Cruise Log HY01-03 (by Dr. Darby)
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
We awoke today to a very different motion (waves) and instead of ice scrapping and banging along the ship's side, only the sound of wind. Temperatures have reached the very balmy 40's and concern over the cores freezing in the refer van with a broken compressor and no temperature control have evaporated. Bernard Coakley, co-chief for the multichannel towed seismic project and Dennis Darby, co-Chief for the coring project addressed the Healy crew at noon assembly to thank them for a very successful expedition. Several of the accomplishments were mentioned and the crew was saluted for their contribution to the expedition and for a mission well done with enthusiasm and a "can-do" attitude that all of the science personnel appreciated.
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Tuesday, September 27, 2005
We began the run east to Tromso under relatively calm seas near the ice edge and by evening, seas were running 10-12 ft. The temperatures are warming rapidly though and this means fog. You might be getting the picture that fog is the norm for Arctic waters this time of year. Everyone needs a rest after working long hours for 2 months straight without a break, but spirits are high and the accomplishments of this historic expedition are quite impressive. In addition to the coring, over 15 dirty ice samples were collected from across the Arctic Basin and the multichannel seismic project collected 2200 kilometers of lines from rarely visited areas.
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Monday, September 26, 2005
Today, we wrapped-up the science on HOTRAX'05 with a bang. First, we collected the 21st JPC and Multicore on this leg of HOTRAX making the total of 29 cores of each counting the first leg in June. The total sediment core recovered from both cruises of HOTRAX is 474 meters and more important, we have collected some of longest cores in the difficult to reach areas of the central Arctic Ocean. This core material will provide the basis for many studies over the next several years by both U.S. and international scientists. While on the coring station, the ice properties group made their last and 26th foray onto the ice and after the coring, we deployed the multichannel seismic streamer and promptly lost nearly the entire array when a large block of ice caught the towed array and severed it. Then the cyclo-converter on the starboard shaft went out reducing power to that shaft by 50%, so we are now heading south to the ice edge and will map the seafloor along this margin until the science officially terminates at 07:00 Tuesday and we head for Tromso. We expect small swells at the ice margin but once south of Svalbard, the seas are predicted to be 3-5 meters and building with winds as high as 35 knts. Thus, we have to secure everything tonight in preparation for this. The refer van with all of the core material is on the bow and will be inaccessible if water is coming over the bow, so we will work on getting the last core logged, opened, photographed, and stowed in this van before morning. Weather in Tromso is predicted to be in the 40's (F), a heat wave for us. We have had a great expedition despite the setbacks but everyone is looking forward to land instead of ice.
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Sunday, September 25, 2005
After making good progress toward the Yermak Plateau west of Svalbard we ran into a large area of difficult ice and make only 2-3 miles in 4 hours. We thus abandoned the original survey plan and devised one farther to the south nearer the ice margin. We will hopefully find the targeted drift deposits there as well for coring. Today was overcast and snowy but we did see another polar bear, but no seal kills. The temperatures continue to drop and are now below 9 deg F but the winds are only 5-10 knts. We have to process any core material quickly because the refrigerated van on the bow where we stow the opened cores must be secured for the run to Tromso. We expect to have waves in excess of 6-8 ft and the van may not be accessible during this time due to possible water coming over the bow. The heavy seismic gear will all have to be stowed or secured before the crossing so tomorrow promises to be a very busy day.
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Saturday, September 24, 2005
We have rapidly progressed from no darkness to nearly 12 hours. The sunrise and sunsets last for hours because of the low angle of rise or set. Despite our great progress to the south yesterday, temperatures continue to drop with lows in the low teens. Today was sunny and windy and ice conditions that were encountered near the ice margin were mostly first year with pockets of multiyear ice and Healy was able to average about 6 knots of progress toward our next station despite a circuitous route at times to go around large floes. The only science was an ice reconnaissance for the ice group to measure the physical properties of the seaice and their distribution. Now that it's dark, Healy uses two large searchlights that light up the ice some 400 meters ahead of the ship. This is so large, solid floes can be avoided if possible. Tonight is casino night in the mess. Blackjack and roulette are popular and all participants, especially those in costume, will have fun.
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Friday, September 23, 2005
We broke out of the packice mid-morning and en route to the Yermak Plateau along the ice edge we saw two polar bears within 2 hours of each other, both with fresh seal kills. The first bear had the seal on a very small floe and when Oden passed, the bear dragged the seal into the water. When we passed just 15 minutes later, the seal and bear were both back on the small floe. This time the bear left the seal when we were nearly upon his position and swam about 50 meters before we lost sight of him in the pancake ice. Pancake ice is newly formed ice where the edges are crushed by impacts with other nearby small ice floes.
