RU COOL?

Things are starting to bustle at Palmer Station! The other day I went out with the phytoplankton group from Rutgers University Coastal Ocean Observational Lab (RU COOL, hence the blog title) to release one of their Slocum Gliders. Gliders are released in harsh environments (like Antarctica) to make real-time observations when it is too dangerous to send out a human. They measure things such as dissolved oxygen, temperature, and chlorophylls to measure phytoplankton biomass and productivity over large spatial domains. As the glider travels it dives up and down taking measurements, surfacing to send its coordinates back to the lab.

To release the glider we loaded it into the zodiac and head for Outcast Island, one of the outer-lying islands surrounding Palmer. We then continued on for about a mile to give the glider a wide berth, you have to release them far away from land because they take a very long time to turn (rudder on the tail).  We then attached a buoy and rope to the glider for a dive test run, after it successfully dives (instructions sent via satellite from Rutgers) and comes back to the surface we took off the rope and let it go for good.

The Glider! 

Waiting for the Glider to do a test dive

Sadly, that day the glider didn’t do so well, it was apparently swimming backwards and they had to go retrieve it. However, since then it has been released again and is successfully navigating itself around Palmer Canyon. Here is the lab website if you’re interested: http://rucool.marine.rutgers.edu/

Kim and I have had several full days of sampling, where we go to 26 different GPS points on the sampling grid. Overall, it takes 5 hours or so – but we’ve had great weather the past few days and so it’s awesome to be out on the water. We’re hoping to see some whales, so far there’s been sightings of both humpback and minke whales, but we haven’t seen either.