and climate over a range of timescales, however uncertainty in our understanding of Nd sources to the ocean limit their utility. In particular, recent studies have brought to light the importance of benthic Nd sources as a possible primary control on Nd distributions in the ocean. If this is true, it complicates the interpretation of Nd isotope distributions, which were traditionally thought to reflect largely conservative mixing between endmembers in the North Atlantic and North Pacific. A newly developed model of Nd in the modern ocean predicts that benthic fluxes are large in the Northwest Atlantic, a key region for the formation of North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW). There are only ten locations where benthic Nd fluxes have been directly measured, with no previous studies in the high-latitude North Atlantic. We will directly address this data deficit and test the model predictions by measuring benthic Nd fluxes along two depth transects in the Labrador Sea. We will measure Nd concentrations and isotopic compositions in pore water, seawater, and near seafloor particles in order to calculate Nd fluxes to the ocean from sediments and determine how those fluxes impact seawater Nd isotope values. We will measure other pore water and sedimentary components in order to characterize the diagenetic environment in the sediments and untangle the mechanisms driving Nd uptake/release. This will provide a thorough and holistic picture of Nd cycling in the Labrador Sea, including determining how the isotopic composition of NADW is set (both today and in the past) and what signals (bottom water versus pore water) are being recorded in authigenic records.

This project is designed as a piggyback onto the already funded “N Atlantic Porewater Nd” cruise to the Labrador Sea on the RV Neil Armstrong in summer 2025. The full title of this award is “A porewater perspective on benthic sources on neodymium to the North Atlantic” (NSF award # 2210663). The proposed piggy back project and additional cruise days (see bleow) have been discussed and planned in consultation with Dr. Sophie Hines (the chief scientist on the funded cruise), and Dr. Chandranath Basak (co-I on the funded award). T he goal of the proposed piggyback project is to investigate benthic iron fluxes from the Labrador and Greenland continental shelf sediments. This work complements the funded Nd project, which aims to investigate benthic Nd fluxes in the same area. Iron is a limiting nutrient in this biologically productive region of deep water formation, and benthic Fe may be transported in the West Greenland Current and Labrador Current to supplement glacial sources of iron in the region. Identifying sources of iron and controls on iron delivery in the Labrador Sea will help us understand 1) current patterns of primary productivity and carbon cycling, and 2) how these patterns may shift with advancing climate change and the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet. I propose to add four additional days to the funded cruise (3 science days and 1 travel day) in order to collect additional sediment cores along the already planned transects on the Labrador and Greenland shelves, as well as add one shorter shelf transect near the southern tip of Greenland. Our team will sample multicore subcores for pore water and solid sediments, as well as deploying oxygen microelectrodes, pH sensors, and planar Fe optodes. We will conduct shipboard core incubations using a bromide tracer to describe solute transport mechanisms in intact sediments, and attach a Niskin bottle to the multicorer frame to sample and preserve clean bottom water samples for accurate flux calculations. These datasets will provide detailed information about the biogeochemical conditions in the surface sediments and the magnitude and speciation of the resulting benthic iron flux. Co-I Dr. Hilde Oliver will conduct modeling experiments using the flux data obtained in the labratory portion of the project. This project builds on recent research into water column iron distributions and glacial iron sources in the Labrador Sea by considering the sediments as a likely but under-investigated part of the regional iron cycle. Our results will improve understanding of the controls on primary productivity and carbon sequestration in the North Atlantic.

The Southeast Area Monitoring and Assessment Program (SEAMAP) Shrimp/Groundfish trawlsurveys are conducted throughout the Gulf of Mexico to provide fishery-independent monitoring and assessment information on shrimp and groundfish assemblages associated with low relief soft bottom habitats. These data are essential to the management of the fisheries resources in the Gulf of Mexico. Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF), as well as SEAMAP state partners, sample in conjunction with the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to provide a Gulf-wide trawl survey each summer and fall.

SEFIS is a fishery-independent research group that surveys reef fish using traps and video from Cape Hatteras, NC, to St. Lucie Inlet, FL, from 15-115 m deep.

