Research

The main purpose of the ship usage includes: 1) deployment and retrieval of bottom mounted equipment for planned recording of data for meteotsunami events during severe weather; 2) conduct some transect surveys to verify, cross calibrate and validate the data from the deployed instruments. Since each deployment will last for a month or so (limited by battery life of the instruments), we need to have several trips to cover several months of winter storm time periods.

This cruise surveys the pre-recruit and fully recruited segments of the Atlantic sea scallop resources from Virginia through Georges Bank, generating fishery independent estimates of biomass and size composition. These estimates are used to conduct a quantitative stock assessment for this species. We estimate 450 scallop dredge hauls, 150 CTD profiles, and towed HabCam.

Transit: Honolulu, HI > Newport, OR May 2022

Unknown. The science party was not conducted in completing this SME. Information is based on the CARSON 2021 schedule (2Feb).

Establish global site at PAPA. CGSN of OOI will deploy dual profiler mooring, two flanking subsurface moorings, and three gliders.

Ocean Climate Station Papa: 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 from this mooring are made available directly through the OCS project pages ( https://www.pmel.noaa.gov/ocs/data/disdel/ ) and OceanSITES GDACs ( http://www.oceansites.org ). The suite of carbon dioxide and ocean acidification data are available at NCEI ( https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/ocean-carbon-data-system/oceans/Moorings/Papa_145W_50N.html ) and ERDDAP (https://data.pmel.noaa.gov/pmel/erddap/tabledap/pmel_co2_moorings_e1be_45ac_2ccb.html). Merged-deployment (“long time-series”) Papa data from OceanSITES are also synced and made available through an Amazon S3 bucket and via the Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Data-use and file download metrics are available through the OCS project and are reported annually, but as these data are made freely available, the availability of data-use metrics may vary from external sources. The Ocean Station Papa site also hosts a PMEL autonomous hydrophone mooring that is 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 since 2015. Data from the ONSRN hydrophone at Ocean Station Papa is used to assess impacts of human-made sound (e.g., container shipping) and extreme ocean climate events (e.g., Marine Heat Waves) on threatened marine mammals and sensitive marine ecosystems.

Annual recovery and deployment of Waverider surface mooring at Ocean Weather Station Papa. Expendable drifter deployments at Papa.

he physical properties of the ocean from the surface layers to the abyssal water masses are changing in concert with natural and anthropogenically influenced physical forcing and sustained observations of the ocean are critically important to establish these rates of change. 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 about 25 km southeast of Bermuda in the North Atlantic Ocean. This repeat biweekly hydrographic observations was initiated by Henry Stommel and co-workers in 1954. Now, in its seventh decade, it continues to be recognized as one of the most important sustained ocean time-series and provides an invaluable metric for the long-term state of the North Atlantic subtropical gyre in relation to the meridional overturning circulation, western boundary transport, and gyre recirculation. For example, the upper ocean warming trend has strengthened (about 0.8° C since the 1970's) while the deep Labrador Sea has cooled by a few tenths of a degree. The signature of deoxygenation has been observed at Hydrostation S in the upper ocean (about 7 micro-moles/kg/decade decrease in dissolved oxygen) as well as an intensification and expansion of the oxygen minimum zone. These changes suggest that the North Atlantic subtropical gyre is experiencing deoxygenation as in the Pacific Ocean as a result of increased upper ocean stratification and reduced solubility of oxygen in warmer waters. The Hydrostation S program and its data set are managed as a service to the ocean community, being openly distributed and used as a resource in understanding processes and patterns of variability in the ocean, as well as for education, mentorship and outreach activities. The Hydrostation S project will contribute to the research and training of six research specialists and research technicians at BIOS and contribute to the research projects of at least three Ph.D. students through on-going educational partnership with Princeton University and the University of Southampton in the U.K. The one-day Hydrostation S research cruises are an ideal platform for testing new sensors and for providing hand-on training to undergraduate students enrolled in summer programs. The Hydrostation S project is designed to address the overarching hypothesis that the physical properties of the upper-ocean to deep-ocean are changing in concert with natural and anthropogenically influenced physical forcing. Sustained observations of the ocean, such as those from Hydrostation S, remain critically important to establish rates of change to provide quantitative empirical data for myriad regional and global ocean synthesis and modeling of ocean processes and future ocean change. The major objective of Hydrostation S into the seventh decade is to continue the 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. Such work is complementary to other sustained observations such as the Bermuda Atlantic Time-series Study (BATS) and Ocean Flux Program (OFP). As for the past five years, two CTD profiles will be conducted to better capture the deep-water variability while maintaining all the previous discrete depths. The first CTD cast will profile to full ocean depth (3,200-3,500 m) while the second CTD cast will profile from the surface to 500 m to allow for biogeochemical instrumentation not rated for full ocean depth and to support ancillary studies of ocean physics, biological processes and biogeochemistry. A secondary objective will be to build upon the collaborative comparison of physical data collected as part of two autonomous sensor projects. In the latter stages of the project, as ocean glider deployment becomes more sustainable and reliable, collaborative and comparative efforts will be used to test the capability of ocean gliders to provide data of sufficient quality to detect long-term oceanic change in a "virtual" mooring time-series mode. The robust and highly accurate Hydrostation S data will be used to test the capability of emerging technologies over the next five to ten years.

