MOD Postdoc Spotlight: Filipe Pereira

Filipe in front of the island of Jan Mayen during the 2023 NORSE cruise.

What is your background and what are you working on at the moment?
I started studying biology for my undergrad at the State University of Feira de Santana in Northeast Brazil, which is closer to Alagoinhas, Bahia, where I come from. However, I slowly realized that physics was perhaps more my thing, or rather, it was my mother who noticed that I wasn't very happy with biology. She saw a newspaper article about a major in oceanography at the Federal University of Bahia in the state capital and suggested that it might be more my thing. I applied, got in, and was introduced to physical oceanography in one of the first classes I took there and I loved it. I also started working as a research assistant in a lab with a professor who told me that if I wanted to pursue physical oceanography, I should go to the University of São Paulo (USP) where there were more courses and more focused research. So, I transferred to São Paulo and finished my undergraduate degree and was also lucky enough to get to do a six-month exchange program at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth (UMassD). By then I knew physical oceanography was my thing, so I jumped straight into a PhD when I got back. I earned my doctorate from the dual degree program between USP and UMassD about a year ago and joined the MOD lab at Scripps last fall.

At the moment I have a fellowship from the University of California to work on red tides. Because my background includes both biological and physical oceanography, I’ve been working a lot with biological-physical interactions at meso- and submesoscales before. One of the questions I’m thinking about is how the biology can influence the ocean physics. At Scripps, I’m now working with professors Jen MacKinnon and Drew Lucas on using optics to investigate how phytoplankton could be affecting stratification and how that might be a mechanism that sustains red tides.

Filipe at his PhD thesis defense.

What keeps you excited and interested in working in the field of oceanography?
I really like going to sea. My degree was technically in observational oceanography, but because of the pandemic, I had to switch over to doing more modeling. Now that fieldwork is a possibility again, I’m excited to get to be in touch with the object I’m studying, the ocean. I didn’t grow up by the coast so for me it always felt like a special thing to go to the ocean, especially when you get to be involved in the kind of bigger research cruises that involve a lot of people from different countries, it’s great!

When you were a kid, did you expect to be a scientist or engineer?
I can’t say I “expected” it, but maybe I can say that I “dreamt” of being a scientist? As a kid, I enjoyed watching documentaries on TV and was generally curious, but the path of a scientist was not something that was a given for me, I guess partly because it was never really made clear how you become one? Sure, you go to college and get multiple degrees and all that, but I think I’m still figuring out what it actually means to “be a scientist”.

Were there any particular things from your childhood that drew you to study the ocean?
Nothing very particular. Though I did have a freshwater aquarium as a kid and maybe that’s how I got into studying water. To keep the fish healthy, you need to learn about nitrogen cycles and oxygen et cetera, and perhaps that is what led me to go into biology and later oceanography.

What skills or abilities do you think are useful when going to graduate school for oceanography?
I think self-esteem is really important. We’re trained to question everything and not be sure of anything, and that can sometimes leak into your personal life so having a steady foundation of self-esteem is helpful. Perseverance and resilience are also important. Things take time and sometimes you just have to put your head down and stick it out even if it’s not always super fun. Lastly, I’d say it’s important to be aware that failing is ok, in fact, it’s a useful thing because you learn something.

At sea!

What does a typical workday look like for you?
Well, in essence, it typically looks like this: get to the office, sit at my computer to answer emails and work on whatever data I’m working on, maybe read some papers, and then go home. Nothing super exciting to be honest. Except when you get to go to sea, of course, that’s a bit more thrilling.

What drew you to Scripps?
It was actually quite serendipitous. I was at a conference with Peter Franks and Jen and we started talking, they got Drew on board and then encouraged me to apply for the fellowship and here we are.

NORSE 2023 cruise

Is there a particular scientist/person/thing that inspires you? Can be anyone or anything!
Oh, so many things! In terms of people, I’m really inspired by my ancestors. Black people have this saying back home that “We are the dream of our ancestors”, meaning that our very existence and all the opportunities we have are connected to the hopes, sacrifices, efforts, and dreams of those who came before us. That sense of legacy motivates me a lot and I take a lot of courage and hope from their stories, in particular my grandmothers. I had the opportunity to live with one of my grandmothers during undergrad, and to be around this wealth of knowledge and wisdom from that generation was truly inspiring.

Do you have a fun fact that you'd like to share that not everyone knows about you?

I was once slapped in the face by the first president of Timor-Leste (East Timor). Long story short: Timor-Leste used to be a Portuguese colony, so they still speak some Portuguese. There is a Portuguese consulate in Massachusetts and at some point, when I was on exchange there the university held a reception for the first president of Timor-Leste, Xanana Gusmão, and students were invited. We got to talking and when he learned that I was from Brazil but didn’t attend the opening ceremony for the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro because I was in the US, he slapped me in the face, in a kind way but still strong enough to hurt a little, and said that I should have been there!

MOD Student Spotlight: Caique Dias Luko

What is your background and what are you working on at the moment? 
My background is in oceanography, I did both my undergrad and master’s degree in oceanography at the University of São Paulo (USP) in Brazil, which is where I’m from. I’m currently in my second year at Scripps and right now I’m working with Jen MacKinnon and Amy Waterhouse on projects that involve the Gulf of Mexico and the Tropical Pacific. Both of these regions are the stage to several phenomena that affect climate and marine ecosystems. Hurricane intensification, the formation of Oxygen Minimum Zones and the El Niño Southern Oscillation are some examples of that. Right now, I am studying how submesoscale motions and internal waves can modulate vertical exchanges of heat and oxygen in these regions. Ultimately I want to understand their contribution to the dynamics of these different phenomena.

