UCTD and EcoCTD Observations from the CALYPSO Pilot Experiment (2018): Cruise and Data Report

Abstract

From May 27, 2018 to June 02, 2018, a scientific campaign was conducted in the Alboran Sea as part of an ONR Departmental Research Initiative, CALYPSO. The pilot cruise involved two ships: the R/V Socib, tasked with sampling fixed lines repeatedly, and the NRV Alliance that surveyed along the trajectory of Lagrangian platforms. A large variety of assets were deployed from the NRV Alliance, with the objective to identify coherent Lagrangian pathways from the surface ocean to interior. As part of the field campaign, an Underway-CTD (UCTD) system was used to measure vertical profiles of salinity, temperature and other properties while steaming, to achieve closely spaced measurements in the horizontal along the ship's track. Both a UCTD probe and an biooptically augmented probe, named EcoCTD, were deployed. The EcoCTD collects concurrent physical and bio-optical observations. This report focuses exclusively on the data collected by these two underway systems. It describes th e datasets collected during the pilot cruise, as well as the important processing steps developed for the EcoCTD.