Mentor name: Aaron O’Dea

Co-mentor(s): Carmen Pérez, Andrew Sellers

Location of internship: Laboratorio Marino Isla Naos
 

Project abstract

Coastal oceanographic conditions along Central America's Pacific coast are highly variable across time and space. Surface water accumulation transported by the Equatorial Countercurrent creates warm, oligotrophic conditions throughout the region. However, this warm environment changes dramatically during the boreal winter, when strong northeast winds blow through topographic depressions along the Central American cordillera. Wind action in the Gulf of Panama, Papagayo, and Tehuantepec generates seasonal upwelling events, causing surface water cooling and increased nutrient availability. As winds decrease during spring and early summer, coastal conditions return to a warm, oligotrophic state (D'Croz and O'Dea 2007, O'Dea et al. 2012). These dynamic coastal conditions, which characterize Central America's Pacific coast, provide an ideal setting to study how regional and temporal variation in environmental conditions and primary productivity influence ecological processes that determine community structure in tropical marine ecosystems. Monitoring coastal environmental conditions along regional upwelling gradients is a fundamental aspect of this research. However, efforts to characterize regional and seasonal variation in coastal oceanographic conditions along the Central American coast have been scarce.

An established collaboration between the Max Planck Institutes of Chemistry and STRI seeks to address this gap in oceanographic research through the deployment of the S/Y Eugen Seibold in the Tropical Eastern Pacific. Since 2023, this research vessel, operated by MPIC, has been conducting oceanographic cruises in the region. The main objective of our project is to characterize the seasonal and regional variability of coastal environmental conditions along Central America's Pacific coast. To achieve this, we collect biogeochemical seawater samples along transects perpendicular to the coast of Panama and Costa Rica during different seasons of the Tropical Eastern Pacific, encompassing both upwelling and non-upwelling conditions. This includes sampling in regions influenced by seasonally cold, nutrient-rich waters (Gulf of Panama, Salinas, and Papagayo), as well as areas that maintain warm, oligotrophic conditions throughout the year (Gulf of Chiriquí and Coronado).

The selected intern will gain experience in oceanographic data analysis. They will have access to data collected in previous campaigns and will participate in analyzing relationships between water temperature and nutrient concentrations.

Skills required

• Previous experience in analytical chemistry, particularly in methods for quantifying nutrients in marine waters
• Experience working on oceanographic cruises
• Ability to work in the field for long hours and under adverse sea conditions
• Experience conducting oceanographic data analysis, including statistical methods, depth profiles, and time series
• Experience working with satellite data, including the ability to obtain and process Level 2 satellite data
• Experience in physical and chemical oceanography
• Experience in data manipulation and statistical analysis in R
• Ability to work in teams with people of different nationalities
• Ability to communicate and write in English and Spanish