Plankton Sampler and MINIpack in Nvshuttle
Chelsea Technologies Group (CTG) has delivered an instrumented towed undulating oceanographic recorder, Nv-Shuttle, to the Marine and Coastal Management Group of the Department of Environment and Tourism, Cape Town, South Africa to be utilised within their ongoing and future monitoring programs in the Benguela system. This acquisition has been funded by the Benguela Current Large Marine Ecosystem (BCLME) program, in which Angola, Namibia and South Africa jointly identify and manage transboundary resources of the BCLME.
The Nv-Shuttle will first be used on the RV Africana and the RV Algoa to complement the routine St Helena Bay and SARP monitoring lines, which have been undertaken monthly since April 2000. The classical monitoring at fixed locations will be complemented by either towing continuously back along the monitoring line or by towing between stations and retrieving the NƒÞ-Shuttle every 10 nautical miles. This will be repeated as often as possible for one year and the results will be compared to the fixed station data. Scientists from Namibia and Angola will be invited to Cape Town to participate in the cruises to enable them to build up experience in deploying, operating and retrieving the
NƒÞ-Shuttle and analyzing data collected at sea and in the laboratory ashore. Next the equipment will be deployed on the monitoring line off Namibia on the RV Welwitschia and on the Namibe monitoring line in southern Angola during cruises of opportunity. The use of optical sensors for detection of phytoplankton groups or HABS using an optical plankton counter for zooplankton may be added in the future to the sensor payload.
The Nv-Shuttle supplied for the BCLME programme is fitted with a MINIpack CTD-F to measure Conductivity, Temperature, Depth and Fluorescence, as well as an Autonomous Plankton Sampler (APS). The MINIpack CTD-F is a small, robust and high performance CTD-F.
