FOCI Standard Operating Instructions

January 2002
5.3 Seachest and Uncontaminated Seawater - Sea surface temperature, conductivity, and fluorescence will be continuously monitored.  Data from the Sea-Bird Electronics (SBE) thermosalinograph installed in the sonar void seachest shall be sent to the Scientific Computer System (SCS).  Uncontaminated seawater from this chest will be continuously pumped to the Chemistry Laboratory and through a fluorometer.

The ship’s complement will be responsible for inspecting, and when required, cleaning the seachest and conductivity cells monthly.  The scientists will be responsible for regularly cleaning the cuvette, inside the fluorometer, and obtaining and processing the calibration samples.  Calibration samples will be taken at each bongo station, or one hour apart, whichever is more frequent.

A standard template file specifying these data types shall be maintained for all FOCI cruises by the ship's SCS manager.  American Standard Code for Information Exchange (ASCII) logger files will be included in the periodic backup of SCS data for distribution at the end of the cruise.  The Chief Scientist may request that these data be made available on DOS-formatted media at the completion of the cruise.

During the cruise, the ship's Chief Survey Technician will be responsible for ensuring that data streams from the instruments are correctly logged by the SCS, checking the logger status display once per watch to determine that the instruments are functioning, and for taking salinity calibration samples every other day.

The ship's SCS ASCII-Logger feature shall be configured to log one-minute averaged data throughout each FOCI cruise, including:


allen.macklin@noaa.gov