University scientists continue ocean studies in Tuckerton


BY  BRIAN PRINCE
Staff Writer
Southern Ocean Reporter
Asbury Park Press, October 2002

For Mike Crowley summertime at the Jersey Shore isn't a time for lounging around or tanning. But, like the other scientists working at the Long-term Ecosystem Observatory, or LEO-15, in Tuckerton, he does get to spend some time in the water.

Crowley is the director of the Marine Remote Sensing Lab, a working group within the Coastal Observation Lab of the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences at Rutgers University in New Brunswick that has been doing scientific experiments at the LEO-15 site since 1998.

Focusing on a 30-mile-by-30 mile area off Little Egg Inlet, the group of scientists have examined everything from movements to the ocean's temperature to the marine life that call it home, in an attempt to understand the interacting forces at work there. Their work has contributed to better weather and tide predictions. This year, Crowley said, their equipment found that the temperature of ocean water reached its highest mark since at least 1980.

The project is run through the institute and funded by the Office of Naval Research, NASA, the National Ocean Partnership Program, the National Undersea Research Center, the National Science Foundation, and the state Department of Environmental Protection.

Each July, Crowley said, the scientists at LEO-15 - so named because the original depth of the area being studied was 15 meters . begin a new round of experiments. The next two years will be different, however.

"For the next year or so, we'll be writing a lot of papers and testing existing equipment,'' he said.

The lab will be working out kinks in some of its newest devices designed to probe further beneath the ocean's surface than ever before. Crowley said the teams are looking to expand their study area to a 120-mile-by-120-mile zone where the water can be as much as 300 feet deep.

"If we can stick something out there that can stay out there to the end of a month without risking anybody's life, that's always good,'' he said.

When Crowley stopped by the Long Beach Island Foundation of Arts and Sciences in Loveladies last month to talk about the project, he brought with him a souvenir. Drawing some interested and quizzical looks, he carried the bright yellow instrument, called a Slocum Glider, to the front of the room. The glider is a remote control device that can travel to the bottom of the ocean and measure water temperature and the speed of currents.

"That always gets a good reaction,'' he said with a chuckle. "People think it's a Scud missile.''

He predicted by the summer of 2004, the teams will be ready to begin experiments in the deeper water. In the meantime, Crowley and a group of researchers are headed to Alaska in the coming weeks to visit a similar laboratory the University of Alaska is starting up.

"We're going up there to talk to them because we've already been through it all,'' he said.

These types of trips are the first step in one of the observatory's ultimate goals to become part of a nationwide network of laboratories.

"We hope to be the prototype of what's being done around the country,'' he said.

Four years into his work, Crowley said his enthusiasm hasn't died.

"Every year, there's something new. You are constantly learning new things about what's going on in the ocean.''