Intern

AUV Lab

Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute

Graduate Student - Masters

Physical Oceanography

Moss Landing Marine Laboratories

Erika McPhee-Shaw

I am studying bottom boundary layer dynamics in the Monterey Submarine Canyon for my graduate work, and at MBARI, I am studying vertical mixing and how it relates to biological productivity.

For my thesis, I am describing the bottom boundary layer and how it changes along the canyon-axis in both space and time. I am using various data to quantify a well-mixed bottom boundary layer and a frictional bottom boundary layer. I have initially scaled the boundary layer as an Ekman layer, and have started to estimate bottom boundary layer thicknesses that are strongly affected by stratification and tidal oscillations. At MBARI, I am running a General Ocean Turbulence Model that incorporates a basic NPZD model. This model helps me describe vertical mixing so that I can better understand spatial and temporal changes in various oceanographic properties (nutrients, phytoplankton, TKE) and come up with ideas regarding how AUVs can measure turbulence.