Old Dominion University/Synthetic Conducting Cable for Trace Metal-clean Sampling Winch SSSE

A request is made for the acquisition of an 8000 m long, 14 mm diameter synthetic (Vectran) conducting cable that is part of a trace metal-clean oceanographic sampling system. It would be replacing an existing 12-year-old cable that has been damaged during water sampling in the Arctic, Atlantic, and Pacific Oceans. Trace elements are crucial to biological and chemical processes in the world’s oceans due to their roles as essential micro-nutrients or toxicants.

However, conventional oceanographic sampling methods contaminate water samples for these constituents. Unfortunately, rigorous trace metal-clean procedures are labor-intensive, require specialized equipment, and are very slow, limiting our ability to study trace elements on ocean basin scales. As a part of the international GEOTRACES program a rosette/CTD sampling system that allows rapid, high resolution trace element sampling was developed using NSF funding.

Since the cable is the only thing above the sample bottles, it has to be non-metallic wire to assure quality samples while still being as fast as that of conventional CTD/rosettes. The existing cable has been damaged after 10-years of use and must be replaced to continue high resolution trace element sampling in the world's oceans. There are two NSF-funded cruises in the next three years that require this cable. The request to the SSSE Program is:

1) Synthetic conducting CTD cable, 8000 m x 14 mm $180,340 Broader Impacts

The principal impact of the present proposal is under Merit Review Criterion 2 of the Proposal Guidelines (NSF 19-602). It provides infrastructure support for scientists to use the vessel and its shared-use instrumentation in support of their NSF-funded oceanographic research projects (which individually undergo separate review by the relevant research program of NSF).

The acquisition, maintenance and operation of shared-use instrumentation allows NSF-funded researchers from any US university or lab access to working, calibrated instruments for their research, reducing the cost of that research, and expanding the base of potential researchers.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.