Western Channel Observatory Blog

During late October at the National Centre for Ocean Forecasting (NCOF) workshop at Croyde Bay, Momme Butenschon took some pictures of this phaeocysis bloom around Baggy Point.  The night before there had been some strong winds and the phaeocystis was characteristically frothy at the edges (shore edge especially - but you can see the far edge of the bloom marked with a white slick).  If you look closely you can see some discolouration of the water caused by the bloom.  Might be worth looking at the satellite images to see if there is any evidence of raised chlorophyll?

After several years of the pressure readings not being reliable (in terms of a power supply) the readings should now be much more consistent (i.e. not suddenly dropping to 600 mb!).

Tim

Following some extensive detective work by Peter Walker and myself we have now managed to get the met station up and running again. There was a communications problem with the serial to ethernet box in the plant room which had somehow hung. The pressure readings (690mb!) look somewhat dubious - but might be able to rectify that later.

The good news is that the data loss is much less severe than I first thought. There is around 2 weeks of data that we didn’t realise we had (which will be processed as soon as possible). The data missing period is between 3 - 14 November.

Tim

After the windy weather last week and the large swell we weren’t expecting the vis to be up to much this weekend.  However, although it was not crystal clear we had about 8-9m on the Persier a wreck in Bigbury Bay and the same again on Tinker Shoal just south of Plymouth breakwater.  There was what appeared to be a halocline (or perhaps thermocline, but I couldn’t feel any temperature difference) at Tinker Shoal.  Water is starting to cool down , it was about 15 degrees.

Young Fish Trawl being deployed

Eddystone

Sample from WP2 net

filtration rig

There has been some cracking vis during the last week of September!

27th Sept Start Point 16 m deep, 15m vis.  Short bits of snot (approx 1 cm long) thoughout the water column.  Water temp 15 degrees C.

28th Sept Eddystone Lighthouse.  15 m vis.  Not snotty.

30th Sept Brixham Breakwater beach 5 m vis.

Here’s a quick update on my post last week. The stratification in the Western Channel has continued to break down, indicated by the stratification surface front receding towards the shelf. The resulting increase in nutrients (and fine weather) has established a larger bloom, probably the dinoflagellate Karenia mikimotoi (can anyone confirm?) though only in moderate concentration. This type of bloom occurs here most years, though normally earlier - in August rather than late September: is this due to the lousy summer?

Aqua-MODIS chlorophyll-a (OC5) on 27 Sep. 2008 1305 UTC

Near true-colour scene on 27 Sep. 2008 1305 UTC, darker green indicates higher chl-a, brighter water indicates suspended sediment

Hi folks,

I have now georss enabled this blog. In plain speak that means that articles can now be geographically encoded with a latitude and longitude. I have geo-coded this post with the position of L4 as an example.

Martyn