COASTAL MOORING
COASTAL MOORING
DEPLOYMENT EXAMPLE
PAYLOAD:
Seabird SBE49 CTD
Seabird ECOpuck: ChlA, CDOM, Backscatter
INSTITUTION:
Scripps Institution of Oceanography, MOD Lab
DEPLOYMENT LOCATION:
Offshore of SIO Pier
SCIENTIFIC SUMMARY:
The coastal ocean has the most productive fisheries in the world but also suffers from significant man-made perturbations. Investigating the dynamics of the coastal ocean, and monitoring its health, are thus vital concerns of oceanographers, policy-makers, and government.
Mooring Considerations Tech Note
In this example, an array of 3 Wirewalkers were deployed offshore of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography to study the process of breaking internal waves in the coastal ocean. In Southern California, nutrient fluxes due to these waves control the productivity and nature of the phytoplankton. Internal waves also influence the transport of Meroplanktonic larvae of coastal benthic organisms, such as barnacles, mussels, and oysters.
These figures display a 96-hour snapshot of a 25-day deployment (consisting of 54,000 profiles) of the Wirewalker moorings. Figure 1 shows the influence of tide-generated internal waves breaking over the temperature field. Figure 2 shows the internal wave breaking induced effect on a primary production bloom (hour 60 and beyond) due to changes in the nutrient fluxes (not shown) and changes in temperature.
Figure 1 - Tide-generated internal waves breaking over the temperature field.
Figure 2 - Internal wave breaking induced effect on a primary production bloom.
REFERENCE:
Garwood, J.C., Lucas, A.J., Naughton, P., Alford, M.H., Roberts, P.L.D., Jaffe, J.S., deGelleke, L. and Franks, P.J.S. (2020), A novel cross-shore transport mechanism revealed by subsurface, robotic larval mimics: Internal wave deformation of the background velocity field. Limnol Oceanogr, 65: 1456-1470. https://doi.org/10.1002/lno.11400