In December 2021, we will deploy 3 Saildrone Uncrewed Surface Vehicles (USVs) to monitor air-sea heat and carbon exchange across the Gulf Stream. Powered by wind and solar energy, the vehicles will repeatedly cross the Gulf Stream at three positions along the current: just east of Cape Hatteras, offshore of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, and at a midpoint between these two (about 65°W). The vehicles are planned to collect these observations until May15, 2022. In the event of vehicle damage, there are 3 Saildrones prepared for replacement. On their return trip for recovery in Rhode Island, the R/V Endeavor will rendezvous with one or more Saildrones. We will steam in formation with the USV(s) to collect subsurface data with an underway CTD to pair with the surface data collected by Saildrone. We will also collect pCO2 and oxygen data for calibration and validation of Saildrone sensors, as well as bottle data for subsurface carbon profiles.

UW Oceanography Dept. Ocean 201 Student Cruise for 2022.

Recovery of real time metocean mooring (RTMM) offshore GoM.

Unknown. The science party was not conducted in completing this SME. Information is based on the CARSON 2021 schedule (2Feb).

Over three week period perform ocean acoustics experiments using mulitple acoustic arrays (L-array, vertical line array, etc) with sound sources such as SUS, airguns, towed sources including ITC 2015 and J-15-1. The purpose of these experiments is to collect data that can then be used to infer information on the character of the seabed. The area of operations will include the New England Mudpatch and an area near and within the NESBA 2021 experiment that is on the New England continental slope

The research objectives of this project include investigating three-dimensional (3D) propagation, scattering and ambient sound of the acoustic field in the low to mid-frequency range around the Atlantis II Seamounts using an integrated network of sensors.

Two education days on the Carson in spring 2022 in support of CEWA 591, which also counts for OCEAN 517, at the University of Washington. Class focus is oceanographic and marine meteorologic measurements, especially instrumentation.

