Meet the Teacher:

Joanne Greenleaf

One objective of this cruise will be to determine the particulate components in oceanic blue water conditions (known as optical "Case I" waters) that contribute to the backscattering of light. Backscattered light is the signal measured by remote sensing satellites, imagers and commercial and military LIDAR (LIght Detection And Ranging) systems. One of the fundamental problems in ocean optics over the past several decades has been understanding the source of backscattering in the ocean.

During the transit to and from the open ocean site, we will also deploy an undulating towed vehicle called the DOLPHIN. The DOLPHIN contains a Seabird SBE-49 CTD, two WET Labs ac9s, a WET Labs BB3 and a SAM (Miller et al. 2003, Backscatter 14(2):8-12). During normal operation the instrument undulates between the near surface and ~ 40 m while the ship is underway and provides data with high spatial resolution in both the horizontal and vertical directions. The DOLPHIN data is visualized in real-time on-board the vessel and will be used to resolve the gradient in optical properties during transit to blue water and to assess when we have reached an appropriate blue water site for the proposed work.

The second objective is to test a sensor prototype developed for the U.S. Navy to measure fundamental optical properties of seawater on AUVs.  This testing will be accomplished through integrating the prototype sensor onto the slow DROP. The data from this new sensor will be compared and analyzed in reference to the extensive optical measurements made by the slow DROP.