I have some oceanographic data (time, depth, plankton counts, salinity, temperature, etc.) from the deployment of oceanographic equipment. The deployment consisted of multiple profiles of the water column. I subsetted all downcasts in the data (when the equipment was descending), so that when I plot depth over time, the data look like this: depth over time.
What code or function can I use in R to automatically identify, isolate, and extract the data from each individual downcast into its own object (without having to specifically identify the times of each downcast)? For the data in the plot, it would essentially generate 6 objects. Ideally, the code could easily be applied to other deployments with 1-7 downcasts each.
I've been looking at identifying data break points or structural changes, but nothing has been fruitful. Thank you!!