Oceanographic water temperature, salinity, and velocity collected from Rogue River Mooring off the coast of Oregon from 2000-09-17 to 2004-09-08 (NCEI Accession 0137120)

At tidal frequencies, typical blow-down at the top MicroCAT was less than 2 m with pitch and roll at the ADCP of less than 6 degrees. The worst-case mooring performance was during the severe winter storms of November and December 2002, when the blow-down was about 7 m and the pitch briefly hit 25 degrees. The mooring was recovered and redeployed every six months for four years.

The early data revealed the need to sample closer to the surface than the original mooring design allowed. To facilitate this, a light-weight pennant consisting of a 30 cm plastic float on a thin spectra line was flown off the top of the 1.8 m sphere. A Star-Oddi Starmon mini temperature pod was taped to the line to sample temperature every 5 minutes at 6 m depth.

This simple system worked surprisingly well starting with the fall 2001 deployment. Funding was provided by the NOAA Coastal Ocean Program.