This afternoon, we held a farewell party for our Swedish colleagues. Several of the science crew on Oden flew over along with Capt. Arnell and we said our goodbyes, as the two ships would part company later this evening. Six of the Swedish contingent on Healy that were involved in the coring and bottom mapping, including Martin Jakobsson transferred over to Oden for the short run into Longyearben, Svalbard where they will fly home. While it is sad to say goodbye, many of us will be reunited in another month for the meeting to discuss the stratigraphy and initial sampling of the cores at Stockholm University. Meanwhile, plans begin for the next coring station and multichannel seismic surveys on the Yermak Plateau between Svalbard and Greenland in the Fram Strait.
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Thursday, September 22, 2005
We are now making good headway and have reached 83 degree latitude and lighter ice conditions. Average speeds have increased to about 5 or more knots. Our first hint of near night-time darkness occurred in the last couple of days. It becomes noticeably darker but not so dark that you cannot see the ice ahead for at least a mile. Our Swedish colleagues aboard Healy will depart for Oden tomorrow so that they can meet a flight arranged by the Swedish Polar Research Secretariat in Lonyearben, Svalbard. Only two will stay with us until Tromso to operate the core logger and then pack it for shipment back to Stockholm. Planning has begun for the last coring site and then packing-up for Tromso.
A synopsis of the HOTRAX cruise follows with some interesting highlights:
1) Nearly 459 meter of sediment core was collected, more than any coring expedition to the central Arctic Ocean ever before and even more core than the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program Arctic Expedition last summer to the Lomonosov Ridge. For comparison, IODP ACEX recovered less than 300 meters from about 6 core sites on the Lomonosov Ridge last summer. But these were much deeper and were drilled as well as piston cored.
2) Cores were collected from areas rarely visited and where few cores longer than a few meters are available, like the Mendeleev and Alpha Ridge. The cores from these areas are between 9.5 and 13.5 meters in length.
3) Two unsurveyed lows in the major ridge systems separating the Arctic Ocean into separate basins were covered by multibeam and chirp sub-bottom profiles that revealed the true nature of these "gaps" in the ridges and that have important implications for deep water exchange between the basins.
4) For the first time, sandy mud waves were mapped on the Arctic seafloor and these also have important implications for deep currents.
5) HOTRAX surveying of the seafloor also discovered that the extent of glacial ice erosion on the Chukchi Borderland was greater and deeper than expected.
6) Multichannel seismic lines of the deeper sediment and underlying igneous structure was collected across the major ridge systems and these constitute the longest seismic profiles in the central Arctic Ocean to date.
7) The first underway profile of seaice thickness was attempted by a surface vessel during HOTRAX and is producing valuable data on this important parameter of global warming.
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Wednesday, September 21, 2005
We are now experiencing Arctic sunsets and sunrises. They just blend into one another and if it's overcast they are indistinguishable because it never gets totally dark. The sun on the horizon creates a beautiful and long-lasting sunset-sunrise that is unique to the poles. Soon, there will be a noticeable dark interval because the change occurs very rapidly at these high latitudes. We are still struggling to make headway to the south before this occurs because it will make navigating leads even more difficult. We will find a lead and make 7 or even 9 knts for a short time and then it's a return to heavy ice and "backing & ramming". Over 24 hours we average about 30 nautical miles, or half a degree of latitude. We need to get below 84 degrees before the ice conditions will improve and we are still above 85 degrees. If our progress continues at this pace, it will be two more days to reach 84 degrees latitude. Even below 84 deg. we will have some tough patches of slow going. It's becoming more problematic as to whether Oden will make it to Svalbard by her scheduled arrival date of the 25th. Meanwhile, science is on hold and many of us are working on things like cruise reports.
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Tuesday, September 20, 2005
The struggle south continues. We hope to be at 85 deg 30 min S by midnight. Both ships are taking turns beating their way through the heavy ice. For awhile this afternoon both ships were involved in sort of an icebreaker dance while trying to break through an area of ridging with 3+ meters thickness. One ship would ram and then back while the other rammed forward about a 100 meters off to the side. This provided relief for the ice to move because the ice is under a great deal of pressure. At one point early this morning around 4 am both ships stopped in a small lead because they could not see any leads and it was too foggy for air reconnaissance, so rather than blindly move forward and get into a very difficult mass of ice, we waited for the fog to lift and fly ahead to scout the best route. The oceanographers were able to take advantage of this for a quick CTD cast and the ice group got out on the ice for measurements. Average ice thickness at this site was only 1.8 meters but there was no dirty ice. When we encountered patches of dirty ice later in the day, there was no opportunity to stop and sample. Such are the frustrations of time and weather constraints. Our main objective is to get to the ice margin area and easier ice conditions as quickly as possible.
