Cruise AR18B on RV Neil Armstrong (EK80). This is the eighth major infrastructure deployment and servicing cruise for the Pioneer Array of the National Science Foundation’s Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI). The Pioneer Array includes a network of moorings and autonomous robotic vehicles to monitor waters of the continental shelf and slope south of New England and, in particular, the shelfbreak front where nutrients and other properties are exchanged between the coast and the deep ocean. Data from the Pioneer Array will provide new insights into coastal ocean processes such as shelf/slope nutrient exchange, air-sea property exchange, carbon cycling, and ocean acidification that are important to the New England shelf, and to continental shelf ecosystems around the world. For further information, see http://www.oceanobservatories.org.

Cruise AR18C on RV Neil Armstrong (EK80). This is the eighth major infrastructure deployment and servicing cruise for the Pioneer Array of the National Science Foundation’s Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI). The Pioneer Array includes a network of moorings and autonomous robotic vehicles to monitor waters of the continental shelf and slope south of New England and, in particular, the shelfbreak front where nutrients and other properties are exchanged between the coast and the deep ocean. Data from the Pioneer Array will provide new insights into coastal ocean processes such as shelf/slope nutrient exchange, air-sea property exchange, carbon cycling, and ocean acidification that are important to the New England shelf, and to continental shelf ecosystems around the world. For further information, see http://www.oceanobservatories.org.

Cruise AR18A on RV Neil Armstrong (EK60). This is the eighth major infrastructure deployment and servicing cruise for the Pioneer Array of the National Science Foundation’s Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI). The Pioneer Array includes a network of moorings and autonomous robotic vehicles to monitor waters of the continental shelf and slope south of New England and, in particular, the shelfbreak front where nutrients and other properties are exchanged between the coast and the deep ocean. Data from the Pioneer Array will provide new insights into coastal ocean processes such as shelf/slope nutrient exchange, air-sea property exchange, carbon cycling, and ocean acidification that are important to the New England shelf, and to continental shelf ecosystems around the world. For further information, see http://www.oceanobservatories.org.

Cruise AR18B on RV Neil Armstrong (EK60). This is the eighth major infrastructure deployment and servicing cruise for the Pioneer Array of the National Science Foundation’s Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI). The Pioneer Array includes a network of moorings and autonomous robotic vehicles to monitor waters of the continental shelf and slope south of New England and, in particular, the shelfbreak front where nutrients and other properties are exchanged between the coast and the deep ocean. Data from the Pioneer Array will provide new insights into coastal ocean processes such as shelf/slope nutrient exchange, air-sea property exchange, carbon cycling, and ocean acidification that are important to the New England shelf, and to continental shelf ecosystems around the world. For further information, see http://www.oceanobservatories.org.

Cruise AR18C on RV Neil Armstrong (EK60). This is the eighth major infrastructure deployment and servicing cruise for the Pioneer Array of the National Science Foundation’s Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI). The Pioneer Array includes a network of moorings and autonomous robotic vehicles to monitor waters of the continental shelf and slope south of New England and, in particular, the shelfbreak front where nutrients and other properties are exchanged between the coast and the deep ocean. Data from the Pioneer Array will provide new insights into coastal ocean processes such as shelf/slope nutrient exchange, air-sea property exchange, carbon cycling, and ocean acidification that are important to the New England shelf, and to continental shelf ecosystems around the world. For further information, see http://www.oceanobservatories.org.

AR16_EK80

OOI Pioneer Array

Cruise AR21 on RV Neil Armstrong (EK80). This cruise is the fourth cruise to the Irminger Sea Global Node of the National Science Foundation’s Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI; http://www.oceanobservatories.org). The Irminger Sea Global Node includes an array of four moorings and a combination of patrol and profiling gliders deployed off the southeast tip of Greenland, close to 39°W, 60°N. The location is one characterized by strong air-sea interaction and winter-time water mass formation. It is also a location at an important location of the large-scale global thermohaline circulation where freshening of the water column has been observed, and the data from the array will contribute to improved understanding of the impact of climate variability and change on the physics, chemistry, and biology of the ocean. The combination of the moored array and the gliders will enable investigation of the role of processes at mesoscale and submesoscale horizontal length scales. At the same time, the moored array and gliders will sample the full water column, from the sea floor to the sea surface and the surface mooring will provide unique new observations of surface meteorology and air-sea fluxes. This Irminger Sea Global Node deployment cruise (Irminger-4) has the following primary objectives: deployment of a new Surface Mooring (GI01SUMO), deployment of a new Profiler Mooring (GI02HYPM), deployment of two new Flanking Moorings (GI03FLMA, GI03FLMB), deployment of new Irminger Sea mobile assets (GI05MOAS) with the deployment of gliders tasked to patrol within and around the moored array, recovery of the Surface Mooring, Profiler Mooring, and Flanking Moorings set in July 2016, and CTD casts with water sampling at both for instrument calibration and to further characterize the region of the mooring sites. The intent is to deploy the fourth set of moorings before recovering the previously deployed third set of moorings. This is done to obtain data sets invaluable to the process of intercalibrating the moored instrumentation. Because of this and because the intent is to have future mooring operations to be conducted in close proximity to moorings in the water, the site locations for both the first and second deployments were identified during the bathymetric survey on the first cruise in September 2014.

AR15_EK80

OOI Pioneer 15