Ship Operations R/V Point Sur 2012 - 2016

San Jose State University Foundation, San Jose CA

Investigators

Abstract

This award will fund the first of five years of operation under a renewal of the NSF Cooperative Agreement, OCE- 0505385. Ship awards will be renegotiated each year and is based on the number of days of ship time in support of NSF funded research programs. R/V Pt. Sur, a NSF-owned research vessel, is operated as part of the University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System (UNOLS) research fleet by Moss Landing Marine Laboratories. In 2012, Pt. Sur anticipates operating 102 days, of which 72 days will be in direct support of NSF peer-reviewed sea-going work. R/V Point Sur has been successfully operated by Moss Landing Marine Laboratories (MLML) since 1986. MLML is located in Central California on the Monterey Bay at the head of the deep undersea Monterey canyon and has unique proximity to a wide variety of coastal, canyon and offshore study sites along the Central CA coast The R/V Point Sur continues to serve scientists from institutions around the world as well as institutions associated with the Monterey Bay Crescent Ocean Research Consortium (MBCORC). During 2012 the R/V Point Sur will provide ship time for several research and marine science educational programs funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Office of Naval Research (ONR), the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), the Army Corps of Engineers, MLML and consortium campuses of the California State University system. This proposal requests the funding necessary to support the NSF portion of our operation that amounts to 63 days out of a total schedule of 95 days at sea. These NSF days encompass 4 discrete cruises. Two of these cruises are repeat users of the vessel (Bishop and McPhee-Shaw) while the remaining cruises will be new. The first of these cruises will take the ship off the coast of Oregon for CTD and mid-water trawling operations. The second cruise represents a transit from the vessels homeport to Punta Arenas, Chile. This transit is part of a larger project that involves science support at Palmer Station, Antarctica. This represents one of the longest and most logistically challenging cruises the vessel has ever undertaken. Funds have been included in the current proposal to help prepare the vessel for this work. Broader Impacts: The Moss Landing Marine Laboratories continues to be successful in advancing the California State University's Center for Integrative Coastal Observation, Research and Education program (CI-CORE, http://www.mlml.calstate.edu/cicore/) and the Alliance for Coastal Technologies program (ACT, http://www.actonline.ws/). As a key partner in both these efforts MLML has been funded (at no cost to NSF) to provide instrumentation for the underway measurement of surface water parameters (temperature, salinity, fluorescence, oxygen, and turbidity) from a number of our vessels. As part of the CI-CORE program these data will be formatted and made available on our web site for educators, scientists, policy makers and the public. Various other Federal, State and private supported work is also included in the schedule. The MBARI maintains several moored arrays near the mouth of the Monterey Bay and offshore that will be serviced using the R/V Point Sur. MLML will use approximately 10 days of ship time in support of class cruises and thesis work for the California State Universities (CSU) providing graduate and undergraduate students valuable field time to gather data for class projects. These classes include physical, chemical and biological oceanography, geology, ichthyology, benthic ecology and marine mammal behavior. Several CSU instructors have taken advantage of these class cruises by using them to help educate junior college and high school students as well. In the past weve also opened the R/V Point Sur to local middle school students and their parents for dockside tours and informal talks about the local ocean environment.