One of the longest open-ocean hydrographic stations in the world is maintained at the Hydrostation S site (formerly known as the Panulirus site) located ~25 km southeast of Bermuda in the North Atlantic Ocean. This program of repeat biweekly hydrographic observations began in 1954 (by Hank Stommel) and now, in its seventh decade, has proved to be the catalyst for numerous studies of ocean physics, biological processes and biogeochemistry. Hydrostation S continues to be recognized as one of the most important sustained ocean time–series. The renewal of the Hydrostation S program is proposed herein, extending this invaluable time–series of ocean hydrography to almost 70 years. The upper ocean warming trend has strengthened (about +1.4° C since the 1970's; ~+0.8°C in last decade) with significant salinification (+0.16). Deeper waters such as the Labrador Sea Water has cooled by a few tenths of a degree and freshened with a marked decadal oscillation. The signature of deoxygenation has been observed at Hydrostation S in the upper ocean (about 4 µmoles kg -1 decade -1 decrease in dissolved oxygen) as well as the oxygen minimum zone (~2.5 µmoles kg -1 decade -1 ). Hydrostation S also supports the longest global ocean CO 2 and acidification time-series (from 1983 to present) The major objective of the proposal is to continue Hydrostation S into the eighth decade with numerous questions related to warming and cooling, salinification and freshening, deoxygenation and insights on biogeochemical changes over time. This program constitutes frequent water column sampling of temperature, salinity, and dissolved oxygen (and indirectly, sampling of important ocean carbon time–series) of the North Atlantic subtropical gyre at the Hydrostation S site. Such work is complementary to other sustained observations such as the Bermuda Atlantic Time–series Study (BATS) and Ocean Flux Program (OFP). We propose to carry out a similar sampling format that has been followed for the past 68 years. As for the past ten years, we would continue to conduct two CTD profiles to better capture the deep–water variability while maintaining all the previous discrete depths. The first CTD cast will profile to full ocean depth (3,300–3,500 m) while the second CTD cast will profile to 500 m (to allow for instrumentation not rated for full ocean depth such as a PAR sensor). One indirect objective will be to continue to collaboratively evaluate a BIOS-based glider program with Hydrostation S data as critically important ground truthing data. The existing glider program has challenging issue, and the aim of this effort is to use robust and highly accurate Hydrostation S data to test the capability of emerging technologies over the next five to ten years.

Long-term observations over several decades are a powerful tool for investigating ocean physics, biology, and chemistry, and the response of the oceans to environmental change. The Bermuda Atlantic Time-Series Study, known as BATS, has been running continuously since 1988. The research goals of the BATS program are: (1) to improve our understanding of the time-varying components of the ocean carbon cycle and the cycles of related nutrient elements such as nitrogen, phosphorus, and silicon; and, (2) to identify the relevant physical, chemical and ecosystem properties responsible for this variability. In addition, the BATS program has strong and diverse broader impacts, contributing to the field of ocean sciences by providing high quality ocean observations and data for seagoing scientists and modelers, and a framework through which researchers can conceive and test hypotheses. This award will support the operations of the BATS program for five more years. The primary BATS research themes are as follows: (1) Quantify the role of ocean-atmosphere coupling and climate variability on air-sea exchange of CO2, and carbon export to the ocean interior; (2) Document trends and the controls on the interannual to decadal scale variability in carbon and nutrient cycles to their coupling in the surface and deep ocean via the Redfield Ratio paradigm; (3) Quantify the response of planktonic community structure and function, and impact on biogeochemical cycles to variability in surface fluxes and dynamical processes; (4) Facilitate development, calibration and validation of next generation oceanographic sensors, tools and technologies; and, (5) Generate a dataset that can be utilized by empiricists, modelers and students. This research integrates ocean physics, chemistry and biology into a framework for understanding oceanic processes and ocean change in the North Atlantic subtropical gyre. The existing 29 years of BATS data provide robust constraints on seasonal and interannual variability, the response of the Sargasso Sea ecosystem to natural climate variability, and signal detection of potential ocean changes. This project would extend the BATS program through years 31-35 to address a series of ten interlinked questions through integrated research approaches and a multitude of collaborative efforts. In addition to the themes above, and embedded into the ten questions and approaches, the BATS team will focus on, for example, coupling of particle production and biogeochemistry; revisiting the complexities of the biological carbon pump; oxygen decline; and changes in the hydrography, physics, ocean carbon cycle and biogeochemistry of the Sargasso Sea. The highest quality data observation and collection will be maintained and used to address these questions. Importantly, a wide range of collaborations at the BATS site, spanning the physical and biogeochemical disciplines, will aid these broad goals. Strong links to community stakeholders, and close collaboration (including methods intercomparisons and personnel exchanges) with the Hawaii Ocean Time-series are proposed. This work will extend the research findings of the project into educational and training opportunities within and beyond the oceanographic community, including training and mentorship of both undergraduate and graduate students.

