Onboard the Discovery we’re working to get everything prepared before we arrive at the PAP-SO early next week. Here Christopher Feltham is attaching bottles of preservative to the sediment traps. These will be deployed at depths of 2500m, 3000m and 4750m in the NE Atlantic. The traps collect and preserve sinking particles, each bottle is open for a set period of time to provide a year round picture of marine snow fall. When analysed back at NOC, this shows us how much carbon is sinking from surface waters to the ocean interior and onto the seafloor where it is removed from the atmosphere for thousands of years.
Three of these traps are bound for the PAP-SO and one to #WhittardCanyon where NOC colleagues @VeerleHuvenne and @MikeAClare are collecting evidence of down canyon particle flows. They found some really exciting data in 2020 and we’re looking forward to seeing what they find this time.
@CLASS_UKRI @EMSOeu @NOCnews @bodc @AAiFADO @OTCCO2 #WhittardCanyon mooring.
Our website: https://projects.noc.ac.uk/pap/
Porcupine Abyssal Plain Observatory 