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Monday, September 19, 2005
The rock that was jammed into the core cutter was examined in the lab today and determined to be an igneous rock of volcanic origin but probably not from the volcanic ridge where it was found. Thus it was ice-rafted to this location by glacial icebergs sometime in the past. We learned from the scientists onboard Oden that all further science stations that they had planned were put on hold until we can get to lighter ice conditions and Oden can make Lonyearben, Spitsbergen by the 25th due to commitments for another survey cruise around Spitsbergen. This decision was the result of our slow progress over the last several days. In the last 48 hours we have only made about 60 nautical miles progress south (1 deg of latitude).
One promising note, the winds, while still very strong, have shifted from our side to from behind us so that they do not close the wake behind the ship as rapidly and adversely affect our ability to back up and ram ahead when in heavy ice.
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Sunday, September 18, 2005
Because of ever deteriorating ice conditions, we have had to change our coring site and scrap any survey of what appeared to be a very recent volcano based on earlier depth soundings in the area. We had hoped to obtain detailed bottom maps of this feature and a core from near its summit, reported to be very shallow. Ice conditions in the area of this volcano were impossible, so we chose a site closer to our path and were able to obtain a piston core and multicore. The sub-bottom profiler (3.5 kHz seismic) did not show much layering below the surface but we were not certain that this was the true picture or a result of ice under the hull. We reduced the length of the piston core to 15 meters (50 ft.) and sent it down. The core came back with a bend in the core barrel about 15-18 ft from the bottom and the core cutter was badly bent inward due to a large (12.5 X 8cm) rock wedged in the cutter. The core cutter is only 10 cm in diameter and this rock is the reason that the core bent. It impacted this cast at a depth of about 12 ft and plowed another 4-5 ft blocking any further sediment from entering the core barrel before stopping suddenly and causing the 6,000 lb weight above the remaining 35 ft of pipe to bend the barrel. We brought the core to the surface at about 8:30 and could not place it in its cradle because of the bent pipe. So it was lifted to the flight deck above and the barrel sections removed in 30 knt winds and -10 deg C. This required a struggle with 5 ft long pipe wrenches and a come-along needed to winch the pvc core liner from the bent pipe. The ordeal ended around 2 am and fortunately no one suffered frost bite.
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Saturday, September 17, 2005
The cyclo-converters seem to be working again but the ice conditions have deteriorated to the point where we cannot see the leads due to blowing snow, fog, and high winds. When the helicopter from Oden does fly ice reconnaissance, the leads it reports have closed long before we reach them. To make matters worse, the local drift is to the north. A planning meeting was held after lunch today onboard Healy with the project leaders from both ships. It was announced that Capt. Arnell wishes to proceed south without staying on the Gakkel Ridge to complete the multichannel seismic surveys. Capt. Oliver has decided that he would be jeopardizing Healy by staying in these ice conditions this far north and this late in the season alone. The project leaders concur completely, so we will accompany Oden south. We are still hopeful that we can stop long enough on the Gakkel Ridge to take a quick gravity core near the summit of what appears to be a very young volcano extending to within about 350 meters of the surface. This will take less than an hour and our plans are to proceed south 4-5 miles to a deeper (~1500 m) plateau and take a longer JPC core and a multicore. We are less than 30 miles from this coring site but may not reach it within 24 hours. Late today, we came upon a mother and two cubs crossing behind Oden's wake and across our bow. We stopped about 50 meters from them and they were very interested in us. They were probably thinking fresh meat. We were marveling at how gracefully they move from small floe to floe in the clogged wake of Oden.
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Friday September 16, 2005
Our progress south continues to be a struggle and we are only making about 30 miles a day. At this rate it will take over a week to get far enough south to where the ice is broken. We are experiencing a faster than expected freeze up and winds that are pushing the ice so that it closes rapidly behind us making backing difficult. If we can't backup, we cannot ram ahead and up onto the ice to break it. We are constantly re-evaluating our science plans as conditions deteriorate and more science has to be eliminated. The alternative is to put an already extremely successful expedition in jeopardy of getting stuck for the winter. We have been having problems with the cyclo-converters that pulse energy to the port shaft, reducing our power to about 50%. We are still making progress, but even with Oden, the pace is slow.
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Thursday, September 15, 2005
The temperatures have once again dropped into the teens (F) but the winds have decreased to 5 knts. Everyone is copping with the time change so there are a lot of yawns. Other than that and an occasional ice deployment when Oden stops for a CTD station, we are still pounding our way to the next coring site on the Gakkel Ridge, the modern seafloor spreading center in the Arctic Ocean.
