Two days after our return to land, we wanted to give the 2016 West Coast Ocean Acidification Cruise blog a final send-off (‘we’ being the Leg 2 at-sea bloggers Spencer, Meghan and Katie – aka ‘SMK’ – and shore-based editor Meg). It’s been an incredible experience to explore and learn along with the scientists on board, and we’ve greatly enjoyed sharing the experiences of this ship with you. Continue reading “Goodbye for now”
Introduction
The NOAA Ocean Acidification Program (OAP) West Coast Cruise was conducted in the coastal waters of Baja California, California, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia during the spring of 2016 (5 May – 7 June; Figure 1). The oceanographic conditions during this cruise varied significantly from those observed in this region during our last NOAA ocean acidification cruise in the summer of 2013 Continue reading “A Preliminary View of the 2016 NOAA West Coast Ocean Acidification Cruise Results”
After 35 days at sea (replaying the following video 35 times will give you a rough idea), we thought we would ask each member of the scientific team what their experience was like, rather than write a one-sided view of an individual’s experience.
Continue reading “35 Sunsets Later: Closing thoughts”
The Pacific Ocean has no borders. However, tracking ocean conditions across political borders requires coordination and collaboration. The Hakai Institute’s two coastal ecological observatories are situated almost perfectly at the center of the British Columbia-sized geographical gap between Washington and Alaska. With scientific facilities on both Calvert and Quadra Islands in British Columbia, the Hakai Institute is uniquely placed to add a Canadian complement to NOAA’s ocean acidification monitoring in US waters. Continue reading “Tracking ocean acidification across political boundaries: NOAA-Hakai Institute collaboration”
If you’ve been following this blog for the last month as our intrepid group sails along the West Coast, you’ve probably read quite a few detailed posts describing our sampling procedures, measurement techniques, and experimental designs. Talking about our work is part of the job. Even so, sometimes we scientists can get a bit stuck in our ways, and when we are asked to step away from the tried-and-true journals, seminars, and scientific reports that we routinely use to talk about our research, funny things happen. A few days ago, the blog team challenged our fellow scientists to a research haiku contest. It didn’t take long to discover that condensing our research into 17 syllables can be quite a task, yet our fellow scientists proved themselves worthy to the task. Continue reading “Waxing poetic about science”
You’ve seen the CTD in action in Ring around the Rosette and read about all the different types of samples we take. But for all the incredible scientific opportunities the CTD provides, we still don’t have a name for her (or him!).
We asked scientists onboard for their suggestions. Continue reading “What would you name the CTD?”
If you’ve been following this blog, you’re probably pretty familiar with ocean acidification by now, but figuring out what’s going on with the ocean chemistry is not actually as simple as just measuring the pH. Continue reading “The Basics on Alkalinity”
Among the biologists onboard the NOAA Ship Ronald H. Brown are Dr. Jonna Engström-Öst and Dr. Olivier Glippa from the Novia University of Applied Sciences in Finland. As we mentioned in another post, one of the zooplankton groups being examined on this cruise is copepods, small crustaceans of the subclass Copepoda. Continue reading “Scoping out Copepods”
The nighttime bongo tows (see The Scoop from the Zooplankton Nets) provide a wealth of organisms for the biologists aboard the NOAA Ship Ronald H. Brown to study. From krill and crabs to copepods and pteropods, researchers aboard the Brown are interested in one unifying question: How will ocean acidification change the distribution and abundance of these organisms? Continue reading “Pterotomics: The Molecular Machinery of Pteropods”
By now, you’ve heard of harmful algal blooms wreaking havoc along the California Current system. But what are these algal blooms actually doing that is so harmful? Continue reading “Harmful Algal Blooms: Why do we care?”
West Coast Ocean Acidification 