Caique and his USP undergrad friends on their last fieldwork trip in Ubatuba, SP - Brazil.

What keeps you excited and interested in working in the field of oceanography?
For me, I think it’s mostly curiosity. Whenever I see something interesting, say a figure or photo of a phenomenon in the ocean, I just really want to understand what it can tell us and know more about it. It is even more exciting when that can relate to our daily experiences. Some of my most remarkable memories come from the classroom when I learned the craziest things about the ocean. How would we ever know that the ocean could glow blue at night because of phytoplankton? Or how would we ever know that there are rainier and drier years because of this thing called El Niño? There is so much to learn about our oceans and that keeps me excited!

Caique and his parents at his Bachelor’s degree graduation in 2020.

When you were a kid, did you expect to be a scientist or engineer? 
I didn’t expect to be a scientist, I actually wanted to build houses like my grandfather did. At some point I also wanted to be an Olympic swimmer. But I guess I went into science because I inherited a huge love for nature from my parents. My mom always encouraged me to study and her wish for me has always been to earn a bachelor’s degree from the University of São Paulo. She has really done everything she can to support me and allow me to have that opportunity and I think that’s part of the reason I’m now working towards a PhD.

Were there any particular things from your childhood that drew you to study the ocean?
I grew up in São Paulo, about 1-3 hours away from the ocean. But my mom and I would go as often as we could and have so much fun every time. Her love for the ocean was definitely contagious!

What skills or abilities do you think are useful when going into oceanography or academia in general? 
I think that having an interdisciplinary background can be to your advantage. Oceanography really spans many different fields, and you might have to connect many different dots from different areas of knowledge at times, so it helps to know a little bit about other things outside your niche.

Caique scuba diving in a coral reef in Fernando de Noronha, Brazil.

What does a typical workday look like for you? 
Typically I wake up, get to the office, do some emails, work on some data analysis and make some plots. At some point I’ll take a break and look at the ocean, and maybe there’s a meeting or seminar in the afternoon. After work, I might go play some beach soccer or go hang out with some friends. Of course, that looks different if you’re doing fieldwork at sea, but on average that is about it.

What drew you to Scripps? 
I think I’ve always known about Scripps as one of the best places in the world to do oceanography, already in my undergrad I read papers coming out of here. It just seemed like a fun place with lots of opportunities to do fieldwork and interesting research. My favorite part is probably that you’re surrounded by so many people doing cool things in the field of oceanography and I learn so much just from being around everyone. The fact that the campus is right on the beach and that the weather is nice in Southern California doesn’t hurt either…

Caique and his mom in Fernando de Noronha, in August 2022, right before he came to Scripps.

Is there a particular scientist/person/something that inspires you?
Firstly I would have to say my mom. She is such a hardworking person, but also super kind and generous and that inspires me a lot. Then I would also have to say my advisors Jen MacKinnon and Amy Waterhouse. They are great advisors and do amazing science, all while managing many different students and projects, and at the same time raising families. They’re just great people overall and that is inspiring to me.

Do you have a fun fact that you'd like to share that not everyone knows about you? 
My name “Caique” means “the bird that glides above the sea”. My mom didn’t know that when she gave me my name, but it’s quite a funny coincidence that I then became an oceanographer spending a lot of time on ships gliding around on the ocean. I always think of the frigatebird that soars above the ocean skimming the surface for fish, they can’t dive or swim, but they’re roaming just above the sea surface trying to find their livelihood, it’s not entirely unlike me when I’m on a research cruise!

CTD profiling in the Gulf of Mexico during the SUNRISE 2022 cruise. Photo: Kerstin Bergentz.

Written by Kerstin Bergentz

MOD Student Spotlight: Ankitha Kannad

What is your background and what are you working on at the moment? 
I did my undergrad in physics and geology here in the US at Bryn Mawr College, a small women’s college just outside of Philadelphia. I started out doing physics but then had a bit of an existential crisis halfway through. See, I have always enjoyed environmental work. I even spent a year in between high school and college working for an environmental group and volunteering at a rainforest research institute in India during that time too. During college, I realized that I enjoyed environmental work not just as a side thing but potentially as a career as well. Hence I decided to do geology. I got into oceanography through a summer internship and really enjoyed applying physics to study the ocean. After graduating I ended up spending about 2 years working for a paleo-oceanographer doing data analysis and I got to explore the interactions between the ocean and long-term climate. That is also what I do now in graduate school and my 3rd year at Scripps, although in more real time. I study how small-scale surface processes in the ocean influence rainfall, specifically the monsoon in South Asia together with my advisors, professors Janet Sprintall and Jen Mackinnon.

What keeps you excited and interested in working in the field of oceanography?
I like that I can go to sea and actually observe all of this data I'm looking at and I’m excited to get more fieldwork experience. I also really enjoy doing physics and the way it teaches you to approach problems and think about the world. You learn how to simplify a problem to its essential parts and think more deeply about the forces influencing our everyday lives. I like getting to practice that kind of thinking when studying such a complex system as the ocean.

When you were a kid, did you expect to be a scientist or engineer? 
I don't think I specifically thought about being a scientist when I was a kid. 5-year-old me would not have answered “scientist” to “what do you want to be when you grow up?”. My obsession when I was a kid was ancient civilizations and history. I was also exposed to a lot of popular science shows by my parents who are both engineers but probably wasn’t until high school that I really started to think about going into science as a career. I had a great physics teacher who really encouraged us to think and explore and not just learn things to get a good grade on a test. That was an important experience for me.

Were there any particular things from your childhood that drew you to study the ocean?
I grew up in in Singapore and my family is originally from a coastal town in India so I kind of grew up around the ocean. It had a presence in my life even though I didn’t necessarily spend a lot of time at the beach as a kid. It also felt very natural to move into oceanography from geology. It feels like the intersection of so much that I love and care about - physics, climate change and adaptation especially in many parts of Asia which is where I think I’ll want to work in the future.

What skills or abilities do you think are useful when going into oceanography? 
One thing is to be able to be comfortable with uncertainty. I think that the way science is often taught in school is very deterministic. You have a problem, you solve it using a method you’ve learned, you get an answer, and then you’re done. Actual research is much less certain, and you can’t be afraid of not knowing the right answer, because often you don’t. Making mistakes is part of the process and there is a lot more uncertainty in general. That is hard to learn in a class though, you just have to get into it and practice.

I also think it is important to be able to put things in perspective. In oceanography there are so many different connections to everything from climate science to math and social sciences, and there is a lot you can learn from collaborating with other people. To be a little bit curious about the rest of those fields and to be willing to learn from other people is useful. Being able to put your work in a greater context and think about how you fit into the bigger picture, I think is what makes a good scientist and it can help you stay motivated when it sometimes feels like you’re not making much progress.

 What does a typical workday look like for you? 
I typically spend most of the day working in front of the computer doing data analysis. I'm also just starting out, so I've been spending a lot of time reading papers trying to build a foundational understanding of the things I'm studying and getting started processing and thinking about data from our first cruise in the Arabian Sea.

What drew you to Scripps? 
I think a large part of it for me was being able to get to do observational work, that’s what Scripps is known for. I also applied to graduate school during the Zoom/Covid era (fall of 2020 to start in the fall of 2021) so I didn’t really have a feel for the campus and community. The latter is very important for me after coming from a small college where I really enjoyed that. I’m happy that Scripps although it is big also has that kind of small community vibe at times. Plus, I had spent 6 years on the East Coast and wanted a change. I needed a break from the winter…

Is there a particular scientist/person/something that inspires you?
I've definitely been lucky to have a lot of people who have influenced my path and have been great mentors along the way, but I think the one the person that has been with me the longest is my grandmother. She is not a scientist or does anything related to science, but she just has this wealth of knowledge and understanding of the world. A lot of my favorite memories with her are going out to parks and she would point out all the plants and animals she knows. She also jokes that the kitchen is her laboratory. She is just very curious about everything, a scientist in disguise as a grandmother! Seeing her approach to the world around her reminds me that there's so many people who understand nature in different ways; science is just one approach. I also think that a lot of how much I value community has come from her. My grandparents’ house is always open and people are always coming and going. That sense of community, being welcomed and belonging is something I find invaluable, and it is something I want to work to create around me too.

Do you have a fun fact that you'd like to share that not everyone knows about you? 
I have accumulated a lot of musical hobbies, none of which I’m very good at. Growing up I did classical Indian vocal music and piano, and then I played sitar in high school. I recently started doing taiko drumming too. It is quite physical and requires a lot of precision and alignment, but it is very fun!

 Written by: Kerstin Bergentz

MOD Student Spotlight: Andrea Rodriguez-Marin Freudmann

What is your background and what are you studying or working on at the moment? 
My high school experience was fairly generalized, but I wanted to get more hands-on skills for fabrication and design, so I decided to study engineering in undergrad. I got the chance to study tons of math and physics as well as to design and build things (like a recumbent bicycle!). I also did some design work for an underwater mass spectrometer in a deep-sea microbiology lab (the Girguis lab), which was my first introduction to ocean research. I ended up getting my B.S. in mechanical engineering in 2020, though by that point I had started to form an interest in science. I came to SIO in September of that year to start the Physical Oceanography program, which appealed to me because the first year of courses sounded like a good entry into the world of scientific research.

I am now working with a wonderful group of people at SIO including Amy Waterhouse, Mark Merrifield, Peter Franks, Jen Mackinnon, and many others at other institutions. I am using data from the Inner Shelf Dynamics Experiment to piece together how internal waves affect the momentum budget of the West Coast inner shelf. There have been a lot of studies on this region on the East Coast, but the other side of the continent is less well understood and has rather different dynamics. It sounds somewhat distant from real-life applications, but understanding the role that different forces play in the area can be important for predicting ocean flows and circulation, which in turn can help understand coastal problems, for example, red tides and where they will end up.

 What keeps you excited and interested in working in the field of oceanography?
The first thing that comes to mind is the sea-going part of oceanography. I love spending time on ships and the camaraderie that comes with working with so many dedicated people. It’s like summer camp for scientists, only with 12-hour shifts! It’s also a great opportunity to pick people’s brains for problems they may have seen in the past or have a different perspective on, in a way that’s much less structured than a meeting or a conference. Plus getting to collect the data to work on is very exciting.

Another element that’s really exciting is the sheer number of open questions. There are so many little contradictions and unknowns that need to be answered and that can be a really rewarding experience. For example, I am using model data, objectively mapped data, and observational data in combination since each one provides a piece of an answer to my question about internal waves and cross-shelf dynamics. Sometimes things seem fully understood (like in the model) or utterly baffling (like in the data) but turn out to be very different from our initial assumptions, and it’s the oceanographer’s job to tease out what’s actually happening.

 When you were a kid, did you expect to be a scientist or engineer?
I wanted to be all kinds of things as a kid, from a singer to a doctor, but I was also always interested in water. I grew up on an island taking a boat to school, I canoed through the Canadian wilderness, I was a swim instructor and lifeguard, etc. Once I got to my teenage years though I realized that I wanted to answer questions and solve problems for practical applications. I decided on mechanical engineering in my first year of undergrad because I enjoyed making things with my hands, and I liked being able to see with my own eyes how things work. My two interests didn’t click until my third year of university when I discovered the field of oceanography, and I realized that there was a job that involved answering questions, using cool tools, and spending time on the water.

