the nepheloid layer is present!!

The glider heads into the major zone of shipping activity next. crunch time on the ocean turnpike. interesting observation today is the nepheloid layer in the warm bottom water. the backscatter says lots of paticles are prsent with very little chlorophyll present. That means either sediment or detritus which is often what dominates nepheloid layers. The nepheloid layers often seem to be dominated by detritus which is "fluffy" and easily maintained up in the water column.

Almost at waypoint

RU16 is almost at the next waypoint. The southeastward velocities over the shelf are helping the glider fly very fast (24 km in 18 hours).

After reaching the waypoint, the glider will follow the green line in the plot above, coordinating with Eric Powell's fisheries cruise. The salinity section below reveals lots of small scale structure over the shelf. The glider is now in waters nearly homogeneous, with gradients only in the near-bottom layer.

Long Island source of CDOM water?

Here we have mean surface current map from the last 4 days. Notice the northeast section of the map...we see surface advection from Long Island heading offshore towards the shelfbreak and it goes right through the area RU16 was flying! So could Long Island be the source of the high CDOM water that we saw in the glider section? Interesting...

COOL CDOM WATERS, where do they come from?

The glider continues to make nice progress. We will now prepare to turn into the Glider zone of death (check out the ship tracks). We should have an exciting couple of days! The salinity (and temperature) show a zone that is unique. In the unique water mass, the lower salinity water shows very low chlorophyll but very cooly shows higher Colored Dissolved Organic Matter (CDOM). Next steps is check out the CODAR currents!!

Glider update

RU16 is now 2/3 of the way to the next waypoint. It will be very soon in the area where the current CODAR coverage extends. It seems like the glider will be facing some weak, opposing currents.

solid progress towards waypoint 2

RU16 is making solid progress to waypoint 2, we expect arrival within the next two days.
The glider track shows that RU16 has been moving in a nearly along-shelf direction on the second leg so far. Both CTD and optical data has both shown plenty of structures. We can see in the temperature section that we have just moved through a region of very cold water (< 5.5 deg C).

Turbid deep water -- figures

The following figures go along with Oscar's previous posting. Please read his post first.

high backscatter signal at depth:
low corresponding chlorophyll signal: