Departure of US GEOTRACES cruise GP16 in the Pacific

The latest US GEOTRACES cruise – the East Pacific Zonal Transect sets sailed from Manta, Ecuador on October 25th and will be end in Tahiti on December 22nd. The transect will begin offshore from Peru near 12 degrees South and end with a final station at 150 degrees West, designated as a future intercalibration station that will be re-occupied during a future meridional transect. Along the way, our cruise will transect from an area characterized by high rates of primary production and particle export in the eastern boundary to extremely oligotrophic conditions farther West. We will also intercept the large Oxygen Minimum Zone off Peru during the first half of the transect and a major hydrothermal plume that disperses West away from the Southern East Pacific Rise during the second half of the transect: thus, a recurrent redox-cycling theme will travel with us all the way to our final station.

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