RV Oceanus Cruise CO459-1, 23 Mar-04 Oct 2010. RAPID Mooring Cruise Report

Abstract

This cruise report covers scientific operations conducted during RV Oceanus OC459-1. Mooring
operations conducted on RV Ronald H. Brown RB10-09 are given as an Appendice. Cruise
OC459 departed from Woods Hole on 23rd March 2010 and arrived in Freeport, Grand Bahama on
04th April 2010.
The purpose of the cruise was the refurbishment of an array of moorings off the coast of Abaco
Island, Bahamas at a nominal latitude of 26.5°N. The moorings are part of a purposeful Atlantic
wide mooring array for monitoring the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation and Heat
Flux. The array is a joint UK/US programme and is known as the RAPID-WATCH/MOCHA
array. Information and data from the project can be found on the web site hosted by the National
Oceanography Centre Southampton http://www.noc.soton.ac.uk/rapidmoc and also from the
British Oceanographic Data Centre http://www.bodc.ac.uk.
The RAPID transatlantic array consists of 24 moorings of which 21 are maintained by the UK,
and 17 bottom landers of which 15 are maintained by the UK. The moorings are primarily
instrumented with Sea-Bird self logging instruments measuring conductivity, temperature and
pressure. Direct measurements of currents are made in the shallow and deep western boundary
currents. The bottom landers are instrumented with bottom pressure recorders (also known as tide
gauges), measuring the weight of water above the instrument.
The RAPID naming convention for moorings is Western Boundary (WB), Eastern Boundary (EB)
and Mid-Atlantic Ridge (MAR) indicating the general sub-regions of the array. Numbering
increments from west to east. An L in the name indicates a bottom lander, M indicates a minimooring
with only one instrument, H indicates a mooring which is on the continental slope and is
instrumented over a limited depth range. During OC459-1 we recovered and redeployed: WB1,
WB2, WB6, WBH2, WBADCP, WB2L4 and WB4L4. WBAL1 was deployed on OC459-1.
Mooring WB4 was recovered and redeployed on RB10-09.
On OC459-1, CTD stations were conducted at convenient times throughout the cruise for purposes
of providing pre and post deployment calibrations for mooring instrumentation and for testing
mooring releases prior to deployment. Shipboard underway measurements were systematically
logged, processed and calibrated, including: waves (spectra of energy and significant wave
height), surface meteorology (air pressure, temperature, wind speed and direction and radiation
(total incident and photosynthetically active), sea temperatures and salinities, water depth and
navigation. Sea-water samples from CTD stations and of the sea-surface were obtained for
calibration.

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