COSEE NOW

College of the Redwood’s drifter, deployed two months ago, continues to hang on and is now off the coast of Mexico (http://www.nefsc.noaa.gov/drifter/drift_redwoods_2010_1.html). Its course has generally paralleled the California coast with only two major exceptions. North of Point Reyes the drifter reversed its course and spent several days…[Read more]

It appears that College of the Redwoods’ drifter is slowly dying. NOAA’s drifter guru, Jim Manning, feels that the drifter’s flotation may have been damaged. The drifter is probably partially submerged and is no […]

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 [...]

Finally! After a solid week of meandering around in the Gulf of the Farallons dodging tankers, warships, and fishing boats, CR’s drifter has been recaptured by the California Current and is heading south. The drifter has been sailing steadily southward for the last three days, and is now halfway between the Golden Gate and Monterey [...]

College of the Redwoods’ drifter has taken “playing on the freeway” to a new level. For the last four days, our drifter has been wandering around in the inbound and outbound shipping lanes (there are six of these) to the San Francisco Bay . Two hours ago it moved to within 10 nautical miles from the [...]

No, this is not a Country & Western song. College of the Redwoods’ drifter finally escaped the clutches of the Bodega Triangle two days ago under the cover of darkness. In the same bold move, the drifter also slipped past the deadly clutches of Point Reyes. Safe? Not even! The drifter made an initial feint [...]

College of the Redwoods’ drifter continues to wander in a relatively small area that we have dubbed “The Bodega Triangle”.  After charging southward nearly 90 nm in the first 5 days after deployment, the drifter has since been cycling around an area of only a few square miles.  The seasonally unusual southerly winds over the last [...]

For the first 5 days after deployment, strong NW winds fueled a current that carried College of the Redwoods’ drifter at speeds of well over 1 knot. Those winds died down on Sunday  and postponed our hopes of the drifter making it past Point Reyes. The past 36 hours have becalmed our drifter, and it [...]

The excitement is building in our lab, as our drifter skirted by a major geographic hurdle. In our past studies Point Arena has captured many of our drift bottles. Early this morning the drifter we deployed two days ago ( http://www.nefsc.noaa.gov/drifter/drift_redwoods_2010_1.html  ) successfully avoided the clutches of the Point and is…[Read more]

The students in our Marine Science Technology Program were excited to assemble our new drifter, but their enthusiasm was wavering as we waited weeks for good sea conditions. For those of you unfamiliar with the northern California coast, spring is a rather volatile time. Typically we have strong northwesterly winds at this time of year that [...]