SCALE Cruise report 2019 (Winter and Summer Cruise); Southern Ocean Seasonal Experiment

Abstract

Full narratives available in pdf Winter Cruise Narrative The first SCALE cruise departed on the 18th July. The loading operations started on Monday the 15th and completed successfully in the morning of the day of departure. The pre-departure operations were handled by the land Chief Scientist Dr Sandy Thomalla from CSIR-SOCCO. Assistance on behalf of the ship custodian was provided by Mrs Kusi Ngxabani from DEA and Mr Robert Hales and Mr Jawahir Nandha from AMSOL. A/Prof Marcello Vichi was the CS on board. The science program was distributed among 17 teams, for a total of 92 passengers plus the ship doctor and one human dummy recording ship vibrations, for a total of 94 occupied berths out of the total 100 available. The full list of the winter cruise passengers including their demographic information, nationality and role on board is available at the end of the report. Spring Cruise Narrative The departure of the cruise, originally planned for 10th October 2019, was delayed due to containers setting off the ships fire alarm system. Once the necessary repairs were completed the ship departed from Cape Town on the 12th October 2019 after completion of all passenger procedures. The first station was planned at approximately 36S, to conduct the preparative Geotraces station (soaking, reference and testing of the GoFlo bottles), to deploy the trace metal clean Towfish and to deploy the neuston net. The next few days were primarily focused on sailing towards the SAZ station, with underway measurements and other observational activities taking place. Opportunistic neuston net deployments were planned but bad weather prevented any such operations and the trace metal clean Towfish also had to be retrieved.