US GEOTRACES GP15 cruise Planning Meeting held in Norfolk

The next US GEOTRACES transect will be GP15 in 2018 and led by Old Dominion University’s Greg Cutter, former co-chair of the S&I Committee. His co-leaders on the expedition are Phoebe Lam, current SSC Co-Chair, and Karen Casciotti, current S&I Committee member. It will start on 18 September 2018 in Seattle, Washington, transit to the Alaskan shelf near Kodiak Island and then head south along 152° W to 20° S, with a fuel and food stop in Hilo, Hawaii. There will be a crossover station at 47° N with Japan’s 2017 GP02 cruise for intercalibration. The cruise will end in Papeete, Tahiti on 24 November 2018. There will be 34 scientists on board the US Research Vessel Revelle, examining over 55 TEIs. To coordinate and plan such an endeavor, we held a two day conference 8 and 9 March at ODU, with 56 attendees from as far west as Hawaii and as far north as Alaska – long distances from Virginia, but not as long as the cruise itself – 67 days and 11,000 km! Unique for many US cruises, we will have a professional journalist on board, reporting on the cruise with educational blogs and perhaps videos (depending on bandwidth), and popular magazine articles afterwards. There will also be a public open house in Hilo, Hawaii for local school children and anyone who would like to tour the ship and learn about GEOTRACES.

Figures: (1) GP15 Cruise Track with blue dots indicating Full water column stations, white being Demi stations in the upper 1000 m, and red dots being Super stations where additional sampling beyond the Supers will occur. Brown dots are shelf/slope stations and green dots are port stops. (2) Greg Cutter discussing the cruise track with attendees at the 2018 US GEOTRACES GP15 Planning Meeting.