Supplied Description:
UNH acquired a new shipboard CTD system in at the end of 2013. These data were collected in 2012 and 2013. It remains to be verified if the CTD system used for these data is the new system or the old system.
This is from the Gulf Challenger website: The system includes a Sea-Bird Electronics (SBE) 25Plus CTD, an SBE-55 Sampling Rosette with six four-liter Niskin bottles, a dedicated Hawboldt Industries SPR 1424/S Science winch, and a SBE-33 real-time monitoring and sampling deck unit. The system provides high resolution vertical profiling of hydrographic properties (e.g. conductivity, salinity, temperature), physiochemical properties (e.g. pH and Photosynthetically Active Radiation (PAR)), and surrogates for biological and geological processes (e.g. dissolved oxygen, chlorophyll-a fluorescence and beam transmittance) that are an essential component of oceanographic field research.
The winch is outfitted with 400 meters of armored coax conducting wire that will allow profiling to the bottom anywhere within the Gulf of Maine (a maximum of 330 m depth). The unit will allow researchers to observe the CTD profile data in real time, and trip water sample bottles at optimal depths on the up-cast. An altimeter allows the system to be lowered safely to within 0.5 meter of the bottom without danger of hitting bottom and provides data to the researcher on a real-time computer monitor, as well as to the winch operator through a remote depth/altitude readout at the winch station.