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Deep-Water Moorings Successfully Recovered By Marinna Martini January 1999 in this issue:  previous story | next story Bill Strahle, Marinna Martini and Rick Rendigs from Woods Hole and Marlene Noble from Menlo Park joined forces with folks from the Naval Postgraduate School and the California Department of Fish and Game aboard the R/V Pt. Sur early in December to successfully recover three deep-water moorings (one was 2300 m long!) from the Farallon Islands area off California. The moored data have been and will be used by the EPA to assess the impact of the newly established deep-water disposal site in the region. These moorings are actually the second of two sets of moorings, each set deployed for one year, that monitored the circulation and sediment-transport patterns offshore in the Gulf of the Farallones. The moorings included single-point and Doppler profiling current meters, temperature, salinity and water-clarity recorders, sediment traps and bags of mussels. Even after one year of hanging off a mooring line at depths of 150 and 220 m, most of the mussels were alive on recovery. Along with the sediment traps, the mussels will reveal the presence of any contaminants high in the water column. The USGS moorings were recovered speedily enough to donate ship time to recover a MBARI mooring that had collapsed a year earlier. A MBARI ROV had already attached a line and surface float to the gear, and the Pt. Sur pulled what was left on board. The mooring was entangled with a large fishing net and it was a very dangerous operation for the Pt. Sur crew to bring it aboard. in this issue:  previous story | next story

January 1999 Mailing List: Sign up to receive monthly email updates: in this issue: Gas Hydrate Shear Strength Deep-Water Moorings Recovered Coastal SWATH Tests Cape Cod Seafloor Imagery cover story: New Program-Wide Newsletter Lecture: Tsunami! Lecture: Navassa Island Seminar: South Florida Ecosystem Restoration NAS/NRC Review Coastline Lidar Display at AGU Long Island Sound INATURES Lessons Learned Director Visits Menlo Park Eastern Region Council Visits Woods Hole Note From the Editor January Publications List

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