 Were there any particular things from your childhood that drew you to study the ocean?
Like I mentioned, I grew up on an island, the Toronto Islands on Lake Ontario. One thing that always interested me as a child was how different the ocean was from the lake, how the waves were different, the salt felt different, the existence of tides, etc. It was such a different experience between the ocean on holiday and the lake the rest of the time.

The lake would behave differently every year too in ways that would affect us on the ground: there would be flooding one year and not another, the lake would freeze solid or not, etc. Thanks to this variability a lot of discussion would be about how the winter conditions far away from us would affect water levels in the summer, or how strong the winds were once it started to get cold enough to freeze. I think that was when I started to be interested in the “why” of the bodies of water in my life.  

What skills or abilities do you think are useful when going into oceanography?
I think there are a lot of skills that can get you through, since everyone has a pretty different experience. One that is immediately obvious is persistence, since a lot of the time things just don’t work and you have to believe in yourself enough to keep trying. Along with that, and maybe a little contradictorily, is knowing when to stop or pivot, which is maybe the skill of self-awareness? At the end of the day I think someone researching oceanography needs the confidence to keep going in a direction they believe in, as well as the confidence to decide they want to try something else. Then if someone has good time management, math skills, etc. that’s going to be helpful, but that’s generally true for any STEM subject. In my opinion oceanography is uniquely frustrating (and rewarding) because there is so much to study and so little known, so there are a lot of potential paths to go down.

What does a typical workday look like for you?
I usually start by deciding whether I want to work from home or from the office that day, though typically that’s determined by external factors (like meetings, seminars, classes, etc.). In the morning I typically try to start by catching up on emails and then (hopefully) finishing whatever data analysis I started the evening prior, now with fresh eyes. After lunch I do my second email check of the day, and then either go back to data analysis or do something logistical if I am getting too deeply frustrated. If I am really excited about a problem I’ll keep going into the evening, otherwise I’ll sleep on it. Of course this routine is typically disrupted by things happening around the office, grad school is a hectic time whether you like it or not.

What drew you to Scripps?
I had honestly never even heard of SIO until close to the end of undergrad, and then I applied because it sounded like they were open to those who were still figuring out where they wanted to focus their research. I really wanted that first year of coursework in physical oceanography since my background was in engineering, a degree which is useful but not sufficient for ocean science. I also liked that I could pick an advisor at the end of that first year once I had a better understanding of what I liked. I was also seduced by the amount of sea-going that appeared to happen at SIO, which I was very confident I wanted to do.

Is there a particular scientist/person/thing that inspires you?
This one is always hard for me because different people inspire me in different ways. I think someone whom I admire and respect hugely is my partner Alex. He is always interested in learning and never lets challenges at work prevent him from doing projects on the side that interest him. He thinks through problems carefully and always takes his responsibilities seriously. He definitely inspires me to be at his level professionally.

Do you have a fun fact that you'd like to share that not everyone knows about you?
I can speak Spanish with a French accent!

MOD Postdoc Spotlight: Yackar Mauzole

What is your background and what are you working on at the moment?
My background is in engineering which I studied after high school in France where I grew up. The system there is a bit different so it sort of worked out to me getting a master’s degree in France. Engineering is considered a very solid career path in France, and though I didn’t love every aspect of it I decided to specialize in something I did like, which is fluid mechanics. We had to do a research internship and that is how I ended up getting into oceanography. I then went to grad school in the US at University of Rhode Island and got another masters and my PhD there. Then I did a postdoc at Caltech/JPL and eventually joined MOD in 2019.

Today I’m using satellite data, in particular sea surface temperature, salinity and altimetry and ocean color, to study many different things in the ocean. Currently I’m looking at data from the Bay of Bengal which was the focus area of the project MISOBoB that MOD participated in and collected data for during a cruise in 2019. The Bay of Bengal which is an interesting region for many reasons, not the least the very strong monsoon and high population density. I focus on the smaller temporal and spatial scales (kilometers and days-weeks). What are the patterns of surface salinity? Are there filaments that are repeatedly formed? How does that impact the monsoon? It’s a really fun and intricate problem.  

What keeps you excited and interested in working in the field of oceanography?
There are always new things to learn and discover. You never run out of scientific questions surrounding the ocean. And the questions also vary depending on which ocean you study which is something I’ve realized from working in different places. I guess you could say that oceanography keeps you humble because you constantly get reminded of how much there is left to learn. 

When you were a kid, did you expect to be a scientist or engineer? 
Yes, that was never a question for me. I have always liked science and scored high on the exams throughout my school years. I’ve always known that I wanted to work in the scientific field. 

Were there any particular things from your childhood that drew you to study the ocean? 
No, not when I was a kid. I’ve tried a lot of things throughout my life and if I liked something I steered in that direction and I think that is why I ended up in this field. I wouldn’t call myself an ocean lover. I get really seasick on boats so that is something I’ve decided not to do. But I like to do specific research and enjoy deep diving into data and finding things that other people might not have found yet. I don’t think that you have to be super passionate about something to be interested in it and enjoy working with it. For example, I am not one of those people who has always loved oceanography. I love the ocean, but it wasn’t a trajectory that was set in stone. And that’s something I’ve enjoyed with the American grad school system, that there are opportunities for people with a diverse background, unlike in France where you have to do oceanography from the start if that’s what you want to get into.

