novenber 4,2009 ctd validation

surface inspection
underwater inspection
optical sensor cleaning
c td screen cleaning

Oct 27th thorough cleaning

Given the long lapse since our previous cleaning, we gave the LCIY2 a thorough cleaning:
BASIC AND COMPLETE
surface inspection - all fine
underwater inspection - all lines, chains, pins,shackles, base plate and grounding plate cleaned and inspected - all fine
optical sensor cleaned
ctd body and sensor screens cleaned
NO CTD VALIDATION performed. Will complete CTD validation week of Nov 2

data are now being shared globally

The ICON team has completed work on a feed of data from the Little Cayman station to NOAA's National Data Buoy Center (NDBC). This means that the Little Cayman data will be included in the National Weather Service's (NWS) operational stream and will be made available globally for research and operations. In particular, these data will now be included in the models used by NOAA's National Hurricane Center (NHC) in developing forecasts for hurricanes and tropical storms.

The NDBC website for the Little Cayman station can be found here:

http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/station_page.php?station=lciy2

Online Data Source

Near real-time data from the station can be viewed online at the ICON Web site for this station:

http://ecoforecast.coral.noaa.gov/index/0/LCIY2/station-home

Please also note that sensor information, graphs, events, ecological forecasts (models) and more can be gleaned from this site. Note also that satellite data from several sources are integrated with the in situ information for purposes of modeling and recognizing events of interest. For more information on ecological forecast constructs and this Web site, please contact Lew Gramer at AOML.

Photo by Jim Hendee

Biological Observations

A qualitative biological survey was conducted in Little Cayman, Cayman Islands adjacent to the NOAA/ICON pylon and on Snapshot Reef on 22 and 23 July 2009, respectively. Only a few coral colonies exhibited paling or mild bleaching. Multiple colonies of Siderastrea siderea were mottled, displaying a blue or purple coloration (i.e., this is how this species looks when it begins to pale). It is likely that this is just a result of the normal seasonal declines in zooxanthellae densities and tissue biomass that occur in summer given that few other species or individuals exhibited noticeable paling.

Some coral colonies exhibited signs of the coral disease "white plague." Fortunately, infected colonies appeared to be few and far between. This image illustrates what appears to be recent mortality due to white plague on a colony of Montastraea annularis (all images taken by and courtesy of Dr. Jen Dupont, NOAA Knauss post-doctoral scholar). Drs. Marilyn Brandt and Carrie Manfrino have obtained a long-term dataset which shows that white plague has been the most significant cause of coral mortality in Little Cayman over the last 5-10 years. In fact, Dr. Marilyn Brandt (personal friend and colleague of mine) did a large portion of her Ph.D. work on Little Cayman, where she built an agent-based, data-driven model on the spread of disease on coral community structure. Researchers in the past have implicated coastal runoff and nutrification as the driver of the increase in coral diseases throughout the Caribbean. Marilyn's findings are extremely important in that she has shown that coral disease can be the main cause of mortality for sites without significant land-based sources of pollution. Way to go Marilyn!

There were a fair amount of clionid sponges overgrowing some dead coral skeletons. The image below illustrates clionid colonization of a Diploria labyrinthiformis skeleton. Some species of Cliona are known to actively overgrowth and kill live coral tissue, but it is not known if what was observed is a result of direct overgrowth or solely clinoid recruitment to the dead coral skeleton following mortality. Clionid sponges are of particular concern because they can be significant bioeroders as they directly dissolve coral skeletons and reef framework.













Seawater temperatures were warm when the station went online (29.9 - 30.0 degrees Celsius), but it is unknown if these are representative of the 'normal' seasonal cycle (climatology) for this site because of the lack of long-term in situ data.

Derek P. Manzello, Ph.D.

Station begins transmitting!

The station began transmitting around 3:05pm today, when Mike Jankulak flipped the "on" switch and said from aloft, "We're on!"

Photo by Jennifer Dupont

Instrument Installation Video

This video (utilized in a more comprehensive YouTube presentation) shows composite steps involved in installing the electronics (see Electronics Installation, previous), including scaling "the stick," stringing cables from top to bottom, installing meteorological instruments, hoisting the "brain" (data logger and electrical relays) from the boat to the top, mounting of the underwater instruments (light sensor, CTD), and testing the radio transmission from the pylon to a laptop on the boat. Mike Jankulak on the pylon, Captain Lowell Forbes assisting in lifting the brain, Derek Manzello (black dive suit), and Jim Hendee in the water.

Videography by Myfanwy "Von" Rowlands