Geochemistry and Ecology of the Namibian Upwelling System NAMUFIL: Namibian Upwelling Filament Study - Cruise No. M103 - December 27, 2013 - February 11, 2014 - Walvis Bay (Namibia) - Walvis Bay (Namibia)

Cruise M103 NAMUFIL (Namibian Upwelling Filament Study) onboard RV METEOR was dedicated to the GENUS (Geochemistry and Ecology of the Namibian Upwelling System) project (Phase II) and represented the sixth field campaign within this program since 2008. The scientific work focused on the Namibia Benguela region between the Orange River (28.6��S) in the south and the Kunene River (17.25��S) in the north during low to moderate upwelling conditions in the austral summer season and aimed to clarify relationships between climate change, biogeochemical cycles of nutrients, and ecosystem structure in one of the largest upwelling ecosystems. The cruise was divided into two legs: Leg 1 was the synoptic part and designed to study the entire Northern Benguela upwelling area with pre-defined transects and comprised empirical studies of processes and rates of ocean circulation, biogeochemical cycling of nutrients between the water column, biota and the sediments, trophic interactions and energy flows. Leg 2 focused on the ecosystem succession of a filament in order to investigate processes within and across a dynamic water mass. Overall, the cruise was highly successful as we were able to conduct sampling at 86 stations during leg 1 stations and 76 stations during leg 2. In addition to routine shipboard operations such as CTD casts and the deployment of several plankton nets and a multicorer we also recovered and redeployed various short-term and long-term moorings on the 23��S, 20��S and 18��S transects. The filament observations consisted of high resolution transects with towed CTD, multidisciplinary work at stations and a drifter experiment. The M103 filament experiment was the follow-up study of the METEOR expedition M100 in September 2013.
METEOR-Berichte