The main lab is empty, downright bereft of instruments (mine is the only computer in sight) and people. They’re all out on the fantail loading gear and craning it onto the hardcore industrial wharf… More »
This is where it starts for most grad students in oceanography—with CTD deployment from the starboard side of a research vessel while boarding seas slosh around their shins.… More »
I think I’ve said more than once that subtropical gyres characterize all oceans, “except” one. That one is the Southern Ocean. Unlike all the others (both Pacifics, both Atlantics, and the Indian Ocean)… More »
As we left it last time, Sverdrup and Ekman had explained ocean gyres, thus laying the intellectual foundation of a new science.… More »
Mooring ops complete, a little time on our hands, let’s take a quick look back at the early days of oceanography before all this gee-whiz technology when guys were per force thinking… More »
At this writing shortly after breakfast, the last mooring is going out. It’s a long one, 4,000 meters—that’s 2.48 miles. We’ve been extremely lucky with the weather, four days of… More »
Though we give them individual names for our own convenience of reference, there is no such thing in the world ocean as a singleton current that, like a river, begins at one point and ends… More »
34°40.5’ South by 028°15’ East: The Agulhas Current is as calm today as I’ve ever seen it. A tropical-style squall has formed up away to the west, just to add a bit of variety to a perfect blue-sky day out here in the… More »
