This award to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts provides shared-use instrumentation to significantly improve the oceanographic research capabilities of the research vessels Atlantis, Knorr and Oceanus, three ships operated by WHOI as part of the University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System (UNOLS) research fleet. Specifically, this award will provide a new suite of meteorological sensors and a low temperature sample storage freezer for R/V Oceanus, new deionized water systems for R/Vs Knorr and Oceanus, a new echosounding system for R/V Knorr, upgrades to the existing video plankton recorder and addition of a new digital video plankton recorder, both of these last items usable off any vessel. These improvements will be of substantial advantage to marine scientists using these three ships or for some items, any UNOLS vessel, in their research during 2006 and future years. ***