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Wednesday, September 14, 2005
There was a meeting of the expedition leaders today to review the plans for the remainder of the joint ship operations in the Arctic. Because Oden is due into Longyearben, Svalbard on the 25th, we decided to separate on the 20th. After tis, Healy will continue on her planned science agenda without Oden and arrive in Tromso on the 30th of September. We are hoping for lighter ice conditions so that the ships can operate more or less independently even during the next five days so that one ship is not waiting for the other to complete a science station. This has not been possible over the last several days. Tonight Dr. Leonid Polyak gave a science talk on the background and rationale for the coring and seafloor mapping work being conducted by Healy.
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Tuesday, September 13, 2005
Today we tried to head south, not a really difficult task you might think being that we started at the North Pole. After 12 hours we were still only 20 miles south of the Pole. Heavy floes that are under high compression due to the persistent winds of the last week are making progress a struggle. Seems that Santa doesn't want us to leave. The only science today was an Oden stop for a CTD cast to measure the water column physical properties and at the same time an ice measurement by the Healy ice group (Perovich et al.). There happened to be some dirty ice at this location also. D. Darby and M. Jakobsson walked out abut 300 meters from the ship and sampled it. This was the 11th dirty ice sample on this cruise and these should provide a good cross-section of the sediment sources and thus origin of the pack ice across the Arctic. The Fe grains contained in the sediment from the ice will provide a fingerprint that can be matched to specific source areas around the Arctic. This sediment usually gets into seaice when the ice forms in water shallower than 30 meters.
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Monday, September 12, 2005
Today at 9:00 am Alaska Time Icebreakers Oden and USCGC Healy reached the North Pole, marking Oden's fifth and Healy's second visit there. Captains Tomas Arnell and Daniel Oliver capably led this notable navigation across the central Arctic Ocean from Alaska to the Pole. They were able to take advantage of satellite ice images from time to time for strategic route planning, but the key to short term route planning has been the information on leads brought back from frequent helicopter ice reconnaissance.
In the vicinity of the Lomonosov Ridge there were ample leads (long openings in the ice) aligned with the ridge axis, allowing Healy and Oden to move fairly well (and independently). But north-south leads were scarce north of the ridge. There, large (multi-mile) old ice floes blocked progress. It took a lot of patience, and several dead ends which had to be retraced, before we were able to make progress north to the Pole.
The arrival at the Pole early in the day meant that normal morning routines were suspended and ice liberty commenced around 10:30 am. Immediately before ice liberty began the ice research group and dirty ice sampling party went out on the ice. The two ships stopped in a fairly large multiyear floe facing in opposite directions about 400 yds apart. Parties from both ships walked over to celebrate together and tour the other ship. This was the first opportunity for many to do this since the HOTRAX expedition began. The planned Polar Plunge had to be cancelled for lack of open water along the wake cut by the icebreakers. It was clogged with large ice chunks and slush ice. The under ice dives were likewise cancelled. This expedition began is arriving at the Pole just slightly later than most Polar stops. The jam-packed science agenda in the initial month of the expedition and the locations for stations demanded this. While temperatures hovered around freezing, the high winds (20-25 knts.) sent the wind chill to subzero (F). Despite the cold blustery wind, folks enjoyed the traditional drink, soccer, snowboarding down a nearby pressure ridge (2-3 m high), and even some golf. Santa of course made a visit and was a popular photo opportunity. There was even a toy train circling a candy-stripped pole and a mailbox for Santa. Ice liberty lasted until 14:40 and both ships were underway shortly thereafter. Heading South!
Reliable sources have testified that we may have set a World Record for the longest drive of a goofball at the North Pole. Dennis Darby, using a Wilson driver belonging to Exec. Officer Jackson (USCG Healy) hit a drive that was in excess of 300 yds. This was hit from the ice using a tee and the perpetrator was actually aiming at the icebreaker Oden parked about 350 yds away according to the Healy bridge. The ball landed just short of the Oden, thank heaven and the act was caught by several photos. Eat your heart out, Tiger! Of course, in all fairness to the golf purists among us, there was a trailing breeze reported somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 knts.
