GEOTRACES Japanese Cruise in the South Pacific Ocean – Short report

The KH-14-6 cruise, nicknamed as “GRUS Expedition”, has been conducted between December 2, 2014, and February 26, 2015, in the Pacific Ocean including the Antarctic Sea. The main purpose of the cruise is to establish the 2-dimensional profiles of trace elements and isotopes along the 170°W line (see figure below).

The cruise consisted of four legs, the leg-II (8 stations from GR-7 to GR-14) and the leg-III (7 stations from GR-15 to GR-21) of which were assigned for the GEOTRACES program. Water samples were collected from surface to near bottom by using a clean CTD Carousel Multi Sampling system (24 Niskin-X (12L) bottles) attached at the end of a Ti-armored cable. We occupied two stations, GR-6 (30°S, 174°E) in Leg-I and GR-13 (32°30’S, 170°W) in Leg-II for the purpose of inter-comparison with the data obtained by a previous Australian GEOTRACES cruise.

Figure: Track chart of the cruise KH-14-6 cruise. Click here to view the figure larger.

Chief scientist: Toshitaka Gamo, University of Tokyo