he physical properties of the ocean from the surface layers to the abyssal water masses are changing in concert with natural and anthropogenically influenced physical forcing and sustained observations of the ocean are critically important to establish these rates of change. 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 about 25 km southeast of Bermuda in the North Atlantic Ocean. This repeat biweekly hydrographic observations was initiated by Henry Stommel and co-workers in 1954. Now, in its seventh decade, it continues to be recognized as one of the most important sustained ocean time-series and provides an invaluable metric for the long-term state of the North Atlantic subtropical gyre in relation to the meridional overturning circulation, western boundary transport, and gyre recirculation. For example, the upper ocean warming trend has strengthened (about 0.8° C since the 1970's) while the deep Labrador Sea has cooled by a few tenths of a degree. The signature of deoxygenation has been observed at Hydrostation S in the upper ocean (about 7 micro-moles/kg/decade decrease in dissolved oxygen) as well as an intensification and expansion of the oxygen minimum zone. These changes suggest that the North Atlantic subtropical gyre is experiencing deoxygenation as in the Pacific Ocean as a result of increased upper ocean stratification and reduced solubility of oxygen in warmer waters. The Hydrostation S program and its data set are managed as a service to the ocean community, being openly distributed and used as a resource in understanding processes and patterns of variability in the ocean, as well as for education, mentorship and outreach activities. The Hydrostation S project will contribute to the research and training of six research specialists and research technicians at BIOS and contribute to the research projects of at least three Ph.D. students through on-going educational partnership with Princeton University and the University of Southampton in the U.K. The one-day Hydrostation S research cruises are an ideal platform for testing new sensors and for providing hand-on training to undergraduate students enrolled in summer programs. The Hydrostation S project is designed to address the overarching hypothesis that the physical properties of the upper-ocean to deep-ocean are changing in concert with natural and anthropogenically influenced physical forcing. Sustained observations of the ocean, such as those from Hydrostation S, remain critically important to establish rates of change to provide quantitative empirical data for myriad regional and global ocean synthesis and modeling of ocean processes and future ocean change. The major objective of Hydrostation S into the seventh decade is to continue the 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. Such work is complementary to other sustained observations such as the Bermuda Atlantic Time-series Study (BATS) and Ocean Flux Program (OFP). As for the past five years, two CTD profiles will be conducted to better capture the deep-water variability while maintaining all the previous discrete depths. The first CTD cast will profile to full ocean depth (3,200-3,500 m) while the second CTD cast will profile from the surface to 500 m to allow for biogeochemical instrumentation not rated for full ocean depth and to support ancillary studies of ocean physics, biological processes and biogeochemistry. A secondary objective will be to build upon the collaborative comparison of physical data collected as part of two autonomous sensor projects. In the latter stages of the project, as ocean glider deployment becomes more sustainable and reliable, collaborative and comparative efforts will be used to test the capability of ocean gliders to provide data of sufficient quality to detect long-term oceanic change in a "virtual" mooring time-series mode. The robust and highly accurate Hydrostation S data will be used 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.

The most important and basic climate system components are the heat, freshwater, and carbon content and transport of the oceans, which directly interact with other essential components of the climate system in the atmosphere and cryosphere. In turn the associated variability and trends in the ocean's carbon content, carbonate saturation state, oxygen, and nutrients impact its internal biological environment, with notable large-scale regional changes. This joint study of the ocean carbon cycle and circulation is critical to identify critical areas where changes in ocean circulation could have serious consequences for future anthropogenic carbon uptake. Global warming-induced changes in the ocean's transport of heat and freshwater, which could affect the circulation, are being followed through these long-term measurements. Results to date have shown that the abyssal ocean is warming, taking up to 30% of the excess heat in the entire Earth system, leading to changes in circulation patterns and ventilation rates in the upper ocean. The uptake of anthropogenic carbon from the atmosphere to the ocean has been mapped and shows that the oceans are acidifying. Oxygen concentrations are declining in the ocean thermocline, and tropical oxygen minimum zones are expanding. The project is based on the fundamental concept that data collected belong to the community and need to be made quickly and freely available to the community at large through a recognized international data center. The project will continue to promote training and learning for graduate students, postdoctoral scientists, and new scientists in sea-going work. Outreach activities will continue as opportunities arise. The systematic and global re-occupation of select ocean hydrographic sections conducted for the past decade (2003-2014) will be extended into the 2015-2020 period with the continued objective of quantifying changes in the full-depth ocean. The project is in support of the U.S. CLIVAR (CLImate Variability and predictability) and the Carbon Science Programs, and is a component of a global observing system for the physical climate and carbon system. This long-standing project continues to contribute to the following overlapping scientific objectives: Data for Model Calibration, Validation and Model Based Synthesis; Carbon System Studies; Heat and Freshwater Storage and Flux Studies; Deep and Shallow Water Mass and Ventilation Studies; and Calibration of Autonomous Sensors. By integrating the scientific needs of the carbon, tracer and hydrographic communities, major scientific synergies and cost savings will continue to be achieved. In addition to efficiency, the coordinated approach produces scientific advances that exceed those of having individual programs. An average of two sections will be conducted every year, sometime collaboratively with international partner. The measurements made on each section include hydrography (full-depth vertical profiles of salinity, temperature, oxygen, nutrients, currents), Underway surface temperature, salinity, partial pressure of carbon dioxide (pCO2), air-sea fluxes, bathymetry, navigation), carbon system (dissolved inorganic carbon, pCO2. Total Alkalinity, pH, dissolved organic carbon and nitrogen), and transient tracers. This project will collect the data and perform the quality control measures routinely carried out by providers of reference-quality data. Post-cruise data updates, distribution, and archive will continue to be managed by groups with separate funding. This ongoing project is integrated with a larger international effort to monitor the ocean's response to climate change.

