OPD - Home

OPD Research Areas

Mixing Mixing sets the temperature and salinity structure of the ocean and the distribution of chemical species…
Circulation Circulation, from small estuaries to entire ocean basins, is critical in a variety of processes…
Biogeochemistry Mixing and circulation help regulate ocean productivity and ecosystems…
Instruments Technology plays a critical role in oceanographic research…

Instruments & Sensors

See what we design, build and use in our research…

Educational Opportunities

Graduate students in the Ocean Physics Department take their coursework through an academic department at the UW, while pursuing research projects with a faculty advisor in OPD. Students are offered the opportunity to experience the entire life cycle of sea-going research projects, including experiment planning, participation in research cruises, data processing, scientific analysis and the presentation of results at national and international meetings. More >>
Current Students >>

What We Do

OPD investigators pursue research focused primarily on small-scale and meso-scale oceanographic processes, design and build unique instruments to facilitate these studies, and educate undergraduate and graduate students through instruction and employment.

Deep-Sea Rescue of Valuable Research Instruments

The subsurface mooring component of the Northwest Enhanced Moored Observatory (NEMO) had to be rescued by a ROV piloted by APL-UW engineers. Extensive crevice corrosion from a longer-than-expected deployment was behind the acoustic release failures. More >>

'Wavechasers' Return to the South Pacific

The Wavechasers team was back to the Samoan Passage in the South Pacific. The passage is a large and deep choke point separating the deep basins of the North and South Pacific that funnels more than six million tons of water every second. Check out the team's work by reading their blog entries.
At-sea blog >>

North Atlantic Bloom Experiment

APL-UW oceanographers and their colleagues at WHOI and Univ. of Maine report in the 6 July issue of Science on a new physical mechanism discovered in the North Atlantic Ocean. Eddies convert horizontal density gradients to vertical ones, causing a stratification that brings the phytoplankton to the sunlit surface where they can grow. More >>

In the News

Tracking skyscraper-high waves across the globe

OceanCurrents Magazine

14 Apr 2013

Internal-wave-driven mixing turns out to be a vital aspect of the ocean's circulation. We currently believe that without breaking internal waves, the deep sea would be a stagnant, homogenous deep pool of cold water with a very thin warm layer atop it. Since we instead observe a much more gradual decrease in temperature, we conclude that there is mixing in the abyss and that breaking internal waves lead to much of it. Therefore, internal wave mixing is part of the "bloodstream" of the ocean, enabling the upward part of the "conveyor belt" circulation by moving cold water upward. And that means that our predictions of climate change have significant uncertainty because we do not fully understand the sources, travel pathways and eventual breaking locations of the internal waves in the sea.

A kick-start for phytoplankton

The New York Times, Sophia Li

12 Jul 2012

A study published this month in Science upends the prevailing view on phytoplankton bloom, reporting that shallow ocean currents kick-start the seasonal phenomenon.

Synchronized probes explore Bermuda Triangle's swirling vortices

UW Today, Nancy Gohring

19 Jun 2012

APL-UW scientists chose the location to research its swirling whirlpools via a pioneering experiment that repeatedly sent the probes deep into the ocean and back to the surface in unison.