The BURSTER and ESAW projects led by Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia e di Geofisica Sperimentale – OGS, have came to an end, find here the small interviews given by the PIs. (Click on the image for the full video)
More Information on the Burster Cruise:
The Kveithola sediment Drift in the innermost part of the glacially-eroded Kveithola Trough in the NW Barents Sea hosts an intriguing environment. The internal seismic reflections of the drift show a drastic thinning and termination towards the northern flank of the trough. Here a distinct moat implies a strong influence of dense bottom currents, inferred to flow (or at least to have flown) towards the outer shelf. The highly dynamic environment depicted from the morphological and structural characteristics of the sediment drift is in contrast with the sediment facies and preserved biota, characterized by the presence of typically oxygen-depleted environmental taxa. The sediments of the Kveithola Drift that deposited under persistent dense bottom currents, thus, appears today as a stagnant environment strongly affected by low-oxygen, possibly chemosynthetic conditions with likely ongoing gas seep activity from pockmarks. The BURSTER proposal aims to investigate the hydrographic conditions and the active gas seepage from the pockmark-field on the Kveithola Drift. Additionally, it aims to study climate and environmental changes controlling the evolution of living organisms in extreme environments. This proposal is to be intended as a preliminary, pilot-type of investigation for a successive project that will include detailed and focused investigation of the Kveithola bio-geochemical system over a larger data acquisition area and frame-time. In addition, if no alternative rescue opportunity will be identified by the time of the BURSTER cruise, part of the shiptime will be devoted to retrieve the moorings deployed during the 2014 PREPARED complementary cruise.
More information on the ESAW Cruise:
The southern Adriatic Sea is one of the Mediterranean (Med) basins, included in the Med-SHIP initiative for the repeated, coordinated, and high-quality-standard cruises. It is a site where the hydrography and biogeochemistry of the water column, depends on and influences the circulation and properties of the surrounding basins of the Eastern Mediterranean. Moreover, the hydrography and biogeochemistry are consequences both of the dense water formation, and a long-term variability, Therefore, we propose a multidisciplinary oceanographic campaign to be carried out in order to characterize the present state of the hydrographic and biogeochemical properties, including CFC-12 and SF6 and a carbonate system. We want to characterize the pre-conditioning and post-convection state and determine the evolution of the water masses in the southern Adriatic. We propose to carry out the multidisciplinary research divided in two cruises, ESAW-1 during the pre-conditioning, and ESAW-2 during the post-convection phases of the dense water formation. Some of the main objects to be achieved through this campaign are aimed at collecting multidisciplinary data sets for the process-oriented studies during pre- and post-convection conditions in the SAP, and at studying consequences on the biogeochemical and biological system. The data collected would provide characterization of the typical water masses during 2015-2016 winter conditions in the southern Adriatic Sea, to be compared with the past available data. During the pre-conditioning phase, we will study mainly conditions under the prevailing influence of the advection of different water masses within the basin and between the Adriatic and Ionian seas. At the end of the winter season, we expect to capture the phenomena associated with the vertical convection.