Starting in the 2016-2017 academic year, Scripps Institution of Oceanography and UCSD began an undergraduate major in Oceanic and Atmospheric science. This interdisciplinary major is intended to prepare students for careers in government, environmental policy, management, and consulting, primary and secondary education, and academia. The curriculum combines rigorous classroom training based on mathematics, physics, chemistry, and data analysis with hands-on experience using cutting edge data collection techniques for the ocean and atmosphere. SIO 60, co-taught annually by SIO/UCSD Assistant Professors Drew Lucas and Kate Ricke, is the required introductory course for the O & A major. SIO 60 covers basic concepts in oceanic and atmospheric dynamics with instruction and hands-on activities, with an aim towards future academic, government, and industry scientists as well as professionals in maritime and environmental science fields.

Here we propose a field expedition with a series of deck-board incubations to assess the effects of oxylipins on community trophic and biogeochemical dynamics, in the California Current Ecosystem (CCE). Oxylipins are a class of lipid derived chemical signals produced by diatoms and other eukaryotic phytoplankton under stressful circumstances such as nutrient limitation, wounding due to grazing, and viral infection. From culture and laboratory-based amendment experiments, we know that oxylipins decrease the grazing rates of microzooplankton (MZP), decrease the reproductive success of copepods, decrease the growth rates of eukaryotic phytoplankton and free-living bacterial isolates, and stimulate diatom and particle associated bacteria. Since oxylipins are produced under stress conditions associated with bloom decline and their bioactivity radiates throughout the food web, we hypothesize that oxylipin chemical signaling impacts the biological and microbial carbon pumps through trophodynamics, allelopathy, and stimulation of particle degradation. The major questions that we will address include: 1) how does the concentration and suite of oxylipins available for signaling change over the course of a bloom? 2) what is the net impact of oxylipin signaling on community dynamics? 3) can we quantify the impact of oxylipins on carbon export and nutrient recycling (N, P, Si) in the system? This work will consist of a three-week cruise that seeks to follow diatom blooms off the Coast of California from the onset of the bloom to their demise while surveying the oxylipins dissolved in the water column, particulate oxylipin concentrations, and the oxylipins associated with sinking particles. We will also conduct a series of deck-board experiments with natural populations to determine the net effect of oxylipin chemical signaling on community dynamics and C, N, P, and Si biogeochemistry.

Placement of a neutrino detector in Western Lake Superior

TeSSA is a three-year project to design, construct and test a long-term Telemetered Seafloor Seismic Array (TeSSA) of five seafloor nodes (SFNs) each comprising a very-broadband ocean bottom seismometer (OBS) and a differential pressure gauge. Each SFN will be equipped with an acoustic micromodem. The array is linked through a wave glider that facilitates a Surface Communications Gateway (SCG) with shore-side mission control at Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) via acoustic and satellite services. The TeSSA-cruise 1D is a deployment cruise for the wave glider and one OBS. The test should last about two weeks after which both wave glider and OBS will be recovered on the recovery cruise TeSSA-cruise 1R.