Due to necessary engine repairs on the EPA R/V Lake Guardian , EPA plans to procure vessel support in April and May 2022 (up to 19 days total) to conduct GLNPO’s mission-critical spring water quality and biology monitoring survey of Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, and Lake Huron and in September 2022 (up to 15 days total) to conduct GLNPO’s mission-critical summer water quality and biology monitoring survey of Lake Superior and Lake Huron. This survey helps EPA fulfill monitoring and assessment commitments specified in the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement between Canada and the United States and in the U.S. Clean Water Act. EPA uses data from the spring and summer surveys to assess the status of overall water quality and lower food web health at a whole-lake scale.

Environmental baseline sampling off the coast of Brownsville, TX.

Viral infections of marine microbes can transform the fate of microbial populations that fuel global ocean biogeochemical cycles. For example, viral infections of microbes lead to the release of carbon and nutrients back into the environment. This regeneration of carbon and nutrients stimulates the activity of other microbes and diverts carbon and nutrients from larger organisms in marine food webs. Because virus-microbe infections are relatively specific, it is critical to identify those pairs of viruses and microbes that may disproportionally contribute to the turnover of carbon and nutrients in the ocean. This project will develop quantitative approaches and tools to quantify which viruses infect which microbes and to use these data to quantify how viral infections of microbes collectively shape nutrient and carbon cycles in the North Atlantic Ocean. The project will analyze virus-microbe interactions in mesocosms at the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in mid-coast Maine and during open ocean expeditions to the Bermuda Atlantic Time-Series Study (BATS) site. An interdisciplinary team will leverage recent advances in molecular biology, computational biology, and mathematical modeling to identify virus-host partners and their impact on the movement of elements through marine systems. This project will support three graduate students, six undergraduate students and one postdoctoral researcher in an interdisciplinary context. Research advances will be translated into reproducible software methods to be disseminated via the community cyberinfrastructure platform iVirus, with additional training materials presented as part of a viral methods and informatics workshop held at The Ohio State University. The translation of discoveries to the public will be furthered by the involvement of journalism undergraduate students at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. This project builds upon advances in the molecular toolkit of viromics to develop an integrated approach to characterize lineage-specific rates of infection, lysis, and nutrient release induced by marine viruses in open ocean ecosystems. It will combine theory, in vitro experiments, and in situ sampling to (i) extend a robust inference method for estimating virus-microbe cross-infection networks from time-series data; (ii) establish and characterize in-vitro protocols for inferring cross-infectivity in complex communities using culture-independent methods; (iii) estimate lineage-specific rates of lysis and regeneration of nutrients in marine systems, including applications to coastal and open ocean ecosystems. Project aims focus on quantifying the extent to which virus-induced lysis and regeneration of carbon and nutrients is heterogeneously distributed across microbial populations. To do so, the project will incorporate time series measurements of abundance information (via metagenomes) and activity information (via metatranscriptomes). In so doing, it will advance efforts to understand community-scale interactions rather than those amongst a single virus-host pair. Theoretical methods and in vitro protocols will directly infer lineage-specific infection, lysis, and nutrient release rates in coastal- and open-ocean ecosystems in the North Atlantic Ocean. Results will be used to identify key links that disproportionately influence bulk nutrient release. A novel PCR-based approach will augment and validate the core inference approach. Overall, the project aims to enhance our understanding of how viruses contribute to marine ecosystem function.

