Acoustic doppler current profiling from a volunteer commercial ship

An acoustic Doppler current profiler has been successfully installed on a volunteer commercial ship, the 42,000 DWT oil tanker EXXON Jamestown, which makes monthly round trips from Houston, Texas to Santa Barbara, California via the Panama Canal. Doppler current data collected by the Jamestown so far indicate that the system noise levels are low and the relative current profiles appear reasonable down to 120 meters or more. Very intense vertical shears (0.05 sec^-1) have been repeatedly observed along the Pacific coast of Central America in the area just to the north of the Costa Rica Dome. The Jamestown´s larger size and higher speed produce beam-to-beam profile differences which are more noticeable than in the case of small research vessels. These and other system characteristics are discussed.