by Loic Houpert
It’s been now more than a week that we left Glasgow on the RRS Discovery for the OSNAP cruise DY053. We entered the Iceland Basin yesterday to start the maintenance of the US moorings, after successfully turnover the SAMS moorings in Rockall Trough and recover Bowmore (the SAMS glider) on Rockall Plateau.
The RRS Discovery left Glasgow on Wednesday 29th June. The SAMS team (Estelle, John, Karen, Kamila, Stuart and myself) had the shortest trip to join the ship. Yunli, a technician from Ocean University of China, came from Qingdao (in China)! We also have a lot of people coming from the US. Bill Johns and his team (Adam, Cobi, Mark, Greg, Tiago and Dom) came from Miami, and Heather came from Woods Hole (in the Massachusetts). Dave, Chris, Steve, Andy, Jeff and Zoltan are all based at NOC (Southampton) and complete the science party of this scientific cruise.
The purpose of this OSNAP cruise is to service the Scottish and US moorings, deploy RAFOS floats, and deploy and recover gliders. All these observation are essential for us to better understand the ocean circulation and its role on the European and global climate. Moreover there is mounting evidence of the importance of the ocean circulation in the subpolar North Atlantic for the region’s marine ecosystem, the formation of hurricanes, and rainfall in the Sahel, and parts of the USA.
