BIOS Advances Atlantic Research with the AA500

Sitting 700 miles off the US coastline is the world’s longest-running open ocean time-series, Hydrostation 'S'. Since 1954, researchers and scientists from the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences (BIOS) have been sampling this site every two weeks documenting the changes in the ocean’s heat, salinity, and dissolved oxygen inventories.

Our ocean helps buffer Earth from climate change. For decades, BIOS has been working to better understanding and quantifying the biological pump and the flux of carbon from the upper ocean. The ocean time-series measures all forms of carbon and other major elements and tries to understand their transformation from inorganic to organic, from dissolved to particulate, and vice-versa. It also seeks to understand the flux of CO2 through the top of the ocean and the flux of organic carbon to the bottom of the ocean. Key to understanding these processes is determining the absolute change in the nitrate, nitrite, phosphate and silica concentrations, which requires consistent, accurate, and precise measurements. BIOS trusts their samples to the SEAL AA500 Segmented Flow Analyzer.

By their very nature, time-series studies measure small changes over time. One of the biggest challenges is discerning long-term changes with very small signals, which makes collecting measurements over 20 to 30 years necessary to verify the changes and place them in regional and global perspectives. For well over a decade, BIOS trusted their analyses to the AA3 AutoAnalyzer. The performance, accuracy and resolution seen on the SEAL AA500 made it an easy decision for BIOS. The AA500 has now been in place at BIOS for over 12 months and, according to nutrient research technician Emily Davey, it has continued to impress, delivering not only the expected benefits but also workflow and throughput improvements.

Emily has been able to clear a significant backlog in samples as the AA500 has helped increase throughput with the automatic shut-down feature allowing longer unassisted runs, after which the instrument is left to self-clean and shut-down. The improved throughput allows the BATS program to be more progressive, incorporating more samples into their general sampling. Dr. Rod Johnson, a Co-Principal Investigator commented, “We are very excited going forward with the AA500 and Emily’s dedicated approach for high quality nutrient data. We can now expand and take opportunistic measurements at additional stations or interesting ocean features, which gives us a better idea of the true oceanic variability of nutrients in this region of the North Atlantic Subtropical Gyre”.

Looking ahead, with the AA500 in place, advances in numerical modelling, increased sampling from the main core site, and the surrounding spatial grid, BIOS aims to better quantify the flux of nutrients in their immediate vicinity, further contributing to the understanding of the biological pump and the changing anatomy of the North Atlantic. Visit our website to discover the benefits an AA500 can bring to your lab: https://www.seal-analytical.com/Products/Segmented-Flow-Analyzers/AA500-AutoAnalyzer