Tides in Korea

I went to field trip to Sumjin River in South Korea in summer 2002.

Sumjin River, Korea in 2002

Since Korea is small country, you can see the ocean within 4 hours no matter where you live. Also, ebb-flood tides are so strong that we can observe a huge area of subtidal zone coming out of water twice a day.

I remember here clearly because I had never seen such a beautiful and a broad subtidal sediment.

Dirty job in oceanography

People may think oceanographers as scientists using cutting-edge equipment on a comfortable research cruise.
Oceanographic equipment are very expensive because it works under water which is basically stressful environment to machines using electricity due to pressure and 'water' itself. Although this job can be physically challenged due to the characteristics of environment where we work, many research cruises have been built as much as comfortable for scientists. But there are still many oceanographers who want to be dirty, work harder, and avoid any comfort zone at least during the cruise.  

Dr. Jeff Cornwell and Mike Owen (faculty research assistant) at Horn Point Laboratory have been collecting estuarine sediments from all over the U.S. more than two decades. Studying bio-geo-chemical mechanisms occurring under the benthic environment is crucial to understand entire ecosystem responses due to high biogeochemical activities of micro and macro organisms under the sediment. As we cannot understand atmospheric reactions (e.g., climate) without knowing the interaction between atmosphere and earth's surface, we cannot find about the function or productivity of 'water' without the understanding of 'sediment'.

This is why we collected sediment core samples from Chesapeake Bay 'no oxygen' zone to find out the biochemical characteristics of the area.

Sediment Cores

Since the accumulation rate of sediment is on the order of 0.5 to 1 cm per year, these sediment cores which are about 30 cm long is at least 15 to 20 years old (maybe older than you!). It not only has a history of the Bay itself, but also kindly provides all scientific information if we are willing to get.

And don't forget that mud is good for your skin, too!!!

My 17 yr old dog, Ggang-ggang.

Zooplankton grazing

If I define oceanography as a student, I would say that this is the study of "everything" from small micro-size to whale-like big organisms and "interactions" between the organisms and environment. I am sure this is not a perfect definition but I just want to say that one oceanographic study must be supported by other studies to become better research. Our project (Life in the Dead Zone) emphasizes not only geochemical cycle of nutrients in the anoxic environment but also biological responses (e.g., bacteria and zooplankton) to see how the organisms react to the stressful environmental condition. This is why we also observed zooplankton activities such as grazing, egg production, etc. This sample below was captured by zooplankton team at Horn Point Laboratory and I found very interesting zooplankton activity which seemed like eating black particulate material which looks alike a fish fecal pellet. Please let me know what Acartia tonsa (zooplankton) was doing here.

R/V Rachel Carson

U of Maryland built a new scientific cruise. It's awesomely pretty and functional. Drs. Boynton, Kemp, Bosch, and many scientists in our school contributed their experience to build this one.

I took this picture during the "Life in the Deadzone" cruise because air condition was broken on the R/V Sharp. We went to Solomons MD to fix it.

Sediment and strange man.

Today morning, 4 Delaware University journalists (newspaper publishers?) got on the cruise to see what we are doing. Maybe they are going to report our story on their newspaper.

They took lots of pictures of our works, especially, sediment collection.

This is the picture of Evan Krappe who passionately took pictures on the wet stern. To make it worse we were collecting anoxic bottom sediment which smells like rotten eggs. I'm looking forward seeing his pictures soon.

Location:Blue Star Memorial Hwy,3,United States

Scanfish MKII

his is one of coolest (I think) oceanographic equipment. It is basically towed by a boat in any aquatic environment where we want to know water properties (i.e., oxygen, temperature, etc.).

Research vessel Sharp towed it on July 9th 2010 in the middle of Chesapeake Bay and this is a part of my new research project: Life in the Dead Zone which is funded by National Science Foundation.


It literally flies up and down in the water column and is controlled by the computer package below:


After 'scanning' the water I processed data with Sea-Bird Software which convert data into available numbers. Then, I used Surfer software to draw a following pictures.

X-axis is the latitude and y-axis is the depth of oxygen and salinity

Location:6, Hoopers Island,United States