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Sunday, September 11, 2005
Oden's Captain and the Oden Project Leader (Anders Karlqvist) flew over to Healy this morning to discuss routes for getting to the Pole. Having wrapped up the science on the Lomonosov Ridge Gap, we are now working our way the last 45 miles to the Pole in very large zigzags in order to avoid thick multi-year floes. We expect to arrive before breakfast on Monday the 12th. Already a list is circulating for those wishing to take the polar plunge. Although the temperatures have warmed during the last day from as cold as 6 deg.F on Thursday to a high today of about 34 deg F, the 20-30 knt winds make most outside activities uncomfortable, let alone swimming. Everyone is hoping for a sunny day, even if that means colder temperatures. The only science during the transit to the Pole is a dirty ice sampling and a seaice thickness/physical properties measurement about 30 miles from the Pole but 52 miles by our zigzag route. While we do this, Oden will perform a CTD hydrocast to measure the seawater properties and put some biologists on the ice for a sampling of the algae under and throughout the ice.
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Saturday, September 10
The day began early for the coring crew when coring commenced around midnight (Friday) and was completed in record time at 3:15 am. Because of the shallow depth of about 1,000 meters, the time to send the piston corer and multicorer to the bottom was less than at deeper stations. This station found slightly sandy sediments with manganese coatings on pebbles on the surface, an indication of currents that slow fine-grained mud from settling out. This is because these coatings are thought to take several centuries or more to form in most cases. This was somewhat surprising given that we tought that deep water was flowing between the Amundsen and Makarov basins only at the deeper connections below 1,500 meters. Enroute to the next coring station, we mapped another series of waveforms on the seafloor due to slow moving currents. The next coring station was only about 10 miles to the northwest and was located in the intraridge basin within the area of these waveforms. This core also was sandier than most Arctic sediments and gave further evidence for current activity along the seafloor in depths of 2800 meters. This coring activity was completed around 18:30 hr. The ice group also got out on the ice to measure the thickness and other properties at the early morning coring station.
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Friday, September 9
Today was spent surveying the area along the Lomonosov Ridge where deep water exchange is suspected. This is an area of lowest elevations along the ridge crest. Both multibeam mapping of the bottom, Knutson profiling of the shallow sub-bottom (<50 meters below the seafloor), and multichannel seismic of the deeper sub-bottom down to several kilometers below the seafloor were used to survey the area. A suspected deep, narrow gap was not found, instead a shallower and broad low area was discovered.
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Thursday, September 8
We towed the multichannel seismic array most of today collecting data from the flanks of the Lomonosov Ridge and the Makarov Basin. Olden came along slide Healy at 16:00 hr. to transfer science and ship's crew back and forth. The chief scientists, Captain, and other principal investigators were lifted by crane in a metal basket to the Oden's flight deck. When the science and operations meeting was over they enjoyed a dinner of crepes and bean soup, a traditional Swedish meal aboard Oden. Oden backed into Healy's bow for the return transfer. Oden is designed to escort vessels in ice and has a towing notch at her stern. Everyone was impressed with Capt. Arnell's handling of Oden during this maneuver.
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Wednesday, September 7
Another helicopter exchange brought crew and scientists from both ships to the other for discussions and tours. The winds and dropping temperatures put a harsh bite in the air and thankfully only a few have to work on deck in this weather. Today's temperature hovered around 16-19 deg F with winds of 12-26 knts. The Oden's helicopter is used for a lot of the reconnaissance for open leads using GPS to plot the leads so that they can be easily followed by the helmsman. We try to avoid breaking ice as much as possible to conserve fuel. The Healy can burn more than 15,000 gal a day breaking heavy floes. The ice has been slightly thinner than what we saw a week ago with floes 8 to 11 ft thick.
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Tuesday, September 6
Today both the Perovich group and the dirty ice folks (Darby) got out on the ice while the Oden stopped for a hydrocast to measure the temperature, conductivity, and other properties of the water column. There just happened to be several closes with sediment that was picked-up by the ice when it formed in shallow water. The 10-25 knt winds are beginning to form drifts on the packice making it hard to see depressions that are several feet deep and because of the melting that continues under the ice, these depressions are sometimes underlain by thin ice and a wet reception. Fortunately, no one has fallen in except for some minor mishaps where one or two have gotten wet up to their knees in meltponds. In addition to the ice measurements and sampling, there was another professional exchange with Oden and a meeting of the chief scientists on Healy to plan the next day or so operations together.
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Monday, September 5
We reached the Lomonosov Ridge near 87 degree N today and continued to proceed northward zigzagging as we follow the open leads where possible. Typically we steam 100 miles to progress 50 or 60 miles closer to our objective, the "Gap" in the Lomonosov Ridge where deep water exchange between the adjacent Amundsen and Makarov Basing is suspected. The research cooperation between the two ships and there respective science groups is not formalized but is evolving as the data is collected by both ships. Oden is interested in the bottom profiling of the physiographic features (multibeam data) collected by Healy and not only does the seismic surveying depend on Oden cutting a wide wake for Healy to follow with its towed array, but the physical oceanographic data collected by the Oden researchers is important to what and where the Healy surveying expects to find and thus helps determine where Healy should survey.
