Today was our first day at Rose Atoll and it was breathtaking. The weather was perfect. Blue sky, puffy white clouds, and a sea as calm as glass. I was serving as coxswain (driving the boat) with the Oceanography team deploying instruments to measure conditions at the Atoll over the next two years. At the same time we recovered a variety of other instruments which have been measuring the water temperature, currents and tides during the two years since our last visit.
New this year we are conducting some experiments looking at the residence time of the water within the Rose Atoll lagoon. To do this we have deployed an acoustic doppler current profiler which will measure the speed of the water flowing into and out of the pass at the northwest corner of the atoll. This will be combined with other data including that from a temperature pressure meter measuring the change in depth of the water in the lagoon to create a model showing scientists how quickly the lagoon is flushed with open ocean water. Understanding this is important for studies of ocean water chemistry because water that has stayed in the lagoon for longer periods of time will be more affected by the biological activity within the lagoon itself.
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