 What skills or abilities do you think are useful when getting into oceanography?
Humility, curiosity, patience, and open-mindedness. Humility is important, the ocean is so vast and there are just so many things we don’t know and it’s important to be able to admit that. Once we admit that we don’t know we can start thinking creatively about out how to measure and better understand things. I also think the ability to set boundaries and remember that your research is not your entire life. Detaching your worth as a human being from your output in academia is super important. The culture in academia is unfortunately not always very supportive of a healthy work-life balance and it takes work prioritizing your mental health and other things that are important to you. It’s not always easy, but I really think that you can make it work.

 
What does a typical workday look like for you? 
That depends. I primarily use satellite data and if there is a question that comes up about something like temperature patterns or surface currents in a region I spring into action. The first thing I do is that I go gather data from various sources online. The advantage with satellite data is that it’s relatively easy to get your hands on multiple months/years of data. I make some figures and try to connect what I see in them with what the literature is saying, what observations are suggesting, and discuss that with Jen and the others. Satellite data is neat because you can add many layers of things. Maybe the front you’re interested in doesn’t appear as clear in sea surface temperature, but it might really stand out in chlorophyll, so I typically play around with many different datasets to try to understand what I’m looking at. Whether I’m investigating a question purely from the satellite data perspective or if the question came from something that was seen in observation can vary, but regardless, my workday is typically a lot of coding!

What drew you to Scripps?
I think that for me it had a lot to do with the people. The MOD group is a fun and inspiring group of people that I was excited to work with, especially Jen. I think it is so important to seek out good coworkers and mentors in academia. It’s tough field and it’s easy to get burned out and discouraged, so to find good people who support you and believe in you is crucial.

Is there a particular scientist/person/thing that inspires you?  
Someone I very much look up to is Dr. Dawn Wright [editor’s note: Chief Scientist at ESRI]. I know from personal experience how hard it can be to be a black woman in oceanography and I can only imagine how much harder it must have been at the time she went through her PhD. When I’ve met her, I’m always struck by how kind of a person she is, she’s truly a bright shining light, and that is something I very much aspire to. Another scientist and human I look up to Dr. Amina Schartup who is an Assistant Professor at Scripps. She’s such a force of nature and always ready to give encouragement and no-bullshit advice.

Do you have a fun fact that you'd like to share that not everyone knows about you? 
I call myself a “dry oceanographer”. I study the ocean, but I’m not someone who enjoys being at sea at all. There are many types of oceanography, and though “oceanographer” very often gets mistaken for “marine biologist” for some reason, I’ve learned that oceanography is very popular at customs or immigration. Whenever I am renewing my visa or entering the US, the person I get to talk to looks at my papers and when they see it says “oceanographer” on there always ask “Oh, are our oceans ok?”. I typically answer “yeah, I’m working on it” and that usually gets me the stamp in my passport that I need. Somehow there seems to be a large percentage of people working in immigrations who are very keen on ocean sciences which is perhaps a bit unexpected but very nice to see!

Written by Kerstin Bergentz

NORSE 2023 - That's a wrap!

For the third year in a row, a group of MOD scientists, engineers and students ventured into the far north, braving the fickle beast that is the North Atlantic ocean in November. Equipped with various MOD in-house developed toys, and joined by fabulous colleagues from multiple different institutions, the science party was on a mission to investigate what happens to the upper ocean under strong forcing from wind and waves.

With the 2023 cruise just being done, that wraps up three years of fieldwork for the Office of Naval Research funded project NORSE – Northern Ocean Rapid Surface Evolution. Read on to hear about some highlights from this cruise. More on NORSE can be found here, there are also blogposts from the previous years’ cruises in 2021 and 2022 on the MOD blog, as well as a story for the Scripps Explorations dispatch series, all written by our graduate student Kerstin. Our fieldwork this year was also picked up by the San Diego Union Tribune that featured a story on our chief scientist Jen MacKinnon.

The NORSE 2023 science party

The NORSE 2023 science party was the largest yet, 30 scientists, engineers, and students, including two STEMSeas students. We all met up in a cold and snowy Tromso and boarded the Norwegian ice-breaker R/V Kronprins Haakon. After loading all the gear onboard, we quietly slipped out of the shelter of the archipelago and fjords one early arctic morning and set course towards the Lofoten Basin Eddy.

Thanks to the splitting of a northward current, the Lofoten Basin is enclosed by the Norwegian Atlantic Frontal Current and the Norwegian Atlantic Slope Current. The shedding of vortices by the slope current help make the Lofoten Basin a hotspot for temperature and vorticity in the Nordic Seas and help contribute to the local climate. Previous NORSE cruises have focused on a particular vortex in the basin, the Lofoten Basin Eddy, a well studied semi-permanent anticyclonic feature in which we’ve deployed multiple sets of surface drifters. These drifters are non-recovered, current tracking instruments that send back their data via gps and help us investigate energy transfer from the wind to the ocean when there is background vorticity present.

Drifter deployment

Glider recovery

Glider back on board

Then we headed further west towards our favorite volcano, Mt Beerenberg on the island of Jan Mayen, where most of the focus was during this year’s cruise. Jan Mayen sits on the intersection of multiple basins and is a meeting point of several currents and water masses which makes it a perfect place to study what happens to water of different temperature and salinity when they meet and the atmosphere exerts its forces on the ocean. In the waters around this isolated Norwegian Island we performed various acoustic experiments with hydrophones and sound sources, we deployed the MOD in-house autonomous profiler system the Wirewalker and did a lot of ship-based profiling with our turbulence sensor package the epsilometer as well as the CTD/oxygen/chlorophyll package.

