The BAT flies!

Today on R/V Oceanus we got the Acrobat flying with its two GusT probes sticking out front. We’re using it to survey a flux box around the Oceano array. It takes us about 3 hours to go around it at 5 knots. Before we started BATing — oh, by the way, there’s a real bat with us on Oceanus, likely a stowaway from Oregon — we did a 2-knot CTD tow-yo/ADCP run in parallel with R/V Kalipi. They ran a 10-m line inshore of us, but, as in their post, it was a little too shallow for operations. So they moved to the 15-m isobath that is shown as the dashed line in the box below.

This evening we had a great lightening display off to the east. We did get a brief wind burst and rain shower, just before which we recovered the BAT in case the Oceanus captain had to maneuver quickly. Here’s what the storm looked like on the UMiami Marine Doppler Radar onboard Oceanus (courtesy of Lisa Nyman). On the left is a nice image of NLIWs, on the right is the storm.

We’ll keep BATing until tomorrow and look for a time to do a slower, detailed, 2-knot cross-shore chase of NLIWs with the Sally Ride.

—Jack Barth, R/V Oceanus