Helicopter flights between the two ships ferrying researchers and crew from both ships is becoming routine. Meanwhile, the winds are intensifying as a large low pressure system sits nearly directly above us. Seeing 35 knt winds and fog at the same time is strange because fog is often associated with calm winds at lower latitudes, but not in the Arctic where cold air and water in leads produces abundant fog in any winds.
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Saturday, September 03
Today is just about the half-way mark for the HOTRAX cruise. The voluntary participation in the Polar Bear Initiation for those crossing the Arctic Circle for the first-time was completed early this morning in 18 deg.F temperatures with the traditional dip in a makeshift pool on the deck as well as other indignities we rather not mention. We traversed westward several tens of miles today to avoid heavy ice due north of our position but have finally turned northward toward Station 10 on the Lomonosov Ridge and then onto the Pole. We expect to reach the Pole somewhere between the 10th and 12th of Sept. Dirty ice is still present but not in the quantities that we saw just a few days ago and further to the southeast. We will be on a CTD hydrocast station for Oden around midnight tonight. We all hope that the situation in the Gulf States, especially New Orleans improves soon. We can't get video and only a few pictures, but the news reports are awfully grim. Several of the crew have family or friends in this area and our thoughts go out to the survivors of this tragedy.
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Friday, September 2
Today was a glorious Arctic, sunny day with only a few patches of fog early in the morning. Following Oden, we hit very little ice so the ride is considerably quieter with no vibrations. Great for sleeping and working. The temperatures have dipped into the teens (18 deg F). Tonight, the JAMSTEC (Japan Marine Sci. & Tech. Center) researchers onboard are deploying an ice drift buoy that hopefully will provide ice drift information for months or even a year from now. This is being conducted in concert with another Oden hydrocast station in order to save ship time.
The long awaited initiation for those who crossed the Arctic Circle for the first time finally began today. The entirely voluntary participation involves having your nose painted blue ("Blue Nosers" called "Wogs") and enduring all sorts of indignities throughout the day. Even some of the officers participated as Wogs and Friday evening all of the Wogs put on a "non-talent" show which was enjoyed by all and included dance routines, singing & guitar playing, games, and worse of all, eating smelly Swedish canned sour herring called "Surstromming". The event was held in the hanger and about 50 Wogs participated. The initiation to "Polar Bears" ended sometime after 5:30 Saturday morning with the traditional ceremony presided over by "King Neptune". The newly initiated Wogs will receive a diploma suitable for framing sometime after the cruise.
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Thursday, September 1
Oden reached Healy's position around 3 am and immediately began breaking ice for Healy so that the seismic gear on Healy could be towed with less ice interference and thus collect much better data. This worked extremely well from the very beginning, thanks to the presence of some large leads of open water heading in the direction we want to go before turning due north. Even in the pack ice, the Oden cuts a wide path due to it's unique design with its bow area much wider than its stern. A small group from Healy flew to the Oden around 3pm to continue planning on the nearterm operations between the ships. This consisted of the Co-Chief Scientists, B. Coakley and D. Darby along with the coordinator from the Swedish Polar Secretariate onboard Healy, Eva Gronlund. One detail that had to be finalized was how to coordinate stations so that one ship was not just waiting for the other. This was tested later that night and both ships completed their station within 10 minutes of the other; the Oden did a dual CTD hydrocast and the Healy did a coring station (JPC 17).
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Wednesday, August 31
We started the day with a coring station and ice operations with the Perovich ice group.
This is the 16th piston core on this cruise and we recovered nearly 10 meters in noticeably sandier mud. We also discovered very large dune-like waves on the seafloor with the multibeam, which scans the seafloor and produces an image of the bottom topography over a swath path nearly 8 km wide. These waves are believed to consist of sandy mud and not sand alone like similar dunes in deserts. They are evidence of relatively weak currents that produce shear stress along the bottom and prevent some fines from settling, thus the slightly sandier nature of the sediment retrieved in our cores near the top of the cores. These "mud waves" are about 500 meters between successive waves and 25 meters high. That's wave length and amplitude in more precise terms. We see these features covering tens of miles along the seafloor on the Alpha Ridge in water depths of about 2500 meters.
In the afternoon, the Oden's helicopter visited Healy with the Captain of the Oden, Tomes Arnell, the Swedish Polar Secretariate Project Leader on Oden, Dr. Anders Karlqvist, and two of the Principal Investigators and Project Leaders, Dr. Goran Hjorck and Dr. Bert Rudels. Thus begins the collaboration between the two ships and the science parties on both ships. The Oden is conducting primarily physical, chemical, and biological studies of the water column but also has sea ice studies and Arctic bird investigators onboard.
