OCEANOGRAPHIC OBSERVATIONS 

 NORTH ATLANTIC OCEAN STATION BRAVO 



14 NOVEMBER 1967—16 NOVEMBER 1969 



by 



JOSEPH L. SHUHYi 



INTRODUCTION 



Ocean Station BRAVO is located in the Lab- 

 rador Sea at 56°30'N and 51°00'W (fig. 1). The 

 oceanographic conditions at BRAVO have been 

 monitored by U.S. Coast Guard vessels since 

 January 1964. All previous reports on the data 

 collected at this Ocean Station are listed under 

 references. This is the fifth report in the series 

 and covers the period November 1967 to 

 November 1969 during which time 663 oceano- 

 graphic stations were taken. 



PROCEDURES 



During the period November 1967 — 

 November 1969 oceanographic data were col- 

 lected by U.S. Coast Guard vessels either once 

 daily with Nansen bottles or up to 4 times per day 

 with an electronic Salinity — Temperature 

 — Depth (STD) sensor system (Plessey model 

 9006N or model 9040 S/T/D/ Environmental Pro- 

 filing System), weather and operations permit- 

 ting, while occupying Ocean Station BRAVO. 



Vessels equipped with an STD sensor system 

 took four casts per day to 1500 meters. Once a 



^U.S. Coast Guard Oceanographic I'nit. Building 159-F,, Navv Yard 

 Annex, Washington, D.C. 20390. 



week a cast to 3000 meters was taken by those 

 ships having an STD with a 3000 meter capabil- 

 ity. Quality control of the STD casts was accom- 

 plished by the use of two Nansen bottles, one at 

 the surface and one just above the STD under- 

 water sensor at depth on every cast. In the event of 

 STD failure during the cruise, daily Nansen casts 

 were taken. The interpolated temperatures and 

 salinities for standard depths, sigma-t, specific 

 volume anomalies, and sound velocities were 

 computed by NODC and are presented in Appen- 

 dix A. 



The Ocean Station Vessels are normally re- 

 quested to maintain station within a ten-mile 

 square grid around center of station. Positions are 

 shown of those stations taken more than 30 miles 

 from the center of OS BRAVO (fig. 2). The 

 bathymetry around OS BRAVO is shown in figure 

 3. A cruise description of the 29 patrols covered 

 by this report can be found in table 1. 



DISCUSSION 



The data from the 29 patrols included in this 

 report cover the two year period from 14 

 November 1967 to 16 November 1969. A com- 

 parison between these data and those collected 

 from 1964 to 1967 will be made. In addition to the 

 annual variations of temperature and salinity. 



1 



