Woohoo! The Golden Dragon

by Isa Rosso

On July 24th, we crossed the International Date Line (IDL). So, we had July 24th twice. Crossing a (imaginary) line of navigation on a vessel means ceremony, initiation rite. However, because we lost some time for the bad weather, the ceremony has been postponed for later, during the transit to Tahiti. I can't wait!

I was reading on Wikipedia the other day about the IDL, and I got super excited! Apparently in the navy, those who cross the IDL become part of the Imperial Order of the Golden Dragon.. Oooh!! I like that!! (it just gave me an idea for my 4th dragon tattoo.. hmmm!). 

We sailed over many interesting topographic features since the crossing, but I'll leave this topic for the next time. Today, instead, I want to talk about biogeochemical floats we are deploying on this cruise, which are part of the fleet of floats that the Southern Ocean Carbon and Climate Observation and Modeling project (SOCCOM) is building. Becki already talked about Argo floats in a previous post (see it here). On this leg, we are going to deploy 2 SOCCOM floats, followed by another 4 on the next leg. At the moment, there are 80 active floats which have been deployed since 2014 in the Southern Ocean. The goal of SOCCOM is to increase the coverage of biogeochemical and physical observations in the Southern Ocean, in order to ``unlock the mysteries'' that its poorly explored waters hide. The Southern Ocean is a very "moody'' environment to explore, with violent winds and nasty storms. Further south, the presence of sea ice makes observations even more difficult. Deploying these sophisticated underwater robots allow us to establish a multi-year coverage of data: the battery and the 10-day cycle allow a lifetime of at least 3 years, collecting data to a depth of 2000 m.

Sydney, just before the cruise started: boxes containing the SOCCOM floats are moved onto the ship

These floats behave like the Argo ones, descending to a parking depth of 1000 m, then drifting for ~10 days, sinking to 2000 m and ascending to the surface, while collecting data. While at the surface, they send the data collected from their 2000 m to surface ascent to satellites via an antenna located at the top. Like the Argo floats, they measure temperature, salinity, and pressure, but they are also equipped with biogeochemical sensors for nitrate, oxygen, chlorophyll and pH. 

July 28 was another exciting day for this project: the first SOCCOM float was deployed at 32 30' S, 174 50' W!! Following tradition (see blogs on the SOCCOM website), the float was ''prepared'' for its voyage. Students, crew members, and technicians had fun drawing, writing quotes, names or their University logo on it! And, as per tradition, the float received a name as well… 

Whoohoo! The Golden Dragon! 

    

Prep of the float. Natalie, on the left, and Kelly (right) are drawing on the float

Woohoo! The Golden Dragon is doing well: its sensors are all working fine, and the first profiles have already been sent. You can look at these data (and all the profiles from each of the SOCCOM floats) here: http://soccom.princeton.edu/content/float-data 

pH, chlorophyll, oxygen, temperature, salinity and nitrate depth profiles (depth is on the x axis) for the float #12380

Deployment of WhooHoo! The Golden Dragon (photos are extracted from a video recorded by Natalie Zielinski)