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Tuesday, August 30
Today was a fantastic day for sighting dirty sea ice. Dennis Darby, Co-Chief for the cruise and lead investigator for the coring flew out about 15 miles ahead of the ship this morning to sample some of the dirty floes that we have been seeing in this area because he is also working on determining the source of the sediment in the sea ice. He does this using tiny grains picked-up by the ice when it forms. These grains can be analyzed for their chemical fingerprint and matched to a large source area data base. Bruce Elder from the ice group accompanied him and helped with the sampling. The helicopter tried to land in the center of a large patch of this dirty ice but as soon as the wheels settle into the snow, water was noted rising around the one wheel. After immediately lifting off, they found another site without a hidden melt pond. After lunch another piston core and multicore was taken and recovered nearly 11 meters of core. At this coring site more dirty ice was sampled both by small boat (D. Darby) from small floes floating nearby and by Glenn Berger about 500 meters off the port bow with the ice group on the floe next to the ship.
We reached the farthest east we will traverse on the Alpha Ridge before heading north toward the Pole today and will now turn around and head west to meet the Oden because there is lighter ice in this direction.
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Monday, August 29
Anticipation of the rendezvous with the Swedish icebreaker, Oden grows as we get closer and word is that she has passed through a zone of very heavy ice near the center of the Beaufort Gyre, a large clockwise drift pattern north of Alaska. The Coriolis effect, which causes currents in the Northern Hemisphere to veer to the right is strongest near the Pole and this causes ice to move toward the center of this gyre. The Arctic winter has apparently begun as temperatures are noticeably colder the last few days, now in the low 20's F. This is also the snowy season although the Arctic gets less than 10 inches or so of precipitation a year, qualifying it as a desert, the humidity this time of year is near 85% and we are experiencing snow flurries just about every day now. Snow or not, we core when we reach station and took a Jumbo Piston Core and Multicore right after lunch, recovering 11.5 meters of sediment from beneath the seafloor. Every time the ship stops for coring, the ice group is put onto the ice for measuring the thickness and other properties. Sea ice in this area of the Alpha Ridge varies between 1.5 to over 3 meters, with pressure ridges where the ice is pushed together reaching more than 6 meters. The powdery snow has many of us thinking of Christmas in August.
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Sunday, Aug. 28, 2005
Appropriate for a Sunday, the skies finally cleared for most of the day and beautiful sun brightened the Arctic sky. We cored a site between Station 8 and 9 because we crossed a shallow portion of the Alpha Ridge, relatively speaking. Instead of 2700 meters deep, it was only about 1400 meters. This is important because shells in the sediment tend to dissolve faster at deeper water depths and we need these fossils for information they provide about past climate. This phenomenon is called the calcium carbonate compensation depth, the depth where shells dissolve as fast as the settle out of the water column. The piston core penetrated nearly 14 m on the 15 m barrel used and we retrieved over 12 m of sediment. The reason for the difference between penetration, indicated by mud on the outside of the core barrel, and the recovered core is complex, but may involve the stiffness of the Arctic mud with abundant coarse layers of ice-rafted debris that slows the piston and prevents it from sucking more into the liner. The seismic gear was deployed for a short time today to test the new hydrophone array that replaced the string lost a few days ago. There seems to be some minor problems with the data and that coupled with heavier ice conditions encountered for intervals led to the stowing of the gear until Oden can help cut a wake. Some Notes on the Weekend Routine onboard Healy Sunday is not really a "dayoff" for most of the Coast Guard crew on Healy, but many relax and read or watch a tapped movie or just catch-up on laundry, etc. Saturdays are much the same and the highlight for Saturday night is a movie shown on a large screen in the helicopter hanger with popcorn and sodas. The Executive Officer makes inspection rounds Saturday mornings around 10 and thus the science spaces and everyone's stateroom have to be clean. This is beneficial for all.
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Saturday, Aug. 27, 2005
Only three days to the rendezvous with Oden and everyone is looking forward to seeing her. Today and tomorrow will be transit days, but if something interesting shows on the sub-bottom profiler we may stop for a core. We continue to open cores from the last week of coring and are seeing layers never seen before in this area because the cores have penetrated deeper than any before. A several meter thick interval of alternating silty mud of different brown colors is most intriguing and might represent either seaice transport of winnowed shelf or nearshore sediments or glacial outwash that was picked up by a glacier readvancing over its own deposits. Everyone continues in great spirits, especially after our ice party yesterday. Even the dishwasher is now repaired and we are eating off regular plates instead of paper plates, which we were quickly exhausting. Hard to find the Maytag guy in this part of the world. Fortunately the Healy engineers are pretty good at fixing things. It's amazing that more things don't break with all the shaking and banging occurring while we break ice at 4 to 5 knots.