This project is part of a summer REU program in marine sciences in Savannah, Georgia, that emphasizes early undergraduate participation (freshmen and sophomore), to target students during a critical time in their STEM career. The project includes a 2-day research cruise opportunity for these undergraduate students aboard a UNOLS vessel for estuarine and pelagic research experience. This REU provides a first research experience to bright young scientists who are not traditionally considered for an REU. Moreover, this opportunity to conduct high-quality oceanographic research is in an environment that is accommodating, nurturing, and educationally diverse. In targeting students with no prior research experience, the SSU REU provides them with the necessary skills to successfully complete their project. This will yield small cohorts of students who will become the next generation of research oceanographers. The broad range of faculty mentor qualifications, experience, and facilities at SSU and its research partners provides additional intellectual merit for every REU project, thus broadening each participant’s experience. The cruise will include all the participants, PI, co-PI, graduate assistant, and additional faculty mentors whose research utilizes coastal/estuarine field sampling. The cruise provides participants with direct, collaborative experience working with the science and ship’s crew, off-shore sampling and data collection, and common oceanographic instrumentation and equipment (e.g., CTD, grab core, plankton nets). These experiences provide opportunities for some interns to develop research ideas for their own projects but serve also as a common bonding experience for all the students conducting science together. This is annually rated highest in the post-program assessments. The 91-foot UNOLS research vessel Savannah operated by SkIO has space for 18 and provides the ideal platform for short-term/ offshore research cruises.

Naval Undersea Warfare Center Division, (NAVUNSEAWARCENDIV) Newport Ranges, Engineering, and Analysis Department, Waterfront Operations Branch (Code 7022) supports at-sea testing for advanced unmanned test vehicles, oceanographic systems, and acoustic communications. Branch personnel maintain expertise in safely conducting at-sea exercises and in the deployment and recovery retrieval of various test equipment and devices. Often, supporting tests of this nature requires assets to be used which are not owned by the Government. Examples of such equipment include fixed and rotary wing aircraft, oceangoing vessels, commercial diving support, vessel mobilization support, and use of various pieces of oceanographic equipment. NUWCDIVNPT is planning a test vehicle exercise from 27 - 28 May 2025 at the Jacksonville Shallow Water Tactics and Training Range (JSWTTR), off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida (FL). Up to sixteen (16) test vehicle are planned for evaluation of Operational Software. Services of multiple vessels and one aircraft will be required.

Methane seeps affect the geology, ecology, and chemistry of the near-seafloor environment. We will investigate newly-discovered methane seeps along the slope of the northern US Atlantic Margin. We will describe and study the characteristics, biogeochemistry, and evolution over the geological time of seeps along two representative transects extending from the shelf edge to the continental rise.

Placement of a neutrino detector in Western Lake Superior

SIO 145 (Field Methods in Biological Oceanography) is a 6-credit lab course for SIO Marine Biology undergraduates. These day cruises aboard R/V Sproul will offer students a hands-on opportunity to work at sea and gain a better understanding of how to use oceanographic sampling equipment and conduct oceanographic field research. In addition, cruises on the Sproul will provide students with an opportunity to collect data and samples that are needed to develop quarter-long lab projects. The goals of the cruise are to (1) demonstrate the different types of instrumentation used to study biological oceanography, including a CTD, Isaacs-Kidd Midwater Trawl, and plankton tows, (2) generate hydrographic data illustrating the oceanographic conditions of our sampling location(s) (e.g., thermocline, oxygen minimum zone), (3) visualize and recover zooplankton and micronekton characteristic of the southern California Current Ecosystem, (4) examine zooplankton and micronekton community composition, and (5) provide at-sea experience to students along with detailed explanations of ship operations and facilities. Work will be conducted in and around the San Diego Trough.

