Martha's Vineyard Coastal Observatory

The Martha’s Vineyard Coastal Observatory is alive and well and producing great data for a growing and diverse scientific community. It has been an exciting fall with new instrument installations and a very busy one as we work at developing a management structure for our new facility. The vision of the observatory as a significant resource not only to the scientific community, but also to the public, and especially as a tool for educators gives us a very broad mission. Meeting these diverse goals will be challenging and exciting.

New Users
The most exciting news in late November was the installation of another new user, actually two of them. Peter Traykovski and Jim Irish are collaborating on the science and instrumentation for studies of bedform migration.

December brought us more users, Mike Richardson of NRL at Stennis and John Bradley of OmniTech in New Orleans. They brought a team of seven engineers and divers to install a suite of four instruments. They will be collaborating with Peter Traykovski on expanded studies of sediment transport and object burial.

Glenn McDonald, Andy Girard and Erich Horgan installed a second Traykovski monopod and worked with the NRL divers.

Together the two groups have a suite of eight instruments arrayed from the node about 150 meters to the South and East. Peter has added an Imagenix sonar and a second Nortek current meter. Bradley’s group has a Navy optical sediment burial instrument and a Sontek ADP with CT and pressure/wave gauge. It was a challenging installation, requiring three trips but well worth it.


	An image from the sonar near the node in the fine sand showing smaller an-orbital ripples and the instrumented NRL shape with a scour pit around it.

Data Serving
Janet Fredericks, our data analysis programmer, has started working with Danielle Fino and Julie Allen of CIS. They will be creating a web page to serve up Janet’s data output products as well as other information, links related to MVCO, current science projects, and future plans. This is a long awaited and critical element in meeting our commitment to provide a suite of core meteorological and hydrographic data sets to our broad constituency of scientists, fishermen, students, teachers, and beach-goers.

The display of the core sensor suite at the met mast on South Beach will include both 2-D and 3-D sonic anemometers, relative humidity, temperature, and pressure. At the lab we add both solar and infrared radiation and a rain gauge as well as another wind speed and direction measurement. The underwater node will report on surface current speed and direction, wave height and direction, and at the forty foot depth sea temperature and salinity. The team expects to have the page available by the end of the year. It is possible some individual scientists may also make information or data available from their sensors at MVCO on their own web pages. We will post links to relevant sites.

Field Ops
We are always looking for new members of the dive team. This is an opportunity to increase your skills and train on new equipment. While very beautiful, the observatory site is a remote and challenging place to dive. We need to be able to draw on a large number of enthusiastic and experienced divers who would enjoy working with us. Terry Rioux is still running training courses for dry suit and surface supply divers as well as starting to introduce divers to the diver signaling system. Divers interested in training should contact Terry at extension 2239. Divers desiring more information about the type of work and diving conditions may contact Glenn McDonald or Fred Thwaites.

Feedback, suggestions or comments on this newsletter can be sent to mmcelroy@whoi.edu.

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