Category Archive

Having collected another set of data from our familiar C2 site, we are now steaming to a location a bit south of the A1 mooring.  Once there we will begin another CTD/LADCP profile until the weather chases us away again.  This time a storm is coming up from the south, and so we will be running north to stay just … Read More

The Tasman Sea is not happy. For the past couple of days, waves have been crashing over the bow, and sustained winds have routinely been blowing above 35 kts. Several of us have been sick, or at best, feeling very tired. We haven’t been able to profile with the CTD/LADCP system. It has been rough. The Tasman Sea on a … Read More

The moment that all field scientists crave has arrived – preliminary data!  Team T-Beam ran two successful profiles and are hot on the trail of identifying the area of highest energy of the internal tide.  Here’s an update of their progress so far.  During a preliminary 30 hour period, the ship steamed back and forth across a 200km transect thought … Read More

Although we are furiously chasing after internal waves underneath the ocean surface in the Tasman Sea, we got a pleasant surprise the other day on a transit between stations – beautiful atmospheric “internal waves” in the sky above us! – Amy Waterhouse, Falkor The Tasman Tidal Dissipation Experiment//Supported by the National Science Foundation

Whilst Falkor is rushing about chasing internal waves for next few weeks, this platform is also being modestly utilized to hunt down any microplastics that may cross its path. Back in my home state of Victoria, I have been collaborating with researchers Slobodanka Stojkovic and Mark Osborn from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), and citizen scientists to investigate … Read More

If you’ve been paying any attention at all to the news in the last, say, two decades, you will know that the temperature of the ocean is increasing. Many national and international agencies and non-profit organizations have devoted funding to study these phenomena and they all point to the same answer – Earth’s ocean is getting warmer. Understanding how the … Read More

This week Pete and I started doing our experiments with water collected from the CTD profiles. We are using the water to conduct chlorophyll measurements, particular organic matter contents, nutrient samples and incubation experiments. All the data that will be collected from our water samples will help us to piece together the possible mixing that is being caused by the … Read More

The connection between physical processes in the ocean and the organisms that live in it can be summed up with one word: Nutrients.  The movement of nutrients through the ocean by tides, gyres, eddies, and waves are in fact the reason we can exist on Earth.  That’s a bold statement, I admit, but let’s examine it a bit more closely.  … Read More

Well, not just passing, but collaborating in a very unique way. By the time Falkor started steaming out of Hobart, the RV Revelle had been at sea for a week and a half, deploying their record 15 moorings and starting CTD-LADCP profiling along the continental slope of Tasmania. With the Revelle’s head start on the science, we decided to make … Read More

Yesterday found me standing on the aft deck of Falkor, gripping a rope to hold the swinging CTD rosette steady as we lowered it over the side and into the ocean. The rogue wave that crashed across the deck managed to soak my work boots and my jeans up to the knee. Even in fairly good weather, ocean fieldwork is … Read More