Ocean color at NASA

NASA has put Pt. Sal at the center of their ocean-color reporting (a coincidence?). Thanks to Kate Adams for pointing out the current regional phytoplankton bloom: It’s on the front page of ocean color today: https://oceancolor.gsfc.nasa.gov/ “On October 4, 2017 the Aqua/MODIS sensor saw some oceanic fall color that is less often noticed than the corresponding land-based colors of deciduous forests. … Read More

Check out these internal waves

Dispatch from the R/V Oceanus Tow-yo sampling is not the most invigorating of field work. It involves watching a screen and calling out depths every few minutes as the CTD moves up and down in the water column. This continues for hours on end (our October 5th sampling lasted for eight hours straight). To fight against the inevitable hebetude, we … Read More

Going with the flow

SIO drifters are ready to roll. On our way to Pismo, we successfully retrieved the IOP1 beached drifter from Vandenberg AFB. Thank you to the staff for their assistance! 26 charged GPS units, 26 bundles of CODE drifters, 1 ecstatic Matt Spydell.

Sea life stowaways

Data are not the only things our instruments have brought back to the surface. Several sea critters have become quite attached to our landers. In one case, a tan spotted sea anemone had made a home on the lander’s bottom shaft. Marnie gently evicted the critter overboard. Another lander brought up three small brown spotted octopuses, which promptly skittered off … Read More