During the green edge 2016 experiment, at the beginning of June, we observed an aggregate event : A morning the hole used for water column sampling was full of millions of large organic particles : aggregates. The same situation repeats every day during a full week before disappearing completely.
Tag Archives: Phytoplankton spring bloom
Home made growth chambers on the deck of the boat
During the Green Edge cruise aboard the Canadian ice-breaker, much of our work is to keep phytoplankton alive out of their natural environment. We also aim to isolate them to get clonal cultures.
Continue reading Home made growth chambers on the deck of the boat
The silent scale
This motion, which we refer to as the kinetic energy of the ocean, comes from solar radiative energy and the tidal forces exerted by the sun and the moon. Terawatts of kinetic energy are injected to the ocean (1 terawatt = 1012 watts). The low viscosity of seawater and the scale of oceanic basins render the motion highly turbulent, meaning that the flow is populated with swirls of all sizes that stretch and fold the fluid on itself. Large swirl end up breaking up into smaller ones until viscous forces dissipates the kinetic into heat or potential energy. This happens when swirls are a few millimeters wide. It is easily possible to see how this happens only by looking at two fluids of different densities, say an ice cube melting at the surface of a glass filled with warm salty water that we gently mix (Fig. 1c).