Oxygen Saturation

Oxygen Saturation shows the amount of oxygen that is dissolved in the seawater. We expect to see 100% saturation at the surface since the seawater is interacting in equilibrium. It could be possible that having less saturation in the could be linked to higher zooplankton counts in the area however we do not see any connections in the data. Points where an increase above 100% is seen can be attributed to phytoplankton producing oxygen as a by-product of photosynthesis. Our data however is not split into separate depths but organised into stations. It could be possible that there are at some points where phytoplankton increase the oxygen saturation, however we would need further time to split the phytoplankton data between depths.

Nitrite & Nitrate

The main sources of nitrogen for marine organisms. The Nutricline for nitrite and nitrate begin at 25m. due to time and equipment constraints we do not have the luxury of taking samples to properly graph the nutricline for some of the stations.

Phosphate

The same nutricline but with phosphate is present at all stations station except 48, which was a practice and calibration station. The nutricline is very clear again at station 50 and also present at 52 now. Station 51 begins to show a nutricline but we are lacking the final point to truly identify a nutricline. Nitrate and Nitrite show the same patterns.

Silicon

The purpose of developing a depth profile for the offshore stations was to determine the shape and depth of the nutricline (a location of sudden nutrient change). Silicon shows a strong nutricline at station 50 as can be seen by the increase of from 1.4 umol/l increase in concentration. Station 49 has a slight step increase at 35m but doesn’t show such a strong nutricline as station 49. Station shows a nutricline as well but we do not have enough samples to properly measure the nutricline.

Chlorophyll