We completed our first two stations without a problem. The Alkor crew knows our gear well, and deployment and retrieval are as smooth as the glassy sea surface right now. We’re collecting water and particles from the CTD/Niskin rosette, underway seawater system, and pumps that filter in situ. We use Bongo nets to collect particles […]
The deep water hunt
32 µmol nitrate per liter – fantastic!! Better than I dared to dream. But let’s start from the beginning. The main objective of our study is to unravel how changes in upwelling intensity affect the food web and elemental cycling in the Peruvian upwelling system. Simply speaking, should upwelling intensity decline let’s say by 50% […]
Finally at sea
After a day of delay due to bad weather, we’re finally able to leave port. The labs are all set up, and the equipment ready to deploy. Just a few hours to the first station…
AOD Comic: Wellengleichungen im Wassertank
Die wohl beste Zusammenfassung unserer Bemühungen im letzten Semester, Studierenden einen anderen, praxisbezogeneren, letztlich schlicht spaßigeren Zugang zu Atmosphären- und Ozeandynamik (AOD) zu bieten, stammt von Johanna Knauf:
AL534-2
The first official HOTMIC research cruise will be on F/S Alkor, and leaves from Malaga, Spain, on 05 March. The cruise track will follow the European coast from the Mediterranean Sea through the eastern Atlantic, Bay of Biscay, English Channel, and North Sea, to finish in the Baltic Sea at Kiel, Germany, on 01 April. […]
POS536
Technically, the first unofficial HOTMIC research cruise was conducted at the end of summer 2019, in the North Atlantic Gyre on F/S Poseidon. You can read more on their blog here and here.
It’s go time baby!
Water perspective by Sebastian Cantarero: After weeks of preparing, scheming, and building of suspense the day finally arrived! A group of highly trained secret agent scientists waited in the wee hours of the morning for word that Captain Jana and the sediment trap team was returning to dock, giving us the go ahead to start […]
GAME 2020: Researching the effects of plastic debris on the community level
On Monday March 2nd, the preparation course for the new GAME project will start and also in 2020 the programme will focus again on the effects of plastic litter on marine life. However, while previous research in this field has almost exclusively focused on the impact of macro- or micro-sized debris on single organisms, GAME […]
Finding Eddy Vol. 2
The last week of our cruise has begun, and the eddy hunt is aiming for an eddy in the East of Trinidad and Tobago, Eddy2. The trick with catching Eddy2 is to first estimate his dimensions by using sea level anomaly maps which give insight on surface eddies that are often overlying deeper eddies, like […]
Ocean Sciences Meeting, San Diego, Monday morning 8 a.m.
Here we go, a full week of exciting science presentations lies ahead of us. The Ocean Sciences Meeting is a large scientific conference devoted entirely on new discoveries in ocean physics, biology, chemistry, … from hot topics in the tropics to cool stuff in the rapidly changing polar regions. About 5,000 scientists from around the […]




