Atlantic Ocean

Netherlands

This section was split up into three separate cruises. Greater details of each cruise can be found in the respective cruise reprots and metadata forms.

Leg 1 PE 319 on RV Pelagia started 28 April 2010 from Scrabster (Scotland) and arrived in Bermuda 25 May 2010 with Loes Gerringa (Royal NIOZ) as chief scientist. The original departure from Reykjavik, Iceland was changed due to the ash plume from the volcano under the Eyjafjallajoekull.  See cruise report.

Leg 2 PE321 on RV Pelagia departing from St George (Bermuda) 11 June 2010 and ended in Fortaleza (Brazil) on 07 July 2010 with Micha Rijkenberg (Royal NIOZ) as chief scientist. See cruise report and metadata form.

Leg 3 sailed on the UK research ship RRS James Cook departing Punta Arenas (Chile) on the 02 March 2011 and ending in Las Palmas (Spain). Micha Rijkenberg (Royal NIOZ) was chief scientist. prof. Hein J.W. de Baar is the head of Netherlands GEOTRACES programme. For more details see the cruise report.

In September 2008 a meeting was held to discuss the proposed US Atlantic Section. This had led to statement of interests being submitted to the US GEOTRACES Steering Committee. The out come was the U.S. GEOTRACES North Atlantic section cruise (KN199-4) which sailed from Lisbon on 15 October 2010. 

The cruise KN199-4 was terminated after completing one-third of the planned stations due to mechanical problems with the ship.  Science personnel disembarked in the Cape Verde Islands to return home.  Virtually all planned sampling had been completed successfully up to the termination of the cruise, testimony to the excellent preparations on the part of the cruise organizers and shipboard personnel.

US GEOTRACES has been offered time aboard the Atlantis to complete the North Atlantic section in November 2011.  The cruise is scheduled to depart from the Cape Verde Islands on 31 October 2011, and resume science operations by reoccupying the final station of the aborted cruise as an intercalibration exercise.  The cruise will then continue along the track originally planned, ending in Woods Hole in early December.

The chief scientists will be Dr William J. Jenkins ( Director, National Ocean Science, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution) and prof Edward Boyle (Dept. of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, MIT)

A funding opportunity from COST Action ES0801 culminated in a GEOTRACES Mediterranean Planning Workshop, which was held in Nice, France (6-8 October 2010). More than 50 participants from 15 countries met and discussed various aspects of implementing GEOTRACES in the Mediterranean.

The ideal Mediterranean GEOTRACES section(s) was/were discussed: The out come was one central (W-E) section by the R/V Pelagia (Netherlands) that will likely occur in 2013 supported by dedicated process studies.

RRS Discovery cruise D361 sailed February 2011 from Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain. The chief scientist was Prof. Eric Achterberg (School of Ocean & Earth Science, National Oceanography Centre Southampton, University of Southampton). Details of this cruise can be found in the metadata form and cruise report.

GA07

Not available.

RRS Discovery cruise D357 sailed October 2010 from Cape Town, South Africa. The chief scientist was Gideon M. Henderson (Department of Earth Sciences, Oxford). Due to unforeseen circumstances only a third of the proposed 40°S zonal section was completed. The cruise has been rescheduled for December 2011.