Leads:
Glen Gawarkiewicz is the Chief Scientist on this cruise and has more than 37 years of experience in the observation of shelfbreak dynamics in the Mid-Atlantic Bight. As a part of his work as a senior scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) he stays in close contact with the regional fisheries community and is thrilled to share his squid facts with everybody who is interested.
Avijit Gangopadhyay is professor for Estuarine & Ocean Sciences at the School for Marine Science & Technology, UMass Dartmouth, and Co-Cief Scientist on this trip, contributing with his knowledge about Warm Core Ring Dynamics. His special interest in squid is infectious and keeps the rest of the science party awake while hoping to spot one in the nighty glance of the ships’ lights on the water.
Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV)-Team:
Amy Kukulya is the lead of WHOI’s Scibotics Lab and an expert for the development and operation of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs). She joins the cruise with three vehicles which are vital to resolving the salinity intrusions and allow us to be in two places at the same time.
Noa Yoder pilots the AUV during the cruise and works at WHOI as an engineer in the Scibotics lab. She has been with WHOI for 2 years and contibutes greatly to the AUV development, troubleshooting and field operations.
Suparnamaaya (Maaya) Prasad joined Amy’s lab at WHOI as an undergraduate intern. Onshore, she studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, MA.
Turbulence Team:
Ruth Musgrave is a Physical Oceanographer, who is based these days at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada. She has a background in internal waves, turbulence and ocean mixing. Ruth is interested in measuring turbulence in salinity intrusions on the Mid-Atlantic Bight to try to determine how long they can persist, and the mechanisms by which they diffuse.
Erica Green is a Graduate Student at the University of Minnesota-Duluth and collects turbulence measurements for her PhD-thesis. She is excited to measure energy dissipation rates in the vicinity of salinity intrusions, in particular since her usual operation region are the Great Lakes without any salt content. Her lab contributed the Vertical Microstructure Profiler (VMP).
Adrienne Silver is a Graduate Student at the School for Marine Science & Technology, UMass Dartmouth and is advised by Avijit. For her PhD she is studying Warm Core Rings and their effect on the shelfbreak. Adrienne is working on the turbulence team as well as looking at how Warm Core Rings contribute to the production of salinity intrusions.
Lukas Lobert is a Graduate Student in the MIT-WHOI Joint Program and advised by Glen. For his PhD-thesis he studies how storms impact the Mid-Atlantic Bight’s shelfbreak frontal region. His interest in ocean mixing brought him into the Turbulence team during the cruise.
Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP)
Frank Bahr is a Research Specialist at WHOI and an expert for analyzing ocean current data. He looks back on 40 years of sea experience and is an all-round asset to the team, both on land and sea.
Acoustics
Other Support
Svenja Ryan is a Postdoc researcher at WHOI who’s work focuses on marine heatwaves. For the June research cruise Svenja is our onshore contact sending daily satellite and mooring data.
The Commercial Fisheries Research Foundation (CFRF), a nonprofit dedicated to researching sustainable fisheries, has been helping us understand the impact salinity intrusions have on New England’s Fisheries by providing data and first hand experiences from the fishing community.
The Armstrong and its amazing crew making all this data collection from the June cruise possible.
Thanks to NSF for funding the project.