Decisions, decisions

Honey Badger is currently 1070 km from home.  There have been a lot of clouds over the Honey Badger's area the past week, so it has been tough to figure out if the wispy blob of chlorophyll we set out to find was real or not.  However, the most recent one day imagery seems to show that there's nothing special there at the moment.  You can see way point 56 is in the middle of a nicely blue area, and all the interesting yellow-green (higher chl) is off to our west.  Honey Badger is  just at the eastern edge of the no data swath, heading east at 1.2 knots (practically a rooster tail).  Cara and I need to contemplate our options. 

1 day image 18 July 2015

Emily Anderson,  a new M.S. student in my lab, has arrived and is working on the data set.  We'll get her signed up to blog in the next week so she can keep us updated on what she's doing. 

The instruments are sending back good data, although the SMC computer and the phytoflash are not getting along very well.  The problem is likely in the software on the SMC running the phytflash.  It's a new configuration for the wave glider and our budget did not allow extensive testing of it.  Most of the time the phytoflash runs fine.   Periodically something in the system takes a time out from sampling (a coffee break, we call them) and returns in about an hour.  Sometimes it does not come back from the coffee break and goes into dreamtime.  I have to restart the system to get its attention and get the phytoflash running again. 

 Later this week, I"ll post some of the really interesting data we are seeing in the phytoflash.  It is showing the sorts of patterns reported by Mike Behrenfeld in one of his papers a few years ago, and it will allow us to make some interpretations about the types of nutrient limitations found in blooms.  Assuming we find one....