POSEIDON expedition

Jan 30, 2013

Together with international colleagues MARUM scientists are on expedition off Mauretania on board the research vessel POSEIDON. Amongst others the team deployed a buoy which will record seasonal dust fluxes from the Sahara desert into the Atlantic Ocean.

POSEIDON Cruise 445
January 19 - February 1
Las Palmas - LasPalmas

The research vessel POSEIDON is presently underway on her cruise 445, this time in the Mauritanian coastal upwelling region. On board are 7 scientists from the University of Bremen and the MARUM, one from the NIOZ (Netherlands) one from Universities of Göteborg and Stockholm and a Mauritanian observer. The cruise is within the frame of a long-term monitoring program of particle fluxes and vertical transport in this important coastal ecosystem.

The monitoring was initiated in 1988 and the study area has been visited almost yearly since. The scientific program has been intensified in parallel to the monitoring, during the last few years within the MARUM excellence cluster. This year, a large dust buoy was deployed to record seasonal dust flux to the open ocean. Further, the formation and degradation of marine snow particles is studied in situ and combined with experimental work to study key processes important for the biological pump and the carbon cycle.

Further information about the Saharan dust project you can find here:
DustTraffic: Transatlantic Fluxes of Saharan Dust