Subject: NEGOM-7 rpt for Sunday 21 Nov
Date: Sun, 21 Nov 1999 09:10:50 EST
From: Gyremail@aol.com
To: mkhoward@tamu.edu, ann@portia
CC: carib@carbon.marine.usf.edu, pcoble@seas.marine.usf.edu, eshaar@ocean,carol@century21bcs.com

We finished Line 10 at 6:45 AM local time this morning and at 7 AM are underway towards seaward end of our final Line 11. This Line 11 takes about 24 h to run and so if we are not delayed by wind/waves from approaching cold front, we should get in to USF mid-morning tomorrow Monday 11/22. Last evening the CNN News/Weather showed that the latest cold front had pushed across the GulfCoast to reach Tallahassee but we hope it has stalled and will now dissipate w/o affecting us at 27.5N. Seas are almost calm this morning and we're making good time on this transit. -doug sends

Subject: NEGOM-7 cruise rpt for Sat 20 Nov
Date: Sat, 20 Nov 1999 16:37:17 EST
From: Gyremail@aol.com
To: ann@portia, mkhoward@tamu.edu
CC: carib@carbon.marine.usf.edu, pcoble@seas.marine.usf.edu, eshaar@ocean,carol@century21bcs.com

We finished Line 9 at 4 AM local time this morning and at 7 AM we're underway along the inner shelf 'way down along the Suwannee River. Equipment working all right; as part of our near-real0\-time QA/QC for N7. Norman has been generating property-property plots of nutrients and oxygen versus sigma-t. These show good agreement with "historical" (N1-N6) data. Wind continues out of the east today but fetch is short here and speed has finally dropped below 15 knots so we're having a good ride this morning. Narrowband 153 kHz ADCP was installed as planned, in a swap out with BB ADCP earlier this morning; we'll run this NB along Lines 10 and 11 and also on next leg (StPete back to Galveston). We had one drifter remaining after deploying two dozen of them at sites requested by Price so we put this one in last night over the middle shelf of BigBend (L08S06X).
-doug sends

Subject: NEGOM-7 cruise report for Fri 19 Nov
Date: Fri, 19 Nov 1999 09:28:40 EST
From: Gyremail@aol.com
To: ann@portia, mkhoward@tamu.edu
CC: carib@carbon.marine.usf.edu, pcoble@seas.marine.usf.edu, eshaar@ocean, carol@century21bcs.com

We finished Line 8 at 2:30 AM last evening and started Line 9 just after 5:30 AM this morning. We'll work our way inshore along Line 9 today, but it looks like it will be another day of rockin' and rollin' with seas again coming at us out of the east. Frank, Bisman has done at least one light meter cast daily in window of opportunity 10:30 AM - 2:30 PM. Matt, we have 1 oil drifter remaining and we will deploy that today over middle shelf of Big Bend (L09S06X). I hope this can give some useful info about this region since all of rest of Price's drifters were deployed west of Line 7 as he requested. Frank and Paula, we invite you and others at USF to come down to see R/V Gyre on Monday when we come into StPete; we expect to arrive about local noon. Captn Dyer is planning for a short turn around time (a few hours) and most of the biogeochem lab equipment will have been packed up but Norman and I will be happy to lead some show-and-tell sessions while we are offloading and vessel is taking on some groceries and the XBTs that are being shipped to USF to be loaded aboard for survey work on return trip StPete back to Galveston.

Thanks, Matt, for sending us details about the tragedy at TAMU yesterday. Captn Dyer was able to tape record a 5 min segment of summary news on CNN last evening so we were able to see video of the amount of collapse. Unhappily, one of those killed was a Navy cadet known to Roland Clark.
-doug sends

Subject: NEGOM-7 cruise rpt for Thurs 18 Nov
Date: Thu, 18 Nov 1999 09:40:59 EST
From: Gyremail@aol.com
To: ann@portia, mkhoward@tamu.edu
CC: carib@carbon.marine.usf.edu, pcoble@seas.marine.usf.edu, eshaar@ocean, carol@century21bcs.com

We completed Line 7 by 5 AM local this morning and at 8 AM local we are underway inshore south of Apalachicola towards Line 8. Wind is breezy this morning (20 knots out of the east) and so seas are lumpy again today. Weather forecast says another cold front is expected late tomorrow or Saturday, so we're making time/distance good while we can. Urgh. I knew there was a reason I don't like going to sea in November! Equipment and people working OK so far; all drifters have now been deployed as scheduled.

-doug sends

Subject: NEGOM-7 cruise report for Wed 17 Nov
Date: Wed, 17 Nov 1999 09:06:44 EST
From: Gyremail@aol.com
To: ann@portia, mkhoward@tamu.edu
CC: carib@carbon.marine.usf.edu, pcoble@seas.marine.edu, eshaar@ocean, carol@century21bcs.com

We finished Line 5 yesterday and will be working Lines 6 and 7 today. At 7 AM local time we are underway to our 1000 m station on Line 6 and we'll finish this line after breakfast today (L06S19C). Seas have been lumpy for last 24 h but not too high; equipment and people are working well. We've deployed 26 drifters so far; 3 drifters remain to be deployed. We looked but saw no Leonid meteor storm last evening; maybe tonite? We're about 3 h behind our original time/distance schedule but we propose to make up this time by shortening the distance we drive inshore along Line 8: we would do the 10 m station south of Apalachicola at 85W rather than driving east to 84 46.8W. We would then do 20 m station along Line 8 when we cross this isobath at a location slightly to the east of its charted location. Norman and I calculate that this modification will save us some 30 n miles of distance and 3.5 h of time yet still allow us to sample inner shelf off Apalachicola area.-doug sends

