Tidy Preparings - Getting Ready to Find Internal Tides

Research vessel Falkor is set to take off from Hobart, as one of the TTIDE cruises

TTIDE Sampling

Our main sampling method on Falkor will use the shipboard CTD

Pete Strutton and Danielle Mitchell have been busy setting up the wet lab in anticipation of samples that will be used to measure biological productivity within an internal wave beam. In addition to helping us with equipment preparations, Dmitry Brazhnikov has set up numerical models on the new supercomputer Nebula

Looking at Internal Tides

Our group is tasked with determining what an internal tide beam looks like offshore of Tasmania, focusing on the “before” of this internal wave’s lifecycle. We will need to get profiles of velocity, density, turbulence, and nutrients throughout the whole water column in order to understand this internal wave. From there, we can figure out how wide the internal tide beam is, how much it varies, how strong it is before it reaches the Tasman slope, and how much productivity changes inside this internal wave beam.

Two Ships One Focus

The other TTIDE group

Our team on Falkor consists of a great group of scientists from the United States, Canada, Australia, Germany and Russia, and everyone has already started working hard. Hayley Dosser and Dmitry Brazhnikov connected with two middle school groups from Los Alamos, New Mexico and San Diego, giving them a tour of the ship and explaining how we plan to do our science. Pete Strutton, Captain Heiko and I also had the pleasure of meeting with Her Excellency Professor the Honourable Kate Warner, AM, Governor of Tasmania a few days ago.

With recent science articles reporting that 2014 was the warmest year on record, it has reminded us of the importance of our work, bringing our science into perspective. With everyone’s expertise and knowledge, I know we will have a great cruise filled with amazing science and discovery!