The NOPP/SWOT container on the truck and headed to Alameda to meet the R/V Sally Ride! 

Preparations are underway for the next cruise leg of the NOPP IWR team mooring deployments (and recoveries). A total of 11 SWOT cal/val moorings and 3 PIES were deployed last February along the track of the SWOT satellite mission off of California. These moorings are one component of the fast repeat cal/val phase of the NASA-led SWOT mission. Four of these moorings, deployed and designed by the SIO teams, were full depth ocean moorings with a profiling wirewalker in the upper 500m — all of these moorings were measuring temperature, and one was augmented to measured temperature and velocity. The SIO & WHOI IWR teams will be headed to the same location next week on the R/V Sally Ride to recover all 4 SIO moorings, 3 PIES and redeploy the velocity / temperature mooring, and deploy a (whopping) 9 additional PIES.

Team members from SIO’s Multiscale Ocean Dynamics Lab and Send labs spent the last couple of months getting prepared with the final push this week to pack of everything that will be needed. The WHOI IWR Team has been doing the same over the last months but as a mirror image on the East Coast — with all team members meeting in Alameda next week.

SIO Send lab Development Engineer Noah Howins making one of many forklift trips while loading the container. Smiling is an important part of the job! 

SIO MOD Development Engineer Sara Goheen (foreground), a seasoned field engineer, preparing the shipment of gear for the R/V Ride recover & redeployment cruise.

SIO Associate Professor Drew Lucas, and chief scientist of the upcoming R/V Ride cruise, pondering the details and packing for the upcoming cruise! 

SIO Associate Professor Drew Lucas and SIO MOD Development Engineer Spencer Kawamoto, a key member of the MOD group and chief of “thinking of how to make things more efficient”, admiring the freshly painted counter weight for the moorings – the paint is to protect the weight from biological growth over the next 6-7 months that it will spend in the ocean.

Packing for these sea trips includes a lot of pallets, boxes and sometimes even trying to fit one last tire into a wire basket!
Here is SIO Development Technician Helen Dufel trying to get one last tire to fit! 

See you in Alameda!