With just 500 km remaining between RU29 and the port of Ubatuba, our team is working to pull all of the moving parts together to make this mission a success.
By the mere luck of the draw, Dr Frederico Brandini of the University of Sao Paulo colleague of Dr Marcelo Dottori who will be the Chief Scientist running the recovery operation for 29, is on sabbatical here at Rutgers. Brandini gave a fascinating talk highlighting his work at the University with ecosystems along the Brazilian shelf break that our team was eager to attend. One topic discussed was the immense fishing that takes place along the South Brazil Bight- the northern portion being where the recovery is being planned. After the talk he met with our team where he was able to point out where the main shipping lanes were and helped us plan our approach.
In the image above we can see the result of the meeting being the red line which leads from Challenger’s latest location south along the shelf and then crosses the shelf perpendicularly and makes a B-line in to port. At the University of Sao Paulo, they have a budding glider program that will soon be monitoring the coastal waters of their region.
In cooperation with their program, Brandini and our team planned the location of that B-Line to be the foundation of a future long term survey to be run by gliders- similar to the Endurance Line that we have run off of New Jersey for over a decade. If all goes according to plan. Challenger’s final approach into Ubatuba will be the first of many glider runs along that line.
As for the conditions forecasted around our glider now, At the surface both models are showing evidence of a cold eddy to our south and warm eddy to the north creating the strong flux at the surface that is confirmed by the surface drift seen by the glider. Subsurface however, RTOFS shows that there is movement northward in the water column that MyOcean doesnt pick up . This push north seems to hold true when compared to the depth average current calculated by the glider showing an overall northward resistance.
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