As my Ph.D focused in Tīkapa Moana Te Moana Nui a Toi the Hauraki Gulf, I had to do a fair bit of field work, wether as a Teaching Assistant or for my own research.

CTDs

As we were only interested in surface water, it was feasible to drop the CTD probe by hand. The real pickle was matching the points between the CastAway, the RBR, and Te Kaihōpara’s GPS. This gave us pretty images like this one.

Example of CTD cast separating Temperature (left), Salinity (center) and Chlorophyll-a (right).

I then related these to plankton composition in the water.

Tracking fine-scale front with TK

While sampling the Gulf was fun, I did not do it randomly, moving Te Kaihōpara wherever I wanted. I relied on the pyBOA.

Compared output of the pyBOA on two good sampling days

By doing so, I tried to make sure to have a story to tell about plankton accross front. Or more accurately, answer the question “Do Plankton change accross small scale fronts ?”.

Fauna observation

Although I did not take fauna observation from Te Kaihōpara for my project, and instead used a dataset provided to me by fisheries, I still had the chance to witness a few dolphins and mantas while out in the Gulf.

Dolphin (left) and Manta (right) seen from TK’s bridge.

‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵ <º))))>< Thank you to all the little hands that helped for my own sampling