Subject: NEGOM-7 cruise rpt for Tues 16 Nov
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 09:32:59 EST
From: Gyremail@aol.com
To: ann@portia, mkhoward@tamu.edu
CC: carib@carbon.marine.usf.edu, pcoble@marine.usf.edu, eshaar@ocean, carol@century21bcs.com

Howdy ya'll,

At 8 AM CST we were at the 100m station on Line 5. We will be working north this morning to finish this line just off Destin FL. A "weak" cold front is passing over us so seas are whitecapped but sky is clear. USF guys did 2 lightmeter casts on Sunday and again on Monday and they will try to repeat same today. Tandem fluorometers are logging OK (though as on previous lines salinity has been > 35 all the way up to 100 m depth) and Robin says safire data look good. All hydrography survey equipment working well. Ryan Thomas is enjoying his first cruise.

-doug sends

Subject: NEGOM-7 science report for Mon 15 Nov
Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1999 09:54:30 EST
From: Gyremail@aol.com
To: ann@portia, mkhoward@tamu.edu
CC: carib@carbon.marine.usf.edu, pcoble@marine.usf.edu, carol@century21bcs.com, eshaar@ocean

We're progressing on schedule; we've been making > 8.5 knots transit speed and knocking out each of our CTD stations in close to the times allotted. Weather was good this weekend but wind is out of the north today and seas are starting to build. We finished Line 3 yesterday and are this morning headed seaward along Line 4 running south from Pensacola. At 8 AM CST we're at L04S03C. All science systems are working; AC-9 and Sapphire flow-thru data loggers in Main Lab are mapping DOM concurrently with tandem fluorometers although so far (Lines 2 and 3) we've not encountered low salinity water except close in to the shore. We've deployed 11 Argos drifters so far (#12 goes in at this station). That's about it until tomorrow.

-doug sends

Subject: NEGOM-7 cruise report for Sunday 14 November
Date: Sun, 14 Nov 1999 19:50:17 EST
From: Gyremail@aol.com
To: ann@portia, mkhoward@tamu.edu
CC: carib@carbon.marine.usf.edu, pcoble@marine.usf.edu, carol@century21bcs.com

Hello Ann and Matt,

We did Line 1 yesterday and we finished Line 2 just before noon today (Sunday 14th Nov). We're about to begin Line 3 (at 14:30 CDT). Weather has improved a lot since yesterday when it was pretty lumpy and many of us had not yet achieved our "sea legs" (urp!). All of us, including XiangDong, are now up and operational. So far, we have documented high chl near the MR delta but there is not a large area of low salinity water that extends east of the delta. On Line 1, we found sfc salinity ranged 35.8 (S07C) to 31.8 (S01C); however along Line 2 the range was much less: just 34.7 (S00C) to 36.3 (S10C). We're continuing to take bucket salinity samples along Line 3 novertheless. Based on the 3 SeaWiFS images that Bisman brought along from 1-9 November, we're expecting to find most of the continental margin will have salinity and chl that is fairly "typical" for this time of year.

The test cast we did yesterday before beginning Line 1 went well; no evidence of any leaking bottles. Ken Bottom drew the samples and reported that bottle salinity, oxygen, and nitrate in the AIW salinity minimum averaged 34.900 +/- 0.002, 3.24 +/- 0.01, and 29.1 +/- 0.2 respectively (mean +/- std dev for n = 12 samples). So he's again proved his reputation as a WOCE Panel of Experts analyst, eh? Ken and Erik both supervised the volunteers who have been drawing samples for subsequent CTD casts and they all appear to be doing a very good job. Alexey Ivanov and Becca Scott are drawing the oxygen samples for subsequent stations.

No major problems to report; all of us certainly hope this spell of nice weather holds for at least a few more days! If we are able keep up the station pace for the rest of our Lines 3-11 and unless we're slowed by bad weather, we project we'll finish in time to arrive at USF dock by noon on Monday 22 Nov.

-doug sends

Subject: R/V Gyre cruise report for Sat 13 Nov
Date: Sat, 13 Nov 1999 10:10:08 EST
From: Gyremail@aol.com
To: ann@portia, mkhoward@tamu.edu

Hello Ann and Matt,

We departed Gulfport just before 10 PM last evening and are expecting to arrive at our first station at seaward end of Line 1 about 10:30 CST this morning. Since we got out 2 hours "early", Norm and I have elected to begin with test cast CTD rather than waiting to do this until we're transiting from Line 2 to Line 3 tomorrow.. We plan to trip all 12 bottles in AIW salinity minimum and then sample them for salinity, oxygen, and nutrients so we'll know later today whether or not we have any leaking bottles.

Our plan: oxygens are going to be done by Alexey Ivanov (who already knows "how to") and by Becca Scott. Ken B will draw oxygens from this test cast CTD but Becca will follow him around the rosette with supervision by Erik Q to draw practice oxygens herself. This should give her the training and practice she needs before she draws oxygens herself from L01S07C which will follow as soon as we can get the rosette turned back around. Underway data loggers were turned on last night (ADCPs) and thermosalingraphs were set up and logging data by shortly after breakfast this morning. Salinity is high (36.2) and color low as we head toward seaward end of Line 1. Position at 9 AM local was 28 51N, 88 49 W.

-doug sends