Here are the results of two AUV missions performed on 5/16 and 5/17 to observe the offshore extent of the river plume during max ebb using elevated CDOM signatures to define the boundaries of  the plume.  The 5/16 mission was performed during strong southerly wind conditions (blowing directly into the inlet) while the 5/17 mission was performed during minimal wind conditions.  Both missions extend to 1km offshore.  You’ll notice how defined the river jet is during the 5/17 mission and how the plume extends beyond our survey lines.  In contrast, it appears the strong wind conditions during the 5/16 mission suppressed the offshore extent of the plume and pushed it in a southwesterly direction.  It’s also interesting to see the impact the wind conditions have on the mixing of the plume.  The high wind event on 5/16 diluted the plume significantly (colorbar range: 6 to 10 ppb) when compared to the low  wind event on 5/17 where the river plume saw consistent CDOM levels of ~13 ppb as it is advected offshore.

Hello everyone, just wanted to pass along some of the work the SIO CORDC group has been performing offshore with the REMUS AUV.  On 5/8/2012 we ran a REMUS mission supporting the Guza dye release.  We’ve overlaid the Rhodamine signature observed by our AUV on the hyperspectral image taken at 17:39UTC (courtesy of Luc Lenain and Nick Statom). The REMUS was deployed at 17:20UTC and started near the entrance to the new channel and went in a southwesterly direction towards the beach.  It reached the end of this leg at ~17:40UTC(when the image was taken).  You can see from the image that this first leg was outside of the dye signature which corresponded with our observations  The REMUS then performs a mow the law pattern across the inlet.  We first encountered dye at ~17:46UTC and continued measuring the plume until the end of the mission at ~19:00UTC.