One of the longest open-ocean hydrographic stations in the world is maintained at the Hydrostation S site (formerly known as the Panulirus site) located ~25 km southeast of Bermuda in the North Atlantic Ocean. This program of repeat biweekly hydrographic observations began in 1954 (by Hank Stommel) and now, in its seventh decade, has proved to be the catalyst for numerous studies of ocean physics, biological processes and biogeochemistry. Hydrostation S continues to be recognized as one of the most important sustained ocean time–series. The renewal of the Hydrostation S program is proposed herein, extending this invaluable time–series of ocean hydrography to almost 70 years. The upper ocean warming trend has strengthened (about +1.4° C since the 1970's; ~+0.8°C in last decade) with significant salinification (+0.16). Deeper waters such as the Labrador Sea Water has cooled by a few tenths of a degree and freshened with a marked decadal oscillation. The signature of deoxygenation has been observed at Hydrostation S in the upper ocean (about 4 µmoles kg -1 decade -1 decrease in dissolved oxygen) as well as the oxygen minimum zone (~2.5 µmoles kg -1 decade -1 ). Hydrostation S also supports the longest global ocean CO 2 and acidification time-series (from 1983 to present) The major objective of the proposal is to continue Hydrostation S into the eighth decade with numerous questions related to warming and cooling, salinification and freshening, deoxygenation and insights on biogeochemical changes over time. This program constitutes frequent water column sampling of temperature, salinity, and dissolved oxygen (and indirectly, sampling of important ocean carbon time–series) of the North Atlantic subtropical gyre at the Hydrostation S site. Such work is complementary to other sustained observations such as the Bermuda Atlantic Time–series Study (BATS) and Ocean Flux Program (OFP). We propose to carry out a similar sampling format that has been followed for the past 68 years. As for the past ten years, we would continue to conduct two CTD profiles to better capture the deep–water variability while maintaining all the previous discrete depths. The first CTD cast will profile to full ocean depth (3,300–3,500 m) while the second CTD cast will profile to 500 m (to allow for instrumentation not rated for full ocean depth such as a PAR sensor). One indirect objective will be to continue to collaboratively evaluate a BIOS-based glider program with Hydrostation S data as critically important ground truthing data. The existing glider program has challenging issue, and the aim of this effort is to use robust and highly accurate Hydrostation S data to test the capability of emerging technologies over the next five to ten years.

The overarching project is to observe and quantify the anisotropy of the Ocean Surface Boundary Layer with specially equipped Lagrangian floats. Observations will be conducted near the Ocean Climate Station P. The first cruise of the series is to deploy a Waverider buoy to provide essential surface wave monitoring during the project. Intended as ancillary project to an OOI cruise.

This is the twelfth cruise (eleventh turnaround) for the Global Station Papa Array of the National Science Foundation’s Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI; http://www.oceanobservatories.org). The Station Papa Array includes a network of moorings and gliders to monitor waters in the data sparse high latitudes of the Gulf of Alaska. The moorings and the gliders give the array the capability to address the role of the mesoscale flow field in ocean dynamics Summary of Field Work The Station Papa cruise primary objectives include the recovery and deployment of the Global Hybrid Profiler Mooring and the Mesoscale Flanking Moorings A and B, glider deployments and CTD casts with water sampling at the mooring and glider sites for instrument calibration and data verification.

The overall goal of this mooring is to provide high quality in situ reference time series for assessing biases and uncertainties in satellite and numerical weather prediction products, and for better understanding multidisciplinary interactions in the climate system. The mooring is part of a global network of OceanSITES reference stations. All data are publicly available and serve a wide community of users. The mooring carries a suite of sensors to monitor carbon uptake; air-sea heat, moisture, and momentum fluxes; a surface meteorological suite and subsurface temperature and salinity, near-surface currents, pH, and the biological production of oxygen. In addition to contributing to the OceanSITES network, the mooring is an important site within the network of Surface CO2 and Ocean Acidification observations. Data available through OCS-project-pages and OceanSITES-GDACs . Carbon dioxide and ocean acidification data available at NCEI & ERDDAP . Papa also hosts a PMEL autonomous hydrophone mooring, part of the NOAA-National Park Service Ocean Noise Station Reference Network(ONSRN). This unique cross line, inter-agency network has deployed sound monitoring across the U.S. EEZ. Data from hydrophone at Station Papa is used to assess impacts of human-made sound(e.g.,shipping) and extreme ocean climate events(e.g.,Marine Heat Waves) on threatened marine mammals and sensitive marine ecosystems.

