Southern Ocean optical drifter experiment

• Main Authors: Ricardo M. Letelier, Mark R. Abboit, David M. Karl
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 1996
• Subjects: Austral; Drake Passage; Gerlache; Gerlache Strait; Southern Ocean
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.634.7122; http://pal.lternet.edu/docs/bibliography/Public/074lterc.pdf

During the austral summer of 1994-1995, and as part of the SANTA CLApS research cruise (PD94- 12; Karl, this volume) of the Palmer LTER project, we deployed two WOCE/OCM (Ocean Color Monitor, METOCEAN Data Systems) drifters, one in the Gerlache Strait (64 ° 11‘S, 61020 ’ W) and the other in the south of the Drake Passage (62000’S, 62 ° 16’W, Fig. 1A). The aim of these deployments was to monitor temporal variations in the optical properties of water masses, to interpret these variations in terms of phytoplankton biomass changes, and to study the variability of chlorophyll (chl) natural fluorescence when normalized to chl concentrations. Each drifter was equipped