Hi all,
The crew managed to catch a brief break in northeast winds to do the March 8 run. The upper stations weren’t sampled due to steering problems on the boat. River flow for the weak prior to sampling was about 25% of the seasonal norm. As a result of the low flow, salinity is unusually high for late winter and ranged from 5 at station 50 to 20 in the bottom near the mouth. Vertical stratification was very weak due to prior wind mixing and low flow. There was a subsurface patch of high chlorophyll a at stations 60 and 70. I looked at the bottom water sample from station 70 and it was co-dominated by the dinoflagellates, Prorocentrum minimum and Heterocapsa triquetra. These are the two typical bloom winter/spring bloom formers in the Neuse and haven’t been shown to cause problems (e.g. toxins/fish kills etc.).
Stay well,
– Nathan
