Final post from the Thassala

By Camille Lique

RREX cruise: R/V Thassala

It is been a week since we came back to dry land. After 35 days at sea, everyone was pretty excited to be back at home!

Looking back at what we achieved, the cruise is already a big success, as we managed to carry out all that was initially planned (and even more). It is now time to look more in detail at the data from the 131 CTD casts, the ADCP transects, and the 58 microstructure profiles. Some of the autonomous instruments we deployed during the cruise should (obviously) send observation for the next few years. A twin cruise should happen in 2017 to recover the 9 moorings we left at sea, and gather more in situ observations. Now it is time to start a new phase of the work, as it will probably take months (if not years), to dissect all the data and unravel all the physical processes we have capture in our the set of observations. This should allow us to provide a comprehensive description of the oceanic conditions in this region, and to better describe, quantify and understand all the complex oceanic features encompassed in the dataset.

At a time when we are all getting back to a more normal life, we also know that this experience at sea will remain in our mind for a long time.

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