This multi-cruise project request is for the major infrastructure deployment and recovery of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) Coastal Endurance Array (EA) ( https://www.oceanobservatories.org ). The Endurance Array includes fixed and mobile assets to observe cross-shelf and along-shelf variability in the coastal upwelling region of the Oregon and Washington coasts and provide synoptic, multi-scale observations of the eastern boundary current regime. Two lines of Endurance moorings run approximately east-west across the continental shelf north and south of the Columbia River outflow. Three different mooring types are used to capture surface meteorology along with near-surface, near-bottom and mid-water column ocean structure in the vicinity of the shelf break front. The mooring types are: Coastal Surface Mooring (SHSM, OSSM), Inshore Surface Mooring (ISSM), and Offshore Profiler Mooring (OSPM). Moorings are permitted under the United States Coast Guard (USCG) Private Aid to Navigation (PATON) program. The moored array is supplemented by gliders surveying the continental shelf and slope waters offshore of the moored array and coastal surface piercing profilers at the Oregon and Washington Inshore and Shelf sites. Like glider deployments and recoveries, CSPP deployments and recoveries can occur on mooring cruises or from small vessel cruises.

The Rhode Island Teachers at Sea Program offers a unique experience to Rhode Island K-12 teachers. The teachers participate in the deployment and recovery of oceanographic instrumentation (CTD, multicore, plankton nets) and work with the samples in the lab. There are discussions regarding the equipment as well as the samples. The teachers then discuss how they would use this knowledge in their classroom. In particular, they discuss how the same concepts would be delivered to the different levels (K- 12).

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.

BIOS-SCOPE II - An interdisciplinary Exploration of Microbial Oceanography in the North Atlantic Subtropical Gyre BIOS-SCOPE research brings a unique set of investigative skills and talents together to study the seasonally oligotrophic Sargasso Sea. The BIOS-SCOPE team mission is to advance an understanding of ocean food web sources, sinks and transformations of dissolved and particulate organic matter in the context of defining characteristics of the seasonally oligotrophic Sargasso Sea. The location of the BIOS-SCOPE study, the Bermuda Atlantic Time-series Study (BATS) site, experiences vigorous physical mixing in winter / spring followed by quiescent and stratified periods in the summer / early fall that results in both spring phytoplankton blooms and extremely low-nutrient surface conditions in each annual cycle. The dramatic seasonality of BATS makes it an excellent site for exploring features of biogeochemistry related to ocean mixing and stratification, and for exploring the long-term consequences of ocean surface warming. This study site supports the longest running open ocean metagenomics time-series in oceanography northwestern Sargasso Sea. Advances in understanding organism-organism and organism-organic compound interactions that were made in the first 5 years of the program are described in detail in the companion BIOS-SCOPE project report. These discoveries were founded on technological advances in sequencing, analytical chemistry and computation, and supported by the BIOS-SCOPE logistical framework, which has proven robust and responsive to changing investigative priorities. In its second phase BIOS-SCOPE is poised to apply its revised and more effectively integrated range of skills to investigate specific mechanisms of organic matter production, oxidation and transformation in both DOM and POM. We will further explore the link between biogeochemical variability, its control on phytoplankton community structure and how that affects the quality, quantity and cycling of organic matter. New metagenomic approaches will be used to further explore viral ecology in this oligotrophic system and how it controls microbial community and biogeochemical cycling. We have organized the interdisciplinary efforts of the BIOS-SCOPE investigators into three main themes that include: Theme I. Linkages between temporal variability of biological community structure and ocean biogeochemistry. Theme II. Characterization of dissolved and particulate organic matter and its relation to biological transformation. Theme III. Systems biology and evolution for the discovery and exploration of new mechanisms of organic matter oxidation and cellular interactions.