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The Great Cocco Belt
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2011
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Melville
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Project Title: |
Collaborative Research: The Great Southern Coccolithophore Belt |
Project Status: |
Submitted |
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Principal Investigator: |
William M. Balch, Bigelow |
Project Institution: |
Bigelow |
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Project ID: |
102166 |
Version #: |
4 |
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Date Submitted: |
8/14/2009 12:36:00 PM |
Created By: |
William M. Balch |
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Date Last Modified: |
6/4/2010 12:44:00 PM |
URI Serial #: |
None |
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Funding Agencies: |
NSF/OCE/BIO - 0961660 - Funded |
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Summary of Field Work: |
We have been funded for two cruises to systematically sample the Great Coccolithophore Belt along the 50oS parallel, during the austral summers of 2011 and 2012. The two legs would be between a) Punta Arenas, Chile, Cape Town, South Africa and 2) Cape Town, SA and Fremantle, Australia. The approximate lengths of each leg are:
Punta Arenas to Cape Town: 12,045km
Cape Town to Fremantle: 11,650km
Due to prevailing directions and intensities of wind and seas, we would propose to do the cruise track in an eastward direction. Each cruise leg has a north-south section from 30°S to 60°S in order to define the meridional variability within the Great Coccolithophore Belt in each ocean sector. The N-S legs are at 20°W (the northern section of which overlaps the AMT line) and 70°E (just east of the Kerguelen Plateau). The transits to- and from- Cape Town and Fremantle also provide N-S sampling across the Great Belt. Details of the length of each leg are given in Table 1 and Fig. 9 of the original proposal. The 2011 cruise is scheduled for mid-January-February to accommodate the Geotraces cruise ending in early December 2010 (using the same McLane pumps that we will be using). |
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Summary of Facility Requirements: |
We will need facilities for the following work:
1) Isotope van for 14C tracer work
2) Trace metal work, preferably a trace-metal clean van
3) Metal free block/sheave for running Kevlar line through (Co-I Twining will bring his own (non-conducting) line to put on the ship's winch for hanging bottles). We are hoping that on Melville and Revelle we can keep the Kevlar line clean in terms of trace iron contamination.
4) Bow-mounted radiometers (the Revelle fabricated an elegant mount for us to do this which they may still have on the ship.
5) Flowing seawater system for underway measurements of optics and SAMI pCO2 system
6) McLane pumps (from WHOI pool) for in situ pumping
7) CTD/hydrocast capabilities
8) Fume hood (for working with acetone and 1ft^2 of space for concentrated HNO3, plus concentrated NH4OH work for 234Th sample processing)
9) access to Met/Nav data
10) ADCP
11) Thermosalinograph data
12) Marine tech support for running nutrient (NO3, NO2, PO4, Si(OH)4), DO and Salinity at ~60 profiles per cruise, plus running nutrients on carboy experiments.
13) Capability to hang McLane pumps for 4-5h deployments. The McLane in situ pumps will also be deployed off (hopefully same non-conducting metal-free line as Twining GO-FLO bottles
14) We will need space on the fan tail for flow-through incubators. They have a foot print of 4' x 4' and we expect to have 3 or 4 of them. These will be to incubate large carboys in ambient seawater plus smaller bottles for primary production/calcification incubations, thus we'd need a seawater line to supply them. We'll also have hose drains leading overboard
15) We will be doing experiments involving CO2 bubbling in the incubators, thus will be bringing ~20 bottles of CO2/air mixture. These ideally would be stored out on deck.
16) Co-investigator Lam will also have 2-3 bottles of counting gas (99% argon, 1% isobutane) for counting 234Th at sea. These will have to be secured on deck but with access to an interior lab.
17) If possible, we would like to load as much as possible of equipment, hazmats, isotopes, gases in San Diego before Melville sails in October 2010. We fully understand that this must be cleared at multiple levels.
18) Co-investigator Lam has requested for one gravity core with overlying plankton tow (150-300um mesh) for the Punta Arenas to Cape Town leg. The location would be near 50oS x 0oW (location near a previously cored site . We would need to discuss at our cruise planning meeting which cable would be available for this, time needed for the deployment and recovery as well as any other logistical issues. I'm assuming we would need 3.5 Khz sonar capability as well in order to choose the "soft spot" for the core, plus presumably the articulating crane in order to deploy the corer over the side. Co-I Lam has discussed this with the STS. |
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Summary of other requirements and comments: |
The cruise tracks are designed in order that the available time for dedicated science on station is 8h d-1. There will be seven types of station sampling: 1) underway sampling for hydrography and optics, 2) CTD no-water, 3) CTD with water (for measuring everything except productivity), 4) CTD with water including productivity and a separate cast of trace-metal clean Niskin-X bottles, 5) in situ pumping stations, 6) in-water optics sampling and 7) one station for a standard gravity core. The reason for this stratified sampling is related to both finances and time. Underway sampling will provide us the fastest way to survey an area for coccolithophores. Pumping stations and productivity stations are the most costly in terms of supplies, wire time and technician time to process. At the other extreme are CTD/no-water casts which can be done quickly and cheaply. Thus, we are planning ~120 CTD casts for each leg, half of which will involve collecting water (the other half would be CTD only) which will provide a horizontal resolution of the hydrography of ~100km. Profiles of other discrete water samples (including chlorophyll, POC, PIC, DIC, cell counts, biogenic silica, CTDs, etc.) will be measured at ~60 stations per cruise (with effective station spacing of ~200km). Productivity casts will always be done pre-dawn and will include all particulate analyses and CTD measurements. The incubations will always run for 24h. There will ideally be one productivity/trace-metal station per day or about 30 per cruise (station spacing for productivity/calcification will be ~400km). There will be up to fifteen 12-18 depth 234Th profiles taken in the upper 400m every other day by CTD to determine 234Th export and remineralization. Each 234Th profile will have an accompanying 6-depth in-situ pumping profile to determine size fractionated (>51?m and 1-51?m) 234Th:POC ratios. A free-fall optical profiler will be deployed at local apparent noon when sea-state permits and skies are clear (thus maybe 10 profiles per cruise leg?). These provide subsurface radiance and irradiance estimates as a function of depth, which can be inverted to derive inherent optical properties (that can be related to POC and PIC distributions). Carboy experiments will be conducted on the main deck involving ocean acidification (and bubbling with 4 different CO2 gas mixtures). There will be 5 such experiments over the course of the cruise. We will also run 3 trace-metal-addition experiments in carboys on the fan tail during the cruise. |
