Sept. 19th - Oct. 10th 2000

This cruise was organised by Wolfgang Balzer from the Institute for Marine Chemistry of the University Bremen. The ain objectives of the cruise were to investigate the distribution of nutrients and trace elements in the water column and their transport from the photic zone into the sediments in the upwelling region off the Namibian coast and to determine the effects of bioproductivity and hydrography on the composition of radioisotopes in the water column and surface sediments in the Angola and Cape basins.

In addition, Claudia Sprengel (University Bremen) and Markus Geisen (NHM) had the possibility to carry intensive sampling for coccolithophores resulting in
 

•  LM & SEM filters from 79 surface wwater stations along the cruise track (dots)
• 18 depth transects with up to ten depths between 10-200m from a rosette sampler (hollow circles)
• 18 fine fraction calcite samples for stable isotope work (diagonal crosses)
• 13 samples of concentrated sea water for isolation work taken both from surface nets and from the rosette sampler (crosses)

Light microscopy on board and scanning electron microscopy work at the NHM confirmed the hight diversity and abundance of coccolithophores in the samples. Until now 450 isolations have been made from the net samples, hopefully resulting in several of new cultures. For a text version of the report produced click  here .

dots - surface water samples
hollow circles - depth profiles
diagonal crosses - fine fraction calcite samples
crosses - plankton net samples