DBASIS buoy

Wirewalker in the water

Wirewalker prep

Deployment

Other groups on the cruise had multiple instruments that went in and out of the water too, such as SWIFTs (drifting instruments that can measure waves and wind among other things) and gliders (autonomous underwater vessels that can be piloted to glide around and measure things like temperature, salinity and turbulence)

Small boat ops

SWIFT deployment

SWIFT deployment

We spent also two full days recovering the four moorings that we put out last year. They came back covered in basket stars.

1 of 4 moorings back on board

Basket stars

The North Atlantic was cooperative giving us almost flat seas for much of the first two weeks. However, the light was running out. At latitude 70°N we saw the sun set behind the horizon for the last time on November 20th, not to be seen again until late January. But just as things were seeming to be a little too picturesque and we started to wonder if we’d actually get to see some of that forcing from wind and waves that NORSE is about, things picked up and we spent most of Thanksgiving holed up on the most leeward side of Jan Mayen while the wind was howling a steady 70 mph outside and a thin layer of ice slowly built up on the Kronprins Haakon. We decorated the lab with paper turkeys and held a ship wide ping pong tournament in the helicopter hangar. The final was a real nail biter between Italy and Norway. And yes, the ship has a helicopter hangar with a ping pong table.

The running joke amongst seagoing oceanographers is that when you say you’re going on a “cruise” people immediately think you’re going on vacation, and you have to explain that it’s a “research cruise”. Well, with heated bathroom floors, a 9th floor observation deck with reclining chairs, a sauna, and a massage chair in the library, the Kronprins Haakon was one of those ships where three weeks of working long days on a research cruise could, at least sometimes, feel a little like a vacation. The abundance of pretty views didn’t hurt either.

Last sunrise

Last sunset

Jan Mayen post storm

Aurora Borealis

Once the skies cleared up and Jan Mayen was once again visible in the faint glow of daylight (coming from the sun below the horizon, but we take what we can get) we did some last minute profiling and then picked up our last assets from the water before we pointed the bow towards Tromso again. Once in port the science party managed to both prove themselves on the karaoke stage and jump into 5°C/40F water by the downtown sauna before heading home. A worthy ending to a successful cruise.

And that concludes three years of fieldwork for the NORSE project.
Now begins the work of turning all the terabytes of data collected over the past years into research papers that will help the scientific community better understand the upper ocean’s response to strong forcing and how that impacts thermohaline patters, currents, acoustics, and energy transfer from the atmosphere to the ocean, as well as how that might play out in a changing climate. Coming to an oceanographic conference/symposium/journal near you soon…

With that we sign off for the last time: NORSE over and out.

Jan Mayen

(Really, you think we’d leave you without a silly joke or two?)

- Why did the pirate put tape on the squid?
He was afraid it was kraken!

- What do you call a Viking that doesn’t eat fish?
A Norvegan.

All photos and text by Kerstin Bergentz

TLC Dye Release in La Jolla Canyon

“San Diego researchers seek answers about underwater turbulence”

Read the article HERE

MOD’s October 2023 TLC experiment involved a dye release and a week of tracking the dye with our profiling winch and FCTD onboard RV Bob & Betty Beyster.

MOD Student Spotlight: Kelley McBride

What is your background and what are you studying or working on at the moment? 
I got my bachelor’s degree in ocean engineering at the University of Rhode Island where I studied a little bit of everything, from coastal processes to robotics, acoustics, offshore renewable energy and more. When I graduated, I started working as a contractor for the Department of Defense specializing in acoustics and I really enjoyed the challenges associated with the study of underwater sound. However, I soon realized that I was way more intrigued by the study of the oceans from an interdisciplinary perspective, which is what brought me back to graduate school to study oceanography.

Right now, I’m working with professors Peter Franks and Jen MacKinnon and I’m sort of sitting between the biology and the physics. I get to use skills from my engineering background to study coastal physical processes in order to ask and answer biological questions. It’s a fun, interdisciplinary place to be, and since everything's connected in the ocean, it's exciting to be able to look at multiple perspectives and answer a wide range of questions. My research is a part of the Inner Shelf Dynamics Experiment. More specifically, I’m studying coastal transport patterns driven by the internal tide and wind-driven flows and how their variability directly impacts coastal benthic communities, such as the crabs and mussels you see along the shoreline. This research allows me to continuously learn and evolve as a scientist, which is exciting.

What keeps you excited and interested in working in the field of oceanography?
For me, it's looking outside my office window every day and seeing the ocean - it is always different and there are so many questions you can ask to try to better understand it. I’m learning something new about the ocean every single day, and yet I’m continuously reminded of how little we know about it, which constantly motivates me. It’s a privilege to be working at Scripps and to be surrounded by so many amazing scientists and engineers working across so many different disciplines, but everyone’s work ties together which I think is incredible and inspiring.

When you were a kid, did you expect to be a scientist or engineer?
I always dreamt of working in science. I knew early on I was headed in the direction of becoming a scientist or engineer since I always loved math and physics in school. However, once I had an NSF internship studying sand tiger sharks and migratory patterns in the Delaware Bay, I knew I wanted to be an oceanographer and pursue ocean sciences. But I still sometimes have to pinch myself and take a step back and recognize that I am a scientist, and after all these years, I’m getting to do what I’ve always wanted.

Were there any particular things from your childhood that drew you to study the ocean?
Yes, I would say my mom. She grew up in Newport, Rhode Island and she would always take my family there when we were kids. We spent a lot of time at the cliff walk and Second Beach watching the waves and the sea life, and it was always so amazing just how different the ocean was, between days and seasons, and even different parts of the coast. I just loved the salty water, the rhythm of tides and the sound of the waves - everything about it! So being able to study even just a part of that is amazing.

