A production model McLane Moored Profiler was deployed by investigators from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and MRL in 2600 meters of water on the southern flank of the Hawaiian Ridge on January 9, 2001. The location is west of Kaena Point in the Kauai Channel between the islands of Kauai and Oahu, the site of the Hawaii Ocean Mixing Experiment (HOME). The Hawaiian Ridge represents a significant bathymetric obstruction to the barotropic tidal flow between Oahu and Kauai. As such, the region is a natural laboratory in which to investigate barotropic tidal scattering into baroclinic motions, a key element of the Hawaii Ocean Mixing Experiment (HOME). The MMP trial contributed to the HOME program by providing a short, but temporally and vertically well-resolved sampling of the internal wave field above the flank of the Ridge. The tidal flows, constricted by the island chain and the Ridge, are accelerated to speeds approaching 30 cm/s at certain depths and times (Meridional Velocity figure below). Accompanying the strong tidal currents are peak-to-peak vertical displacements of isopycnals of ~100 m (Potential Density figure below). The isopycnal heaving is, by definition, a baroclinic wave; the observed horizontal currents appear to be a mixture of barotropic and baroclinic motions. There is a significant correlation between the meridional flow and the vertical displacement evident in the figures. A more complete discussion can be found in MMP - OCEANS 2001
