OSD Site 63 Venice Acqua Alta Platform (North Western Adriatic Sea)
The sampling site is the
Acqua Alta oceanographic platform, a site for long term ecological research (LTER) operated by the
Institute of Marine Science of the National Research Council of Italy. The
tower, built in 1970, is located at about 10 nautical miles off the city of
Venice, at the water depth of 16 meters. Acqua Alta currently serves as a
multi-disciplinary station for a wide variety of marine researches, and is equipped
with a meteo-oceanographic station (providing measurements of temperature,
wind, humidity, solar radiation, rain, waves and tides), sensors for the main hydrological
parameters, and underwater webcams. Instruments can be controlled remotely, and
real time data are available. It is part of the LTER network and decadal time
series are available at ISMAR-CNR about the trophic state of the area, the
ecology and biodiversity of plankton, and the biogeochemistry.
Due to the adverse
meteorological conditions forecasted for the 20th, the OSD sampling
was carried out on the 19th December. We left from the pier in front
of the Institute around 9:00 onboard the boat Litus. Water sampling was
performed at 2:00 pm. The sea conditions were calm and the weather was sunny.
In addition to collecting samples to be filtered onto Sterivex for bacterial
diversity analyses, we performed CTD casts for measuring the main physical-chemical
variables and collected water samples for phytoplankton/zooplankton abundance, and
the determination of total suspended matter and chlorophyll.
The OSD team of the ISMAR–CNR in Venice before departure.
From left to right: Mauro Bastianini, Gian
Marco Luna, Grazia Marina Quero and Lucia Bongiorni.
The
OSD sampling site 63: the oceanographic tower Acqua Alta operated by the
ISMAR-CNR.
A view on the Northern Adriatic Sea from the upper
floors of the tower.
Live phytoplankton cells observed in the water samples
collected during the pilot event.
We are looking forward to
the OSD sampling day in 2014!
Gian Marco Luna (OSD
Site 63 coordinator), Grazia Marina Quero, Lucia Bongiorni, Mauro Bastianini –
Institute of Marine Science, National Research Council of Italy, Venice (Italy)
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