Corvallis, OR : Oregon State University, College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences
Abstract
This report documents the observations of velocity, temperature and conductivity made in the
Mid-Atlantic Bight region of the NW Atlantic Ocean during the Synthetic Aperture Sonar (SAS)
Primer experiment. The primary data were obtained from instruments moored in 70 in of water
near 40° 30' N, 70° 30' W, from July through September 1996 (Figure 1). Vertical profiles of
conductivity, temperature, light transmission and fluorescence were also made during
deployment and recovery cruises.
The overall goals of this PRIMER program are to assess the feasibility of the operation of an
SAS on the continental shelf. A study of acoustic propagation was conducted during the period
the mooring was deployed, from August 20 through August 27, by F. Henyey, T. Ewart, and K.
Williams (Applied Physics Laboratory / University of Washington). The evaluation of the
synthetic aperture sonar itself was performed by S. Stanic and R. Meredith (Naval Research
Laboratory). This project was carried out in close cooperation with the ONR-sponsored Coastal
Mixing & Optics ARE. In addition to shared logistical planning, we anticipate joint analysis and
sharing of data.
The specific goals of this project are to describe the internal wave field and associated sound
speed fluctuations on the shelf--both statistically and by events. The sampling scheme was
designed to resolve the many components of the wavefield including: near-inertial waves,
internal tide, background continuum and internal solitary waves.
This report is divided into two sections. The first section contains descriptions of the
instrumentation deployed on the PRIMER moorings including locations, sampling rates, and
calibrations. It also includes a brief description of the CTD sampling and sample profiles from
the CTD stations occupied. Copies of the deployment and recovery cruise logs are appended to
the first section. The second section contains plots from the mooring deployment. Several views
of the time series recorded by the moorings are presented. Time series of vertically separated
temperature, salinity, and velocity measurements are shown for the main, subsurface mooring.
Temperature observations from sensors at the same depth on horizontally separated mooring are
also shown. These data are presented as both low-pass filtered and unfiltered time series. Time
is given as day of year 1996 in all of the time series plots; conversion to calendar date is provided
in Table 8. The data displayed in these figures are a subset of the data collected during the
mooring deployment, all of which are available on CD-ROM from the authors