Present and past flow regime on contourite drifts west of Spitsbergen: preliminary results from Eurofleet 2 PREPARED cruise (June 2014).

• Main Authors: Lucchi, Renata G., Kovacevic, Vedrana, Aliani, Stefano, Caburlotto, Andrea, Celussi, Mauro, Corgnati, Lorenzo, Cosoli, Simone, Deponte, Davide, Ersdal, Eli Anne, Fredriksson, Sam, Goszczko, Ilona, Husum, Katrine, Ingrosso, Gianmarco, Laberg, Jan Sverre, Lacka, Magdalena, Langone, Leonardo, Mansutti, Paolo, Mezgec, Karin, Ponomarenko, Ekatarina, Realdon, Giulia, Relitti, Federica, Robijn, Ardo, Skogseth, Ragheidi, Tirelli, Valentina, MORIGI, CATERINA
• Other Authors: Morigi, Caterina
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2015
• Subjects: oceanographic cruise; Svalbard; contourite; Fram Strait; Storfjorden; Spitsbergen
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/11568/750777

Eurofleets-2 PREPARED cruise was conducted during June 5–15, 2014 on board the Norwegian R/V G.O. Sars to investigate the present and past oceanographic flow regime and patterns around two contourite drifts located in the eastern side of the Fram Strait (south-western margin of Spitsbergen). To achieve the main objective of the project, a full range of time scaled measurements was planned, from instantaneous (CTD) and seasonal (moorings) oceanographic measurements, to the recent (Box corer) and geologic (Calypso core) past record. The successful cruise recovered about 2780 km of underway measurements (hull-mounted ADCP and thermosalinograph); 60 CTD sites along 5 main transects; 22 sites for water sampling at different depths for biogeochemical characterization of water masses; 13 meso-zooplankton samplings carried out by vertical hauls (WP2 net) and 20 by horizontal hauls (Manta net) for the study of the present biological productivity of the area; about 120 km of site survey including high-resolution multibeam map and sub-bottom profiles for the identification of current related structures; 5 Box cores; and 2 Calypso piston cores 19.67 and 17.37 m long with an excellent sediment recovery up to 92%. In addition, 3 moorings were deployed for seasonal measurements of water currents direction and velocity, water mass temperature and salinity and to determine the annual amount of local sediment input. Preliminary onboard analyses outlined the presence of a cold-oxygenated and low salinity water mass moving in the deep northern part of the Storfjorden Trough under the effect of the Corilis force and tide configuration considerably affecting the velocity and bottom distribution of the cold water mass. The long Calypso cores contain the record of the past 20 ka with an exceptionally expanded Holocene sequence (over 5 m-thick) that will allow us to obtain very-high resolution palaeoceanographic and palaeoenvironmental reconstructions in the area.