Into The Abyss - Tools For Ocean Pasture Stewardship

Into The Abyss – Tools For Ocean Pasture Stewardship

One of the tools you need to understand your ocean pasture is actually a frame with a large collection of instruments that you lower into the depths. CTDs measure conductivity, temperature and depth.  It is a standard instrument used in oceanography however, our CTD measured much more than C, T, and D.  Our CTD was also equipped with a transmissometer, a turbidity sensor, a dissolved oxygen sensor, a photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) sensor, and a fluorometer.  Over the course of many months we routinely, many times each day, deployed four different similar instrument platforms on our ocean pasture work. two were on gliders, one on our MocNess multi-net plankton net system, and of course the one shown here.