Morning watch on the ecoCTD
We made four short criss-crossings of the Almeria-Oran front overnight, which is spectacularly sharp in salinity and density, before retrieving and packing up the instrument. The ecoCTD watch noticed a massive aggregation of jelly fish right at the front on every crossing of the front, except the last.
Lagrangian float deployment
On May 28, we deployed the Lagrangian float from the ship. The float is designed to stay with water of the same density in which it is placed, and since the flow is along constant density surfaces, the float follows the water extremely well. In this study, we are aiming to follow the trajectory of water in three-dimensions, as it gets horizontally advected, but also subducted (vertically) at the front. Later, the float was recovered from a small boat.
The Alliance
Aerial views
Flying from the ship
On Friday, the winds had died down completely and the sea surface was flat, making it an ideal day for flying from the ship.
Sunrise
Dolphins
We spotted several dolphins. Some of them want back and forth across the UCTD line that trailed from the back for the ship, as did the seabirds that followed the ship’s lights at night.
Where we went
This map of sea surface height (from satellite) and the geostrophic currents shows the large-scale pattern of the flow. There is much more variability at smaller scales that does not show up on this image. The yellow pins are waypoints and outline our ship track, which went back and forth across the front (between less and more dense waters) and where there was a strong jet (of almost 80 cm/s). The streaks are the trajectories of the some of the drifters that were deployed in the early stages of the experiment.
A second drifter array
At night we deployed a second drifter array in a tight configuration (separated by approximately 1km). At each release location, we deployed 4 drifters — one near surface and the others with drogue depths of 10,30,50m. The separation of these drifters in time, would give an estimate of the vertical shear in the flow. The tight array would help capture the effect of small-scale processes.
For the drifters with a 50 m deep drogue, we used a peg-board to unravel the line between the drogue and the surface buoy.
Preparing to release a 50m drifter
The cable is released from this peg-board so as to avoid tangles.
Calypso 2018 