METEOR M97

The cruise M97 to the tropical eastern Atlantic Ocean is a contribution to the DFG Sonderforschungsbereich (SFB) 754, Climate - Biogeochemistry Interactions in the Tropical Ocean, work packages A3, A4 and B8. The goal of this cruise are:
1) Quantify and better understand the supply of oxygen to the oxygen minimum zone (OMZ) of the Tropical Atlantic with a particular focus on the role of submesoscale processes for lateral and vertical oxy-gen fluxes and thus a critical as-pect of the ventilation of this region.
2) Describe variations in the oxygen concentrations in the OMZ from daily to seasonal time scales.
3) Study the zooplankton-mediated carbon, oxygen and nitrogen flux and heterotrophic responses to low oxygen. Abundance, biomass and diversity of the zooplankton com-munity will be studied in relation to water mass characteristics.
The cruise is the first cruise to map the deliberately released tracer that was in-jected to the area in December of 2012 (Merian cruise MSM23), as the “Oxygen Supply Tracer Release Experiment (OSTRE)”. The results from these measurements will help quantifying diapycnal and lateral mixing rates in the region.