Hello and thank you for the opportunity to communicate with interested parties and experts on the SPURS project and scientists on board the Knorr research vessel.

I am Alba Ragone, a research scientist in the department of Civil Engineering, at Glasgow Strathclyde University in Scotland UK. Working on a project called “link between seawaters salinity changes and Octanol-water partition coefficient for POPs”.

Therefore, I am following SPURS progress and data update with absolute interest; and as your project is collecting actual, site-specific data (salinity, pH and temperature changes) in Marine waters. Consequently, I would like to ask the following questions.

1) Is the SPURS project, is analyzing Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) levels in your Seawater samples?

2) If sampling for these compounds is outside SPURS’ agenda, is it possible for the SPURS project to collect water samples and send these to us for analysis, at Glasgow Strathclyde University.

Analyzing actual Sea and Oceanic-water, sampled at different locations for the presence of POPs, would help further environmental research on the trans-boundary dispersion of POPs by means of the Sea and Oceanic waters currents’. Therefore, the SPURS expedition to the Atlantic Ocean “Saltiest Spot”; and program for sampling and data collection, together with the subsequent expedition in 2015 to areas of “low saltiness” is a very important, and could facilitate collection of additional data.

I thank you very much for your kind attention and look forward to your correspondence.

Yours sincerely,

Alba Ragone

The glass floats are at the bottom of the ocean (~17000 feet) just above the release mechanism. The idea is to have enough buoyancy at the bottom of the mooring to bring the bottom end to the surface in case the surface buoy is lost and for ease of recovery if things go well (the bottom end is where you would like to start recovery operations).

The surface buoy is the part most at risk from weather, ship strike, vandalism, etc. And the most likely place for the mooring to break is right under the surface buoy where wave action keeps parts moving and wearing. IF the surface buoy is lost, ALL the instruments suspended below the surface buoy (mostly in the top 1000 feet of ocean) will fall to the sea bottom. They can still be recovered later because of the glass floats in hard hats are at the bottom of the string. All the instruments on the mooring are built to withstand the pressures found at the ocean bottom, so data collected before the loss of the surface buoy is recoverable.

Why hard hats? The glass floats are precision-built spheres designed to withstand great pressure. Any scratch or imperfection could lead to their implosion at depth. The force of one imploding is known to be enough of a disturbance to cause other nearby floats to fail. However, loss of a few glass floats will not deter recovery operations. The hard hats provide secure points to chain the glass floats together as well as much needed protection during their lifetime of service.

I hope that answers your question!
Eric