The NICO expedition offered the chance to re-visit some of the stations from the DUSTTRAFFIC and TRAFFIC projects, of which two dust-collecting buoys are still actively collecting dust. In addition, one sediment-trap mooring is also still collecting dust on an unprecendented high resolution (four days) until it will be recovered in November this year.
What we could not plan for is the outbreak of dust but as you can see in the dusty sunrise above and the animated picture of satellite images below, there were several outbreaks of dust from the Sahara and Sahel during the last few days, exactly when RV Pelagia took off from Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (Spain) heading first South towards the Cape Verde Islands and from there West towards the Caribbean.
Read more about the dust encountered at sea in this blog on the NICO website
Jan-Berend Stuut