What skills or abilities do you think are useful when going into oceanography?
I would say for science, regardless of what the field of science it is, being able to say “I don't know”, and not take that as a weakness is a very good approach. Being able to take “I don’t know” as encouragement to go find an answer and to continually evolve your skillset will serve you very well. There is SO much to learn in oceanography and you're never going to be able to have everything figured out. It can be overwhelming and there will be days that are hard. But then there will be days of discovery that are great, and those are such a high. Being able to persevere, making the most of the highs and not being afraid to ask for help during the lows, is an important skill to learn, too.

What does a typical workday look like for you?
Typically, my morning starts with a lot of heavy data analysis in Matlab, and coffee. I try to incorporate a little bit of writing every day, because the end goal of this is getting papers out the door and getting your dissertation together, so I try to hone that skill most days. But ultimately every day is different and can be scattered with meetings, lab meetings, seminars, defenses, talks over coffee, and more.

What drew you to Scripps?
Growing up, I always thought of Scripps as this faraway place where scientists, marine biologists and physicists did such amazing work. I grew up on the East Coast, so Woods Hole [Oceanographic Institution] was right there and was very familiar, but there was something very interesting and unique about Scripps being on the Pacific Coast. The idea of learning about an entirely new coastline and ocean was appealing. Coming to Scripps provided all of that for me and introduced me to a whole new community of incredible people and research, it’s wonderful.

Is there a particular scientist/person/engineer/thing that inspires you?
I could definitely say “everyone here at Scripps”, I am truly inspired by the people that I surround myself with and I feel lucky to be here. But I think I would have to say my sister has inspired me the most throughout my life. She has always been an inspiring scientist and engineer who's encouraged me to pursue higher education. I really take a lot from the way she thinks about life and her career as well as the work that she does - she has so much passion and perseverance behind it, I’m lucky I have her to look up to.

Do you have a fun fact that you'd like to share that not everyone knows about you?
I am a huge pasta lover and make a lot of homemade pasta. Pasta is something that has become a big part of my time here at Scripps. On my weekends I often spend my time making various types of pasta - it's actually something that my advisor Peter Franks and I have in common and usually talk about at the end of our meetings. My favorite pasta shape is orecchiette. The name essentially means  “small ear” since it’s a little concaved circle. Pasta making is a great way to take a break from your work at the end of the day, I highly recommend it!

Written by Kerstin Bergentz

MOD in the Gulf Stream

Ahoy from the R/V Armstrong!
The Scripps Multiscale Ocean Dynamics (MOD) team is at sea with Bill Hodgkiss’s acoustics group and Luc Lenain’s air-sea group (both SIO) aboard leg 3, led by MOD’s Matthew Alford and Gunnar Voet, of the Office of Naval Research-funded New England Seamounts Experiment (NESMA). The goals are to understand sound propagation in the ocean, and how the Gulf Stream interacts with seamounts, which stick up nearly two miles from the three-mile-deep seafloor in the region. The way they mix, create wakes, and generate internal gravity waves has implications for how the ocean transports heat and dissipates its energy.

The Task Force Ocean - Seamounts team. Chief Scientist Alford (back, with mask) came down with COVID on day one of the cruise and had just emerged after having remained isolated in his stateroom for 9 days. Also pictured are Evan Harris, Helen Dufel, Charlotte Bellerjeau, Nicole Couto, Gunnar Voet, Jeremy Roswell, Arnaud Le Boyer, Sara Goheen, Becca McConnell, Gabriela Chavez and Luke Colosi.

We, some of the MOD group, have now been out here for 17 days, having deployed two moorings and our MOD group’s fast CTD and epsilometer, deployed from our high-speed electric MOD winch. We conducted one of the highest-resolution surveys of the Gulf Stream ever done, showing the very strong currents of the Gulf Steam and the sharply sloping temperature surfaces on both sides. These strong lateral undersea fronts can trap internal gravity waves known as near-inertial waves at their edges, which can lead to turbulence.  

“Clark chart” (courtesy Jennifer Clark and Grace Jensen) showing the sea surface temperature in the North Atlantic on May 31, 2023.  The Gulf Stream brings warm water (red) from lower latitudes, transporting tens of millions of tons of water northward each second.  We are working atop the Atlantis II seamount, which is marked at about 38.5N, 63W.

Sure enough, our turbulence measurements along the same section confirm strong dissipation is occurring in those regions.  We’re currently redoing the survey at even higher resolution with our specialized “epsi-fish” profiler in order to investigate further.

Aerial photo (photo credit: Croy Carlin) of the R/V Armstrong and the MOD winch with our fast CTD instrument in the water ready to begin a profile.

The acoustics and air-sea groups have been very busy and successful as well - we will let them report on their achievements separately. In the next few days we will recover the Waveglider and one of our moorings before heading home. The other mooring will deliver data for another year before we do it all again next year and recover it as well.

The Gulf Stream is part of the ocean’s blood stream, and it feels very exciting to be taking its pulse with these specialized tools aboard such a capable vessel as the R/V Armstrong. We are so lucky and grateful to be here with the Captain and crew of this amazing vessel, who have welcomed us warmly into their home and helped us make sure our instruments have stayed functional for this long and challenging but very successful expedition.

Current speed with temperature contours measured with the fast CTD showing the strong eastward currents of the Gulf Stream and the steeply sloping temperature surfaces associated with it (black lines; 13 degrees is green and 15 degrees is magenta).

This figure shows turbulence (specifically, the logarithm of the thermal dissipation rate) measured with our microstructure instruments that are related to instabilities and trapped internal gravity waves within the Gulf Stream’s edges. The ticks at the top show the very high lateral resolution with which we were able to conduct the survey.

Want to read more on what MOD is up to at sea? Go give us a follow on Instagram or Twitter @mod_at_scripps. 

