MESSOR - A towed underwater vehicle for quantifying and describing the distribution of pelagic organisms and their physical environment

Messor, a simple but efficient towed vehicle have been built to obtain high-resolution data on the physical environment, phytoplankton, zooplankton, nekton and fish through a variety of sensors allowing multiple data acquisition with a near identical resolution in time and space. A multitude of towing tests have been undertaken to obtain a thorough understanding of vehicle behavior and work potential with respect to towing speed and operating depth. During normal field operation the vehicle has proven a valuable tool for studying detailed processes in frontal regions as well as for basin scale monitoring work. A selected exemplary data set from a large scale monitoring study in the Norwegian Sea in 2009 is presented to visualize the scientific potential of this integrated multiple instrumentation platform.