Figure 27 Cutaway view of a sea-fransport van and peripheral lab area installation CUEA 

 shipboard computing system. 



ers from fourteen organizations. Four pre- 

 paratory field experiments, MESCAL-I and -II 

 and CUE-I and -II (Figure 28], precede the 

 major combined biological and physical ocean- 

 ographic effort (JOINT-I] planned off north- 

 west Africa for 1974. 



MESCAL— MESCAL-I was conducted pri- 

 marily as a biological cruise off Baja Cali- 

 fornia in March 1972. It was designed to 

 obtain time series measurements on environ- 

 mental variables such as temperature, nitro- 

 gen, chlorophyll and silicon, and to examine 

 associated biological processes in the devel- 

 opmental stages of an upwelling system. Dur- 

 ing MESCAL-I, scientists observed a feature 

 which appears typical of upwelling areas over 

 complex topography. The feature, called a 

 plume, appears as a surface tongue of water — 

 in this case, a tongue of low-temperature, 

 nutrient-rich water. It is hypothesized that 

 the biological activity associated with upwell- 

 ing plumes is a key factor in upwelling-system 

 dynamics. 



Early analysis of data collected during 

 MESCAL-I indicates that prediction of phyto- 

 plankton levels and nutrient fields is possible. 

 MESCAL-II, which took place in the same 

 area during March and April 1973, further re- 

 fined the phytoplankton-nutrients field model 

 and integrated biological variables into the 

 field work. 



CUE — Upwelling off the Oregon coast is 

 driven by seasonal north winds and occurs 

 annually from May to September. During the 

 summer of 1972, the first Coastal Upwelling 

 Experiment (CUE-I) was carried out in this 

 area. The goals were to define the time and 

 space scales of the upwelling process, to test 

 theoretical hypotheses and models and to test 

 experimental hardware and techniques for 

 future studies of upwelling ecosystems (Fig- 

 ure 29], CUE-I marked the first time that ade- 

 quate experimental data were available to test 

 the theoretical calculations and models. Al- 

 though the results generally agreed with the 

 models, additional information appears neces- 



44 



