We have a little bit of press coverage here at LSU. See the post on our work at the College of Science website HERE.
Tag: hypoxia
Ending the first Diel sampling set
Enjoy some time pictures from time points 0200 and 0600 as we completed our 24 hour survey at the C transect site. The video I have uploaded is of the Platform and its fog horn that sounds every 20 seconds or so. Its a real joy to work and sleep to.
Diel Sampling: Update
Well Day 1 has come and starting to end though my day will still go on for another 10-12 hours. When I woke up this AM, the ship was tossing and rolling quiet a bit for being in the Gulf. The first time point was at 0600 and between lack of sleep, an early morning, and some good waves, I wasn’t exactly feeling bright eyed and bushy tailed, nor was anyone else. Alas, the day went on and the time points began to come and go.
The first and second time points were split up by a trip just past the site C6B where Dr. Nancy Rabalais (LUMCON) and Dr. Brian Roberts (LUMCON) took sediment cores for experiments they wanted to run back at LUMCON.
The second time point was quiet, it was just me sampling so I had the whole CTD to myself. But of course the day isn’t complete without some type of problem ! HA! I am three for three on cruises that have some sort of issue, but some say thats oceanography. Anyways, thanks to the awesome crew of the RV Pelican, and some patience, we got the hydraulics fixed and were able to once again deploy the CTD.
While on the water, you get to see a lot of things : dolphins, fish, jelly fish, etc. But today, between time point three and four, I got to see a Water Spout which I was really excited about. It was pretty far away and the only picture we got is thanks to Mary Kate.
Overall, all is going well. I am waiting for time point 5 to come (2200) and then hopefully get a nap in before time point 6 (0200). Follow my twitter account (@Hensonmw_08) for more live updates. Enjoy some pictures!
Cheers,
Mike
Diel sampling: Cruise number two with the LUMCON team
Today, we board the RV Pelican for a second time in two weeks. The Thrash lab will be sampling with Mary Kate Rogener (@mkrogener) from Dr. Samantha Joye’s lab (UGA), Post Doc Ari Chelsky (Brian Roberts, LUMCON), Lauren Gillies and Erin (@GilliesLE) from Dr. Olivia Mason (FSU), and Wokil Bam from Dr. R. Eugene Turner‘s lab (LSU) under the lead of Dr. Nancy Rabalais (LUMCON).
Unlike the NGOM Shelfwide Hypxoia cruise, we will be focusing this cruise on two sampling sites within the Hypoxia transect over 24 hours.
Sampling will once again include three depths, while collecting water for nutrient data and filters for microbial community data. The idea will be similar to our Fronts sampling.
Others on the cruise will be working on sediment cores (I am excited for this!) as well as work on biogeochemistry rates.
Follow along as we go on our five day journey! And don’t be afraid to ask some questions! And Make sure to follow me on Twitter for live updates (@Hensonmw_08) as well as Mary Kate (@mkrogener) and Lauren (@GilliesLE).
Cheers,
Mike
Northern Gulf of Mexico Shelfwide Hypoxia Cruise
Two weeks ago, I was able to take part in the 6 day Northern Gulf of Mexico research cruise. This is its 31st year that it is going on and our third year taking part in it (see 1, 2). This year I was the lucky one to go instead of Dr. Thrash. This was my first official collection cruise so I was pretty excited to finally get out on a boat and put into practice everything I had learned while at the CMORE summer course.
Once again, our lab was working with Dr. Olivia Mason from Florida State University and her graduate student Lauren Gillies (@GilliesLE), who recently published a paper with Dr. Thrash from the 2013 research cruise: Archaeal enrichment in the hypoxic zone in the northern Gulf of Mexico. Congrats to them!
Though for the most part the set up and collection was the same as past years, this year I added a little twist to the game: Culturing.
The cruise was a lot of fun and as usual I learned a ton about the Northern Gulf of Mexico and hypoxia. The main focus of the rest of the cruise was determining the size and nature of the 2015 “dead zone”. Dr. Rabalais (LUMCON) and her team worked countless hours to make sure all the data was collected and ready to be sent to NOAA, the EPA, and the public. This year we found that the dead zone was larger then scientists had predicted. This year’s dead zone extended over more than 6,400 square miles.
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2015/080415-gulf-of-mexico-dead-zone-above-average.html
A few more pictures of me with some of the awesome graduate researchers (Mary Kate Rogener (@mkrogener) from Dr. Samantha Joye’s lab (UGA)) and Post Doc Ari Chelsky (Brian Roberts, LUMCON) also on board the RV Pelican.
Keep an eye out for more publications from the Mason and Thrash groups on this exciting research area!
Cheers,
MWH
Shelfwide cruise roundup, for now
Nancy Rabalais’s team has been able to process some of the data and issued a press release on this year’s bottom water hypoxia. As I mentioned in the last post, the zone of hypoxia was actually two zones, which you can see below. The total estimated square mileage of bottom water at or below 2 mg/L dissolved oxygen was 5,052 square miles/14,785 square kilometers, which is almost three times larger than the goal proposed by the Mississippi River Gulf of Mexico Watershed Nutrient Task Force in 2001 and 2008.
I can provide some additional thoughts with pretty HD video to boot. The eastern stations, as seen in the chlorophyll map, were predominantly green water, with considerable phyotoplankton mass present in the water column. We could observe significant green-colored biomass both on the GF/D pre-filters and the 0.22 µm Sterivex filters. This is also what you see if you are actually in the water, and the video from the green-water CTD cast at station B6 confirms what was seen with the CTD instrumentation and the filters. Convenient, eh? There is dense, murky greenness at the surface. Deeper, the visibility improves as we get below the highest biomass concentration, but towards the bottom, where hypoxia was observed, we again see increased turbidity, but of a different sort. It’s much whiter than that at the surface. On the return trip, considerable marine snow can be seen (along with a jelly or two and other marine invertebrates).
The western stations, as you might imagine by looking at the surface chlorophyll data, were blue water, with very little phyotplankton mass compared to the eastern stations. The cast at station K3 shows beautiful blue water with high visibility (diver’s paradise), but as you descend, you again pick up the whitish turbidity at the bottom layer where hypoxia was observed.
Sterivex filters from this section were light pink, a phenomenon we observed last year as well. The 16S rRNA and metagenomic data will, among other things, help us uncover a bit more about the variant prokaryotic taxa seen in these contrasting zones of hypoxia.
-jct
2014 Shelfwide cruising update 4
Well, that’s all folks. We’re headed home. We only found isolated pockets of hypoxia found a smaller coastal patch of hypoxia west of the F line. We searched western transects all the way to the P line, which is off the map I posted below in the first update. All in all, Lauren and I collected over 100 samples. It’s going to be an exciting dataset, for sure. I’ll update the blog with higher quality images when I get back, and look for some cool CTD cast videos, brought to you by Mike Henson’s GoPro.
-jct
