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Water Mass Measurements Around Benthic Communities: A Comparative Study Between Yo-Yo Conductivity-Temperature-Depth (CTD) Casts and High-Resolution Time Series Data Acquisition of Bottom Waters from the Pagès Escarpment in the Southern Bay of Biscay

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Diversity in Coastal Marine Sciences

Part of the book series: Coastal Research Library ((COASTALRL,volume 23))

Abstract

We performed a comparative test study applying conventional Conductivity-Temperature-Depth (CTD) casts and a self designed mini lander system, which was deployed on the Pagès Escarpment on the Cantabrian Margin at 762 mbsl water depth for continuous bottom water measurements. Our lander data demonstrate that the mechanical movement of CTD gear disturbs the internal structure of the bottom water mass and extreme values are most likely to be missed. This questions the reliability of repeated CTD casts at the same site (yoyo-CTD) with respect to the detailed bottom water mass characteristics bathing the benthic communities. Although, repeated CTD casts may provide information about the amplitude in temperature and salinity variability, our data clearly exhibit that temperature and salinity maxima and minima respectively do not coincide only with the most obvious semi diurnal tidal dynamics but exhibit other tidal frequencies, mainly M4, which are not captured by yoyo-CTD analysis. High resolution CTD measurements in combination with ADCP data reveal a comprehensive picture of bottom water mass dynamics.

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Acknowledgements

Sip time and financial support was provided by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and FP7 EU project HERMIONE. We thank the captain Michael Schneider and his excellent and most efficient crew of the METEOR cruise 84/5. We would like to thank our technicians, namely Asmus Petersen and Thorsten Schott, and ship-board scientific party of this cruise. We further thank our colleagues Olaf Pfannkuche, Peter Linke, Joachim Schönfeld, Thomas Kumbier for their valuable discussions in designing and constructing the mini-lander. Katriina Juva supported us with the T_Tide analysis, which is greatfully acknowledged. We are indebted to the A. P. Laudenbacher Foundation in La Punt Chamues-ch for providing an excellent atmosphere for a working and research retreat.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, Kiel, Germany

    Wolf-Christian Dullo & Sascha Flögel

  2. Département des Géosciences, Université de Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland

    Andres Rüggeberg

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  1. Wolf-Christian Dullo
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Correspondence to Wolf-Christian Dullo .

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  1. Coastal Education & Research Foundation (CERF), Fletcher, North Carolina, USA

    Charles W. Finkl

  2. Coastal Education & Research Foundation (CERF), Coconut Creek, Florida, USA

    Christopher Makowski

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Dullo, WC., Flögel, S., Rüggeberg, A. (2018). Water Mass Measurements Around Benthic Communities: A Comparative Study Between Yo-Yo Conductivity-Temperature-Depth (CTD) Casts and High-Resolution Time Series Data Acquisition of Bottom Waters from the Pagès Escarpment in the Southern Bay of Biscay. In: Finkl, C., Makowski, C. (eds) Diversity in Coastal Marine Sciences. Coastal Research Library, vol 23. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57577-3_11

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