CoBOP (Coastal Benthic Optical Properties)

The goal of CoBOP is to investigate the optical properties of shallow waters and the shallow sea floor. Specific science objectives are:

• to define and develop the means to measure the inherent optical properties associated with coastal benthic environments;
• to verify radiative transfer models for optically-shallow water in controlled field tests;
• to investigate the relationships between measured benthic optical properties and associated biological, chemical and physical processes.

This last goal recognize that the optical properties of shallow water coastal environments are a complex function of the physical and biogeochemical processes occurring both in the sediments and in the water column. Furthermore, they acknowledge that developing models of the optical properties of these environments requires further information about the processes affecting light alteration and modification by biogeochemical reactions in surficial sediments and at the sediment-water interface.

The work we are carrying out in CoBOP involves examining one aspect of this problem, namely:

• the processes affecting the production of colored dissolved organic matter (CDOM) in sediment pore waters,
• the mechanism(s) by which this material may be transported out of sediments,
• the impact of pore water CDOM on the optical properties of the shallow water benthos (i.e., the sediments, the sediment-water interface and the waters overlying the sediment, including the benthic boundary layer).

The majority of the work in CoBOP is carried out in carbonate sediments near the Caribbean Marine Research Center on Lee Stocking Island, in the Exumas chain in the Bahamas.

Pictures from our CoBOP field effort at LSI in May/June, 1999

Lee Stocking Island (looking north)

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