Scientists paint ocean pink near Torrey Pines State Park

Researchers at the Scripps Oceanographic Institution plunged into the frigid waters of Los Penasquitos Lagoon on Friday, preparing to paint the ocean pink.

Brian Woodward, research and development engineer at Scripps, dropped a small buoy just a few feet from shore. This buoy drifted in tide-driven freshwater with a long plastic hose firmly attached to it.

“We have a lot of moving parts here,” Woodward said.

Shortly after 9 a.m., the team began pumping non-toxic pink dye through a hose into the lagoon.

Soon, fresh water, driven by the tide, began to push the paint into the rough winter surf.

Woodward’s team was ready to record anything they could think of. There were sensors attached to the stakes in the ocean.

“We have a jet ski,” Woodward said, pointing to a jet ski bobbing on the waves. “I don’t know if you noticed that there are fluorometers, CTD (measuring) temperature, depth, communication, salt measurement and the like. It also measures bathymetry.”

The explorers also had drones in the sky. One filmed conventional high-definition video, the other used a hyperspectral camera that allowed the team to track the dye moving away from the lagoon.

Scientists know a lot about how large rivers interact with the ocean, but not much about the many rivers that operate on a smaller scale.

Estuaries, such as this coastal lagoon, send sediment and pollutants into the ocean.

“These very small river plumes interact directly with the surf zone as breaking waves influence their final propagation,” said Sarah Giddings, lead researcher on the coloration project.

Giddings chose Friday morning to release the dye because the tide was receding and this helped push the lighter fresh water out of the lagoon into the heavy salt water.

The team wanted the winter waves to roll towards the shore, pushing back the freshwater plume.

“Waves can effectively trap river plume in the surf zone so that it propagates along the shore rather than hitting the shore,” Giddings said. “And so we’re kind of trying to understand this transition between when it hits the sea and spreads out from the shore, and when it hits the surf and spreads along the coast.”

The painted water quickly began to mix with the surf, and researchers tracking the paint with drones say it quickly moved south along the coast.

The team has already used eco-friendly pink dye to experiment with the ocean.

Back in 2015, Scripps researchers released a pink dye off the south coast of San Diego County and the coast of Mexico to track how pollution moves after it enters the ocean.

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