La Jolla Canyon Operations

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For the next few days, R/V Sally Ride will be doing science operations as part of a verification cruise in La Jolla Canyon. Just outside of the marine protected area, the ship will be recovering moorings for the lab groups of Dr. Ana Sirovic and Dr. Matthew Alford. Deployed from R/V Sproul back in September, there are five moorings that will be released and brought onboard during daylight operations tomorrow and, if necessary, finished the following day. Some have been recording sounds from marine animals, while others have ADCPs (acoustic doppler current profilers) that operate at 75kHz and collect data on internal waves.

Overnight the ship will be running CTD yo-yos, where the sensor package is sent back and forth between a few meters off the seafloor and a few meters from the surface. The roundtrip should take about 25 minutes, and will be repeated continuously for 12 hours. This supplements the ADCP data onboard and on the moorings. Chief scientist Maddie Hamann, a graduate student in the Alford lab, will process this data as part of her thesis on the dissipation of internal waves in La Jolla Canyon. 

Many more details and photos to come. Check out the Facebook Live event during the load here.