Zissou my Ocean

It’s springtime, and just like the phytoplankton in the seas, the internet is blooming with some serious love for “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.” The data suggest the bloom is triggered by the recent release of a new Wes Anderson film, but clearly more research and funding is needed.

In the meantime, check out teh datas. Here is Zissou-i-fication of a CTD cast and Microstructure turbulence profiler deployment. I don’t know how I lived without this.

And for those that heart the details like me, here’s the pseudo-technical play by play :

  • 0:02 min- DEPLOY TEH CTD ROSETTE!
  • 0:09 – Horrifyingly large fish scares rosette back to the surface
  • 0:12 – Dramatic snap whilst popping the Niskin Bottle to take a water sample
  • 0:18 – Hell yeah, here comes the Microstructure profiler to measure teh turbulenz.
  • 0:21 – Delicate sensors must not ram the sea floor. Hit the squib, release the weights and the profiler becomes positively buoyant and floats back up to the surface.
  • 0:28 – PAN OUT to the Southern Ocean and the Drake Passage, site of DIMES.
  • 0:31 – What does water do when it goes thorough a constriction? It makez teh eddies!  AWWW…..

And there is also the Zissou-i-fication of our data. Karthik Ram made these beautiful color palettes for R based on Wes Anderson Films.  Of course I needed these for myself, so I translated the Zissou color palette into Matlab, then went another step forward and made another script to ZissouMyPlot. Final step, Zissou your own ocean!

Zissoumyplot.m has been deployed.
Zissoumyplot.m has been deployed.

 

 

(Confession: I may have been listening to the Life Aquatic soundtrack the entire time while writing this.)