Science Results : Daily Update

Daily Update | Current SEA Research

June 11, 2010

By Giora Proskurowski

There is very little science to report, as we left port today at 1400, got fuel at the dockyard across the bay from Hamilton at 1500, dropped the pilots at the pilot station at 1700, and are now still in eyesight of Bermuda.

We are going to get started this evening with the inaugural deployment of the Plastics at SEA Expedition; fittingly, a surface plankton net tow using the neuston net, the workhorse of this cruise. As a preview of the data we expect to produce, I plotted up the data from neuston tows that the College of Charleston students conducted during their recent 10-day SEA program aboard the Cramer, transiting from Charleston to Bermuda.

You will notice that there were no stations early in the trip; this was due to difficult weather. You may also notice that the concentration of plastics (in number of pieces per square kilometer) increased as the Cramer got closer to Bermuda. While this is not unexpected – the North Atlantic subtropical gyre (a region of weak winds and slow currents) is centered just west of the middle of the Atlantic – it is somewhat surprising that the few data points show such an even increase upon entering the gyre.