In late October, the RV Thomas G. Thompson set sail from
Manta,Ecuador, on the latest US leg of the international
GEOTRACES program with co-chief scientists Jim Moffett (USC)
and Chris German (WHOI) in charge: the East Pacific Zonal
Transect (EPZT). Thus far, the team at sea have started
the transect beginning in ~100m water at the Peru Margin
and studying trace element and isotope distributions across
the high productivity upwelling zone near 12°S and the intense
oxygen minimum zone that extends offshore at these latitudes.
In the second month of our cruise, we will be turning our
attention to the major hydrothermal plume, first identified
from He3/4 anomalies in the 1970s, that extends from the
super-fast spreading East Pacific Rise near 15°S for more
than 2000km across the South Pacific. You can see
the track covered, and the distance still to be achieved
in EPZT Fig.A.
After 2 months at sea in total, Moffett, German and the EPZT team will sail into Papeete, Tahiti on Dec 22nd.
