Diving through a plankton bloom

Satellite image: Sentinel 3, Tilman Dinter, AWI

Today, during the #DronningMaudLandCruise2019, we deployed one of our two Seagliders; an underwater drone that will make dives between the surface and 1000 m depth to measure ocean temperature, salinity, oxygen, and chlorophyll-a. Satellite images showed that a big plankton bloom is happening right now in this area, perfect timing! The glider will make transects across this bloom for the coming three weeks, remotely piloted by our colleagues in Bergen through Iridium satellite connection. At the end of the cruise we will pick up the glider and obtain a lot of new information on the biology and physics. First water samples confirm that we are looking at a very strong bloom, dominated by various large diatoms.

Photos: Sebastien Moreau, NP