GA02 cruise completed

After 5 weeks sailing from Punta Arenas (2 March) to Las Palmas (6 April) as guests of Captain Bill Richardson and his helpful crew on the RRS James Cook, the third and last leg of the Dutch GEOTRACES project has now been completed. The Dutch GEOTRACES project aimed to map the distribution of important trace elements and isotopes in the West Atlantic Ocean. With 18 full depth stations sampled during this leg 3 we now completed a transect of 59 stations from 65ºN to 50ºS, see Figure 1 for cruise track and full West Atlantic Ocean transect. On board we have a diverse party of international scientists from Brazil, Germany, France, UK, USA, Austria and the Netherlands. We sampled an even more diverse set of parameters with direct on board measurement of the trace metals Fe, Al, Mn, Co, Zn and Cd, the CO2 system, nutrients, organic speciation and size fractionation of Fe, 234Th and bacterial and archaeal production. We also sampled a large set of parameters for the international community including  Ag, Pt, Cu, Zn, Hg, Ba, U, Mo, the rare earth elements, the isotopes of Cd, Cr, Ni, Nd (water column and bottom sediments), Pb, Fe, Zn, Si, 15N, 13/14C, 230Th, 231Pa, 232Th, 18O, D and other parameters as CFC’s and a whole range of parameters to increase our understanding of the deep sea microbiology.

Figure1_West Atlantic Transect

Figure 1: The completed West Atlantic transect of the Dutch GEOTRACES project

PI of the cruise: Micha Rijkenberg.

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