Archive for category: News

OSM 2024 in New Orleans is less than 2-weeks away! On the first day, Monday February 19, Rockland Scientific is hosting a special lunchtime workshop focused on turbulence measurements from autonomous vehicles. Titled “Science and technology development of persistent turbulence observations from gliders and profiling floats,” the workshop will feature presentations from key researchers around the world sharing their motivation, lessons learned, and visions for the future of turbulence measurements, ocean mixing, and climate change research!  The last 15-min will provide for a town-hall discussion with the speakers as panelists. 

Speakers: 

• Dr. Fabian Wolk, President Rockland Scientific 
• Dr. Alberto Naveira Garabato, University of Southampton, United Kingdom 
• Dr. Ryu Inoue, JAMSTEC, Japan 
• Dr. Stephanie Waterman, University of British Columbia, Canada 

Location: rooms 229-230 

Time: 12:45-13:45   

Lunch will be provided to the first 50 attendees – so get there early! 

BONUS! – the workshop is down the hall from the Observing Ocean Mixing with Autonomous Platforms session (rooms 217-219) that starts at 2pm, so it will be a great catalyst for continued discussions on turbulence measurements during the afternoon presentations & posters! 

Rockland Scientific provided an in-person, week-long Turbulence Workshop at the National Oceanography Centre Southampton (NOC Southampton) from November 28 to December 2, 2022. Although we have been providing frequent web-live training events to customers around the globe, this was the first in-person workshop since the pandemic. Participants for this workshop were from the University of Southampton, NOC Liverpool, and NOC Southampton. Members of the Marine Autonomous Robotic Systems (MARS) group work out of NOC Southampton and operate the Autosub Long Range AUV (a.k.a Boaty McBoatface), as well as NOC’s fleet of Ocean Microstructure Gliders (OMG).  

 The workshop allowed for the introduction of one of Rockland’s newest members, R&D Scientist Dr. Anneke ten Doeschate, who provided instruction on ocean turbulence theory, time series analysis, and processing of turbulence data obtained from autonomous robotic vehicles. Anneke was able to draw on her previous experience with turbulence measurements and air sea interaction research to add to many interesting discussions during the week.  

 In addition to providing educational content on ocean turbulence theory and data processing, the workshop provided technical instruction on the use of Rockland’s MicroRider instruments and microstructure probes, which are integrated on NOC’s Boaty McBoatface and Slocum Glider OMG’s. Cross-pollinating discussions from Rockland and participants occurred throughout the week and showcased how strong collaborations between research teams and industry can lead to improvements in scientific data collection techniques and technology.  Rockland enthusiastically looks forward to our continued work with all the NOC Workshop participants.  

Earlier this year, researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) were experiencing challenges with data from one of the shear channels on their MicroCTD. However, Rockland manufacturing and support teams quickly provided a loaner MicroCTD to help EPFL continue their seasonal study from their Léman exploration platform (LéXPLORE).

Rockland’s fast responsiveness and logistical capabilities provided for rapid delivery of the loaner MicroCTD. This enabled the EPFL team to conduct their periodic measurements without disruption. 

Some call it Lake Geneva (English), others call it Lac Léman (French). This beautiful lake sits on the border between Switzerland and France, and it receives a lot of scientific attention. “LéXPLORE”, which stands for “Léman exploration”, is the name for a scientific floating platform located on the lake off Lausanne. The platform is equipped with cutting-edge scientific instrumentation for simultaneous biological, chemical, and physical measurements at high resolution. 

As one can see from the pictures on the home page of the LéXPLORE platform (https://lexplore.info/), Rockland Scientific equipment is an important part of the equipment pool. Here is a video of the LéXPLORE platform taken from the perspective of a MicroCTD. 

Dr. Sebastiano Piccolroaz, an emerging scientist at EPFL, is very active in collecting microstructure data in the lakes. Dr. Piccolroaz has collected more than 900 MicroCTD profiles just in the past year. 

Sebastiano commented, “we take microstructure profiles nearly on a weekly basis (both upward and downward) as we are interested in seasonal and sub-daily turbulence and gas-flux patterns. Having the loaner instrument in such a short time was therefore a great support from Rockland as it allowed us to keep pace with our regular weekly fieldwork. On top of this, I should add that the same week we received the loaner instrument, we contributed to an important 48h monitoring campaign in Rotsee (close to Luzern), where colleagues at EAWAG are investigating horizontal flows resulting from nearshore night- time cooling with ADCP and tracer measurements. Having the loaner MicroCTD with us was definitely a big plus!”. 

Rockland’s continuing support was further demonstrated this Spring when our Sales & Support Manager for the Europe, Middle East & Africa (EMEA) region, Romain Tricarico, had the opportunity to travel to Switzerland to work with researchers from EPFL and Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (EAWAG) on the LéXPLORE platform.

The focus of the trip was a two-day microstructure workshop organized by EPFL and EAWAG to discuss: 

1. Best practices to operate Rockland profilers 
2. MicroCTD-VMP data inter-comparison 
3. Post-processing analysis 

Notably, the fun part of the workshop happened during a field testing and deployment of a whole “zoo” of Rockland equipment as shown in the picture below. 

The VMP-500 is more than ten years old and was custom built by Rockland for Swiss researcher Prof. Alfred Wüest, whom everyone knows as Johny. Johny is the Swiss Grandmaster of limnology, having contributed numerous seminal publications on deep lake mixing and inspiring the next generation of microstructure experts. Rockland looks forward to supporting this next generation! 

All in all, Rockland takes pride in providing quick support to its customers and Romain’s presence at the workshop. Together with the guest web-live appearance of Dr. Rolf Lueck (Rockland co-founder and staff scientist) during the data processing session was just another testimony of Rockland’s mission to empower our customers to achieve their turbulence measurement goals and help scientists better understand climate change! 

How can Rockland support your project goals?  Contact us today to discuss our solutions, including available units from our lease-pool.

We would like to assure our Customers, Suppliers, and Partners of Rockland that we have implemented steps to keep our work force safe, while keeping our operations functioning at high productivity.  As of Monday, March 16, 2020, we have implemented a work-from-home policy and we are limiting the movements and contact points of those staff that are required in the office.  Despite these measures, we are confident that we will be able to ship your orders on time and respond to your customer service requests.  There may be some disruptions in answering telephone calls immediately, but we are monitoring the voice mail. For the quickest response, we encourage you to contact us through the email form on our website here.