ABSTRACT
Fluid motion in the ocean or other large bodies of water can be separated into three classes of motion. The first is mean transport, bearing on the physical oceanographic question, “Where does the water go?” Adequate sampling in space is generally a critical issue in capturing the flux of water and other scalar advected quantities such as heat and salt or sediment in suspension. Often the significant flow is weak and the threshold of measurement or the linearity near zero flow in sampling instrumentation is crucial. More often, the mean flow is buried in large zero mean flows such as wave motion, vibration of the sensor, or strong turbulent fluctuations. In these cases, linearity of the sensor over a large dynamic range is important.
