Oceanographic and Water-Quality Measurements collected south of Marthas Vineyard, MA, November-December 2015

Two platforms were deployed at adjacent sites near the Marthas Vineyard Coastal Observatory (MVCO) to compare their ability to measure bottom shear stress. One platform was a low-profile (20 cm-high) sled, and the other platform was a large (2.5-m high) quadpod. Both platforms supported a pair of single-point acoustic-Doppler current meters and an acoustic-Doppler current profiler. On the sled, the instruments were mounted close to the seafloor and looked upward; on the quadpod, the instruments were mounted about 1.5 m above the bottom and looked downward. The quadpod also supported an upward-looking five-beam acoustic Doppler current profiler and instruments to measure temperature, salinity, and turbidity. This dataset was collected primarily to evaluate methods for measuring bottom shear stress, but it also provides useful information on waves, currents, and sediment transport.