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Type of Request: |
Primary Ship Use |
Request Status: |
Submitted |
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Request ID: |
1003215 |
Created By: |
William M. Balch |
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Date Last Modified: |
3/5/2010 5:17:00 PM |
Date Submitted: |
8/14/2009 12:36:00 PM |
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Year: |
2011
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Ship/Facility: |
Melville
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Optimum Start Date:
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1/10/2011 |
Dates to Avoid: |
The McLane pumps proposed for Dr. Lam's part of this work will be used for the Geo-Traces cruise, finishing on 5 December 2010 in WHOI. I am assuming that the minimum time to get them turned around and shipped from WHOI to Punta Arenas would be ~one month. Any less than that might risk them not making it to the cruise |
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Earliest Start Date: |
1/7/2011 |
Multi-Ship Op: |
No |
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Latest Start Date: |
1/20/2011 |
Other Ship(s): |
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Operating Days Needed: |
Science Days |
Mob Days |
De-Mob Days |
Estimated Transit Days |
Total Days |
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35 |
3 |
2 |
2 |
42 |
Repeating Cruise?
(within same year) |
No |
Interval: |
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# of Cruises: |
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Description of Repeating cruise requirements: |
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Justification/Explanation for ship choice, dates,
conflicts, number of days & multi-ship operations: |
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Short Description of Op Area
for use in schedules: |
S. Atl Ocean |
| Description of Op Area: |
We will depart Punta Arenas, S.A. and steam roughly to the 50oS parallel, then heading eastward. This track will ultimately be determined by satellite remote sensing of the Great Belt
At 20oW we would do a north-south line between 30oS and 60oS. After completing this we would rejoin the line along 50oS continuing to Cape Town, South Africa. |
| Op Area Size/Dia.: |
6500 |
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Lat/Long |
Marsden Grid |
Navy Op Area |
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Beginning
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Ending
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Foreign Clearance Required? |
Yes |
Coastal States:
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 Important Info on Foreign Research Clearances
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Are you or any member in your science party bringing in any science equipment items which are regulated for export by the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) and/or the Export Administration Regulations (EAR)?
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No |
If yes, have you applied for the necessary permits through your export control office?
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No |
| Questions about ITAR/EAR regulations?
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Comments about foreign clearance requirements or
description of any other special permitting requirements
(e.g., MMPA, ESA, IHA, Marine Sanctuaries, etc.) |
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Requested Start Port |
Intermediate Port(s) |
Requested End Port |
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Rada Punta Arenas, Chile |
None |
Cape Town, South Africa |
Explanation/justification for requested
ports and dates of intermediate stops
or to list additional port stops |
These ports provide optimal access to the 50oS line and the correct distance of separation. I note that SIO lists ships agents in each port. |
Important Info on Working in Foreign Ports
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Chief Scientist: |
William M. Balch, Bigelow |
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# in Science Party |
20 |
# of different science teams |
4 |
# Marine Technicians to be
provided by ship operator:
(include in science party total)
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4 |
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Explanation of Science Party Requirements and Technician Requirements |
The cruise would require two SIO ship techs for round the clock CTD operation, a chemist for running nutrients/O2/salts, and computer tech for data archival |
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 Dynamic Positioning |  ADCP | Multibeam | Seismic |
| Dredging/Coring/Large Dia. Trawl Wire | Stern A-frame | Fiber Optic (.681) | 0.680 Coax Wire |
| SCUBA Diving | Radioisotope use - briefly describe | NO Radioisotope use/Natural level work | Other Operator Provided Inst. - Describe |
| 2 PI-Provided Vans - briefly describe | MOCNESS | | |
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Explain Instrumentation or Capability
requirements that could affect choice
of ship in scheduling. |
a) Radioisotope use- 14C primary production/calcification work (the same that we have done aboard R/V Revelle on 3 previous cruises.
b) Trace metal clean space is needed aboard ship for this work. Preferably, this could be done using a UNOLS trace metal clean van, if one is available. If no such van is available, we request a standard 20' lab van (with benches), within which we would make a trace-metal clean "bubble" to greatly simplify deployment and recovery of the trace metal sampling bottles from the Kevlar line directly into the van on the back deck. If neither of the two options are available, the work would be conducted on the ship by creating a trace-metal clean 'bubble' in one of the ship's labs.
c) CTD/hydrocast capability with 30L Niskins
d) We are requesting dynamic positioning since we will have McLane pumps suspended for 4-5 hours at a time.
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Explain Major Ancillary Facilities
Requirements and list description
and provider for "other" systems. |
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