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Stockbridge High School Building Drifter

By on September 19, 2011 in Uncategorized

We hope to complete the drifter today. Our goal is to be the first team to launch a drifter into the Great Lakes. We will be launching October 1st and 2nd in the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary in Alpena Michigan and Lake Huron.

 The team has set up a facebook page that is updated daily with pictures, videos and announcements it can be found at:

http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Stockbridge-Advanced-Underwater-Robotics/148465301909424

Please friend us and follow the team.

Also the Jackson Citizen Patriot wrote a great article about the team it can be found on line at:

http://www.mlive.com/news/jackson/index.ssf/2011/09/stockbridge_high_school_roboti_1.html

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Insights into a Mystery

By on June 8, 2010 in College of the Redwoods, Tracking the Drifter, Uncategorized

After 28 days adrift, College of the Redwoods’ drifter is poised to reveal some insights into a long-standing mystery. Marine science students at CR have deployed hundreds of drift bottles over the last 25 years. The bottles contain a card asking the finders to record the location in which they recovered the bottle, and send the card back to us.

In that time we have developed a fairly good idea of where California’s coastal currents are likely to carry our bottles. During our storm season, the nearshore Davidson Current tends to transport our bottles northward. We have very high recovery rates during those times in northern California, Oregon, and Washington. On occasion our bottles have made it as far as British Columbia and Alaska. The Davidson Current tends to be best developed between mid-October and mid-February, but southerly storm winds in late spring and early summer often produce the episodic, short-lived appearance of the Davidson Current.

The California Current, on the other hand, sweeps close to shore during much of the rest of the year. Our drift bottles are usually carried southward during these times. If you’ve been following this blog, you’ve undoubtedly noticed that our drifter has been swept over 200 nautical miles southward in the last month, successfully avoiding all of the most common stranding sites. During this time of year, most of our drift bottles are recovered along the Mendocino, Sonoma, and Marin County coastlines (counties that are north of the Golden Gate). Some of the bottles are carried south of the Golden Gate as far as Monterey County. The farthest south any of our bottles have ever been recovered is Big Sur.

Our drifter is now about 40 n.m. offshore along the Monterey coastline and rapidly approaching the latitude of Point Sur. For the last 25 years, the burning question has been, “Where do the bottles go if they don’t strand north of Big Sur?” Two of our bottles were recovered (several years apart) in the Philippines, but we have no other recoveries south or west of Pt. Sur. So, at long last, our drifter is on the verge of shedding some light on the mystery of where the surface currents carry our drift bottles.

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Marine Science Students Build A Satellite Drifter

By on May 28, 2010 in Uncategorized

College of the RedwoodsNews: Mendocino Coast
May 17, 2010 – 4:02:19 PM

Students in the Marine Science Technology Program (MST) have recently built and deployed an ocean drifter designed to study California coastal currents. The drifter is a four-and-one-half foot tall by four foot wide structure made of PVC pipe, vinyl “sails” and a package containing a satellite transmitter. The drifter is designed to float just below the surface of the ocean so that its path is largely unaffected by the wind. A satellite tracking device protrudes above the ocean surface so the path of the drifter can be monitored by MST students, scientists and the public.

It was dropped into the Pacific Ocean on Tuesday May 11 with the help of the F/V Trek II about two miles offshore of Noyo Bay. The students have been waiting for ideal oceanographic conditions to drop the drifter to utilize the dominate California Current that flows from north to south, fueled by a northwest wind pattern. Strong northerly winds also foster coastal upwelling that pushes surface waters offshore. Upwelling brings cold, nutrient-rich waters to the surface and sustains the tremendously diverse coastal ecosystem along the Mendocino Coast. Information gathered by the drifter will be used in future MST Program classes, such as the Oceanography class that will be offered this coming fall semester. Even if ocean currents force it up on the beach, the drifter can be recovered and redeployed unless it is too damaged.

Funding and support for the project came from the Marine Advanced Technology Education (MATE) program in Monterey via a grant from the National Science Foundation. Scientists from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts provided materials and technical support to assist CR students to assemble the drifter, and the federal National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has donated the satellite time to track the drifter.

Marine Science Technology students on the Mendocino Campus are hoping to see how changes in wind and currents affect the path of their drifter. Watch the MST web page (http://www.redwoods.edu/Departments/Marine/) for a future link that will allow you to track the path of the drifter along with the MST students. You can access a real-time google map with the drifter location updated every four hours at the following address: www.nefsc.noaa.gov/drifter/drift_redwoods_2010_1.html

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