tina tuesday with taenzer @ skio

So good to have these science lectures back on track!

Yes, it was an Evening at Skidaway, this time with a post-doc speaking.

Lucas Taenzer has been at the Skidaway Institute of Oceanography for some few months and already he's been called into action!

 

He spoke on "Hidden Paths Beneath The Waves: How The Open Ocean Shapes Coastal Waters", which was certainly based more in physics than anything else.

I guess I should have invited the physicist to come along!

I'll just have to make sure he sees the video.

Most of the talk concerned the very distinct layers of water which separate the deep, Golf Stream-warmed, Atlantic Ocean from the shallower - and cooler - waters near the eastern shore of the United States.

Those distinct bands act as an invisible, permeable, wall that exists at the edge of the continental shelf.

I was interested in how those bands came into play during hurricane activity.

However, that isn't something that lends itself well to experimentation and observation, as the waters are far too rough then. 

 

This photo is one of the coolest things, though!

Taenzer apparently thought so, too, as he had included it in his slides, though not in his actual talk.

Anyway, the image on the left is of phytoplankton activity, with green being most active and prevalent.

The image on the right shows the lights of a fleet of squid boats out fishing... and they are exactly in the "red" line, where phytoplankton are absent.

What I liked, though, were the lights along the coast, limning in precise detail the curves and inlets shown in the left image - very nice!

I do love how black and while photos contain so much detail!