Dear Ray,
We are continuing our meso-scale survey which should be over by Sunday afternoon, as well as the deployment of most of the drifters. What we find at meso-scale fits quite well with the latest analyses (on www.locean-ipsl.upmc.fr/smos/spurs, as well as some data and a few plots placed there with some delays, as the Paris computers suffered from the heat a week ago).
The eddy centered to its south-east is actually proving to be rather energetic, and you might well feel it during your cruise in a month further west! Hopefully a good portion of the drifters might remain trapped in its circulation and thus flow at some point towards the west (right now they flow to the southeast along the eddy edge).
There is also some indication of the saddle point near our north-east corner with the less salty water arriving from the north, and the TSG/scanfish/autonomous sailing vessel/gliders survey show very clear fronts near the edge of the eddy. This should clearly be the scope of our investigations next week, which we might start on monday, weather permitting.
We have started last night the first long (2-day) deployment of ASIP. So far, so good (deployment between the saddle point and the eddy's edge), with quite strong inertial oscillations (we had finally some trade winds starting 36 hours ago, after 3-4 days of very calm weather and surface waters reaching over 29°C in the early afternoon! You would not have believed that we were a little to the east of the center of the gyre, and we kind of roasted on the deck!).
We will continue have the two gliders circulate around the area (to make it simple, probably in a square box), and we might try to get them to drift with the barycenter of the drifters, but this might be hard due to the features that we decided to investigate. At the end of the cruise, we will interact more with you (please, provide us with your Knorr's adddress so that the two gliders can meet your ship and contribute to your survey before their recovery).
With best regards, Gilles.
PS: I'll be delighted if you pass it to the rest of the Spurs sea-going team.
PS2: our dry-land team might be happy to complement this short report soon.