Written by Matthew Alford

MOD Student Spotlight: Ian Stokes

What is your background and what are you studying at the moment? 
My background is in physics. After finishing my undergraduate degree, I worked for a while as an electrical/mechanical engineer building electric pianos before I came back to grad school. Now I’m in my 4th year of the mechanical engineering PhD program at UCSD with Drew Lucas. With Drew as my advisor, my fluid dynamics specialization has more or less morphed into a degree in physical oceanography, and I’m very grateful for the experiences this has provided. At the moment, I am working on planning an observational experiment where we will use optical fibers to study the structure of shoaling internal waves on the inner shelf. I am also preparing a theory paper for submission that describes how nonlinear structure of the oceanic surface boundary layer impacts the power input from the atmosphere to the internal wave spectrum.

What keeps you excited and interested in working in the field of oceanography?
It’s very rewarding to work with something I’m super passionate about. I’ve spent time in and around the ocean my whole life and most things I do revolve around it. Climate change is a pressing ‘do or die’ issue that our generation is going to have to figure out, and there is no doubt the ocean plays a huge role in all that. They say we know more about the moon than we do about the ocean. It is exciting to know there is so much left to learn! At the end of the day though, I am always thinking about how I am going to help figure out a solution to some part of this problem. I want to use my understanding of the ocean to help protect and preserve it. That keeps me interested and excited most of all.

When you were a kid, did you expect to be a scientist or engineer? 
I was never one of those kids with their whole life planned out, but I’ve always loved building things, tinkering, and restoration projects. I learned analog circuitry through working on amplifiers and building my own musical effects pedals. During undergrad I was restoring an old analog piano, and at one point I bought some components from this Aussie dude. As it turned out his brother owned a custom vintage piano shop. We made friends and before long I ended up working for them as an engineer. Definitely not expected, but wouldn’t have it any different.

Were there any particular things from your childhood that drew you to study the ocean? 
I grew up on the coast in Virginia Beach and nearly everything in my life so far has been oriented around the ocean. I’m really into free diving, surfing, wind sports, (and now scuba thanks to ONR support for our upcoming experiment), the whole deal. The Atlantic will always have a special place in my heart. Southeast Virginia is the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay – a wild place from an oceanographic perspective. The conditions there are very different from San Diego, even the water is a different color. I guess I just couldn’t resist the call of that brownish green and murky Atlantic water…

What skills or abilities do you think are useful when going into oceanography?
A strong stomach is key for going out to sea! I’m very grateful I don’t get seasick. My hands on experience with electrical and mechanical systems has given me unique opportunities to do a lot of instrument development and fieldwork. I will say though, I definitely did myself a disservice by avoiding coding prior to grad school. Coding is a super useful skill. Now I view it for what it is – a high power calculator that can let you do whatever you want. Before though, any time spent behind a screen I avoided like the plague. Obviously, now as a grad student, a large percentage of my life is spent coding and writing. I’ve come to terms with that now, and troubleshooting a code is actually remarkably similar to troubleshooting an electrical system.

What does a typical workday look like for you? 
I would say that there is no typical workday, there's just so many different things I do, and it varies a lot between weeks and months. Right now, I’m doing a lot more writing since I’m trying to get some papers done. Inevitably some coding sneaks it’s way in there when I find new ways I want to present my results. With my experiment coming up this fall, spare thoughts often end up pondering my experimental design. The experiment will involve some scuba-deployed instrumentation, so we’ve been trying to get out on scuba weekly to maintain proficiency.

What drew you to Scripps? 
It was a bit of a lucky stumble actually. I tutored a lot between undergrad and grad school, tutoring is an awesome side-gig when you know math and physics. At the time, there was no upward mobility at the piano shop and I figured my academic skills were probably as sharp as they’d ever be, so I took the GRE. I applied to fluid dynamics programs at some UC’s and UCSD was the only one I got into (score!). From there, I got even luckier to end up working with Drew in the MOD group. I’m very grateful for our lab group and community, and feel super lucky to be a part of it.

Is there a particular scientist/person/thing that inspires you?
I think nature in general, and the ability to harness the forces of nature to one’s advantage is very inspiring. Pelicans are incredible creatures in this way. They use natural wind patterns to minimize flapping which is super cool on its own, but on top of that, they actually surf the updrafts that follow ocean swell! Super cool to watch. The first paper for my thesis was about this process, "wave-slope soaring," and it was a fun and challenging problem to solve! Boyan Slat's “The Ocean Cleanup” project also harnesses the forces of nature in a very clever way. They use the surface current patterns associated with ocean gyres to collect the waste of the pacific garbage patch, and more recently they are using natural effluent discharges to filter waste before it gets to the ocean in the first place – these examples of working with the flow are really cool. Nature is always going to win, so if you can be on the same team as nature that's how you’ll win too.

Do you have a fun fact that you'd like to share that not everyone knows about you? 
I am probably the most blood thirsty vegan out there! For a few years now, I’ve been on the hunter gatherer diet, aka vegan plus what you can catch yourself. Living in San Diego, the obvious place to turn is the ocean. Pacific pelagic fish like tuna, yellowtail, and mahi-mahi are extremely sustainable to hunt (for example, mahi mahi have a remarkably stable population and reach maturity in 4-5 months). These fish traverse the Southern California Bight in great numbers offshore in the summer months. The process of spearfishing has given me an enormous appreciation and respect for the food that goes on my table. To dive on a single breath, become a part of the ocean’s ecosystem, and assume the role of the apex predator that humans truly are, taps into a primal instinct that I’ve found few other activities will awaken. It’s beautiful, humbling, and empowering.

Written by Kerstin Bergentz