Mesoscale eddies are a dominant source of spatial variability in the surface ocean and play a major role in the biological marine carbon cycle. Satellite altimetry is often used to locate and track eddies, but this approach is rarely validated against in situ observations. Here we compare measurements of a small (under 25 km radius) mode water anticyclonic eddy over the Procupine Abyssal Plain using CTD and ADCP measurements from 3 ships, 2 gliders, 2 profiling floats, and one Lagrangian float with those derived from sea level anomaly. In situ estimates of the eddy center were estimated from maps of the thickness of its central isopycnal layer, from ADCP velocities at a reference layer, and from the trajectory of the Lagrangian float. These were compared to three methods using altimetric SLA: one based on maximizing geostrophic rotation, one based on a constant SLA contour, and one which maximizes geostrophic velocity speed along the eddy boundary. All algorithms were used to select CTD profiles that were within the eddy. The in-situ metrics agreed to 97\%. The altimetry metrics showed only a small loss of accuracy, giving $>90$\% agreement with the in situ results. This suggests that current satellite altimetry is adequate for understanding the spatial representation of even relatively small mesoscale eddies.

Phytoplankton communities in the open ocean are high-dimensional, sparse, and spatiotemporally heterogeneous. The advent of automated imaging systems has enabled high-resolution observation of these communities, but the amounts of data and their statistical properties make analysis with traditional approaches challenging. Spatiotemporal topic models offer an unsupervised and interpretable approach to dimensionality reduction of sparse, high-dimensional categorical data. Here we use topic modeling to analyze neural-network-classified phytoplankton imagery taken in and around a retentive eddy during the 2021 North Atlantic EXport Processes in the Ocean from Remote Sensing (EXPORTS) field campaign. We investigate the role physical-biological interactions play in altering plankton community composition within the eddy. Analysis of a water mass mixing framework suggests that storm-driven surface advection and stirring were major drivers of the progression of the eddy plankton community away from a diatom bloom over the course of the cruise.