The research focus of the NGA LTER site will be on mechanistic understanding of processes that underlie environmental variability, and the role of the latter in promoting high productivity and resilience. Building on prior knowledge, the investigators will test three hypotheses centered on ecosystem emergent properties: 1. Changes in the hydrologic cycle affect spring bloom production through changes in cloud cover, the stratification/mixing balance, macro- and micronutrient supplies, and transport pathways. 2. Hot-spots of high summer primary and secondary production result from interactions between the fresher Alaska Coastal Current and more saline offshore waters as promoted by shelf morphology and regional winds; hot spot timing and magnitude will be influenced by changes in the hydrologic cycle. 3. Nutritional and life history patterns of NGA consumers minimize trophic mismatch, buffering spatial and temporal variability in lower trophic level production and leading to resilience in the face of long-term climate change. The investigators will address these hypotheses with an integrated research program that includes: a) seasonal time series studies addressing short- and long-term environmental and ecosystem variability through a spring-to-fall field cruise- and mooring-based observational program, building upon and enhancing the Seward Line times series, and leveraging existing collaborations to obtain higher trophic level data; b) process studies that focus on hypothesized mechanisms leading to variability and enhancement of NGA production in time and space; c) modeling studies that incorporate physical and biogeochemical observations, provide a framework for testing hypotheses, and predict ecosystem responses to projected environmental changes; d) a data management component that provides a public platform for data visualization and synthesis by LTER colleagues, educators & students, and resource managers.

These cruises utilize funding provided by the University of Minnesota. Chief Scientists will be completing seed research cruises or using their ship time to take graduate and undergraduate students on the research vessel Blue Heron.

Particle settling is one of the major ways that material in surface waters reaches the deep ocean. Particulate matter in the open ocean consists primarily of organic material from plankton and other biological detritus, which can readily aggregate to form large flocs. A combination of physical, chemical, and biological processes transforms these flocs as they settle, redistributing material throughout the water column and potentially sequestering elements such as carbon in the deep ocean. The impact of these transformations is affected by the sinking speed of these flocs, with larger and denser particles settling faster than smaller, less-dense ones. One of the key questions facing oceanographers today is what controls particle settling speed (for example, particle size, shape, and density). There is considerable evidence that particles readily break apart as they settle, decreasing their average size and settling speed, but it is not yet understood what conditions cause these disaggregation events. This work will measure the breakup characteristics of organic settling particles both in the laboratory and at sea to quantify the importance of these breakup processes relative to particle transport. The work will be done at the Pennsylvania State University in collaboration with the University of Georgia to target the development of future marine particle disaggregation models for use by the oceanographic community.

The student cruise for the Ocean 220 Course in 2022

Was postponed from 2021 Seabed21+ is an ocean acoustics experiment to study sound propagation in and around the New England Mudpatch. This is a follow-on experiment to Seabed Characterization 2017, led by the present PI and co-PI. This part of the project will conduct a sub-bottom profile survey using a CHIRP sub-bottom profiler and will deploy a number of coring devices and some acoustic devices to study sound propagation.

Deploy and ~9 months later recover 2 CPIES (current pressure recording inverted echo sounders) with MicroModems, sharing 1 OT (overhead transmitter mooring), and deploy two MRV Solo floats in the central Gulf of Mexico. Conduct acoustic-reception testing of the data telemetry. The deployments are centered near 27.6N, 88W. Measurement duration is ~9 months. CTDs to 1300m will be taken at the two CPIES sites on each cruise. Water depth at the deployment sites is approximately 3300 m.

mobilization and deployment of the BP Thunderhorse wavescan mooring.

We propose to deploy a moored dual-sediment trap within the northern Gulf of Mexico (nGOM; 27.5°N, 90.3°W, ~1,200‐m water depth) to collect and quantify particulate fluxes at the base of the euphotic zone and collect and examine eDNA associated with sinking particulates. The proposed deployment site is ideal to study variability in the BCP, as it experiences dynamic biogeochemical conditions driven by Loop Current eddies, transient tropical cyclone events, and pulsed input of nutrients and organic matter via Mississippi River discharge. The deployment of two sediment traps on a single mooring will allow for sample collections to be treated distinctly to best preserve eDNA in Trap 1 (e.g., using a DNA preservative) and particulate materials in Trap 2 (buffered formalin). Trap 1 will be stationed at 120 m (near the bottom of the nGoM euphotic zone) and Trap 2 will be stationed at 700 m water depth to maximize microfossil collection (also for historical time-series consistency). The traps will be programmed to collect samples on a biweekly to monthly basis and will be recovered and redeployed on an approximately annual basis.