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Department Lead

Luc Rainville

Principal Oceanographer

Affiliate Assistant Professor, Oceanography

Research Areas

Instruments & Sensors

Mixing—sets the temperature and salinity structure of the ocean and the distribution of chemical species
Circulation—from small estuaries to entire ocean basins, circulation is critical in a variety of processes
Biogeochemistry—mixing and circulation help regulate ocean productivity and ecosystems
Instruments—technology plays a critical role in oceanographic research

See what we design, build, and use in our research…

Photos and descriptions of: Absolute Velocity Profiler (AVP), Deep Advanced Microstructure Profiler (DAMP), Electromagnetic Vorticity Meter (EMVM), Expendable Current Profilers (XCP)/Expendable CTDs (XCTD), Lagrangian Float, Modular Microstructure Profiler (MMP), Salinity/Density Probe, Saglider, Shallow Water Integrated Mapping System (SWIMS), Triaxus, and TriSoarus.

EXPORTS: Export Processes in the Ocean from RemoTe Sensing			Puget Sound Marine Waters: 2016 Report			Successful Wave Glider Mission in Southern Ocean

Projects

Media Coverage

Publications

Arctic PISCES

Jim Thomson, Jason Gobat, Craig Lee, Bonnie Light, Axel Schweiger

14 April 2025

Sigma Profiler Measurements of Salinity Stratification in the Upper San Francisco Bay Estuary

Zoltan Szuts

15 May 2024

Sampling QUantitative Internal-wave Distributions — SQUID

James Girton, Aurelie Moulin, Emilio Mayorga, Ren-Chieh Lien, Zoltan Szuts

26 February 2024

Find info, tools and maps for outdoor rec and fishing in the PNW on the NANOOS website

Fox News 12 (KPTV Oregon)

31 July 2025

Increasingly acidic seas threaten oyster farming

The New York Times

Jim Robbins

7 July 2025

Research buoy gets refresh on Bellingham Bay

Cascadia Daily News

Hailey Hoffman

20 August 2024

Global distribution and governing dynamics of submesoscale density fronts

Whalen, C.B., and K. Drushka

1 October 2025

A new-generation internal tide model based on 30 years of satellite sea surface height measurements: multiwave decomposition and isolated beams

Zhao, Z.

18 August 2025

Meso- and submesoscale circulation origins for subsurface oxygen intrusions into the oxygen deficient zone of the Eastern Tropical North Pacific

Pietri, A., M. Altabet, G.W. Cowles, and E. D'Asaro

8 August 2025