Wednesday 29 January 2014

OSD Pilot Event on December 19th 2013 at Venice Acqua Alta Platform (OSD63)


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)