Sep
3
Posted by:
Fabian Wolk
Friday, September 03, 2010
Ponta Delgada, August 30, 2010. IFM-GEOMAR successfully completed eleven dives with their AUV Abyss, carrying a customized version of the Rockland Scientific MicroRider sensor package. Principle Investigator Prof. Torsten Kanzow and his AUV team visited a hydrothermal field, known as Lucky Strike, west of the Azores.
Initial technical setbacks were rapidly remedied when Rockland dispatched their engineer, Andre Sodermans, to meet the R/V Poseidon at Flores Island, where he joined the cruise and exchanged a circuit board that malfunctioned in the cold temperatures of the abyssal ocean. The MicroRider system performed flawlessly after the replacement.
The Lucky Strike region in the mid-Atlantic has been previously identified as an area of intense turbulence mixing. Recent observations by St. Laurent and Thurnherr, performed with the Rockland VMP-6000 and published in Nature (2007), show that intense turbulence mixing is generated by bottom flows passing over ridges and through narrow passages in topography.
The goals of the IFM GEOMAR team on this cruise were, among other things, to demonstrate that an AUV can be used as a platform for mapping near-bottom turbulent dissipation rates; and to investigate the effects of bottom topography and bottom flow field on diapycnal turbulent mixing processes.
For further information, please see the IFM GEOMAR website (in German) or contact IFM GEOMAR.
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