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Friday, Aug. 26, 2005
After surveying all night, we began coring another site about 20 miles from Thursday's core site still at Station 8 in the "gap" between the two ridge systems. This new site is much shallower than the 2700 meter water depths encountered Thursday, and were less than 1700 meters deep. The multicore still had cm size pebbles with Mn coatings and even a mollusc shell with similar coatings. So the "non-deposition" seems to be in both deeper and shallower locations within the "gap". Intriguing! After coring and some ice surveys by the ice group, we had our first "ice liberty". At 3 - 5 pm everyone not on duty got to disembark down a steep ramp called the brow to enjoy some beer and games on the ice next to the ship. A lively soccer game broke out that lasted over an hour. Who said this crew is worked to death? The Europeans, mostly Swedish and Norwegian colleagues aboard gave the Americans some lessens in the fine art of playing soccer. Actually everyone had a great time and well deserved break. Even the 35 knots wind was mostly shielded by the Healy as we enjoyed the ice party. Later this evening, the seismic gear was deployed in order to obtain a line between this "high" and another about 40 miles to the north in order to understand the nature and perhaps origin of this "gap". Unfortunately, the hydrophone array quickly became pinched by ice in our wake and after stopping, the aft crane was used to free it in an hour-long tense ordeal. Fortunately the entire streamer was recovered undamaged, but no further deployments will be attempted until the rendezvous or ice conditions improve for towing.
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Thursday, Aug. 25, 2005
We began coring at 6 am and recovered a 10.2 meter JPC as well as about 40 cm in each tube of the multicorer. Each of the multicore tubes contained cm size pebbles coated with Mn oxides. Because these coatings take perhaps centuries to form, this indicates that sediment finer than these pebbles is not accumulating during this time, probably because of bottom currents. So while the acoustic data showed consistent layers across the coring site, deposition in this area is not occurring in recent times. The fact that there is preliminary indications of bottom or near bottom currents in this area is intriguing because this site is in a low between the Mendeleev and Alpha Ridge systems and is suspected to be the major channel for deep water between the Makarov Basin to the west and the Canada Basin north of Alaska. A CTD, which measures conductivity (salinity), temperature, and transmissivity (cloudiness of the water), with depth as well as collect water samples showed a strong warm interval (1 deg. C) between 150 and 500 meters water depth that is the water from the North Atlantic, but no other significant salinity or temperature change deeper. The transmissivity decreased slightly in the lowest 100 meters and suggests some nepheloid or turbid water near the bottom. Further analyses of the water samples will help to determine the origin of this water perhaps.
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Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2005
The skies cleared for a short time just enough for the pilots to get some practice time in today. The conditions were not sufficiently clear for photo surveys of the ice though and these were postponed. The seismic gear was redeployed only to get pinched and break. We lost about 250 meters of valuable hydrophones, but fortunately we have enough to replace this loss twice more. Decisions to redeploy are getting more difficult because there are some potentially interesting features in this area and having seismic data would certainly help to interpret what causes them. We arrived at Coring Station 8 late today and began a several hour survey using the 3.5 Khz and multibeam acoustic equipment that is installed in the hull of Healy, thus requiring no towing. This is used to see the upper 30-50 meters of sub-bottom strata (layers of sediment) and the multibeam shows a swath of the bottom physiography that helps us understand the geology of the area and what might influence deposition. For example, we can see erosional features or collapse features that are usually caused by gas escape from the decomposition of organic matter in the sea-floor sediments.
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Tuesday, Aug. 23, 2005
The entire day was spent in transit to Station 8. We have to back and ram more frequently now as we move north of 83 degrees latitude. This is not good for towing gear because the ship might entangle it when it backs so the seismic gear remains undeployed. Core opening and logging continue in full stride in the science lab. Everyone is impressed with Leonid Polyak's stamina as he insists on describing all of the cores himself so that there is a consistent style of description. There are so many alternating brown layers, each requiring detailed description that it is taking him up to 2 hours to describe each 1.5 meter segment. Some of the cores have as many as 11 segments. We are already seeing a trend in the thickness of these layers as they appear to decrease remarkably in thickness to the north away from the Siberian shelf.
The outside temperature continues to remain on the cold side and melt ponds are freezing over. Don Perovich, one of the ice group leaders assures us that melting from below continues despite the freezing at the surface because the water is still warm enough to melt the ice. We are about 400 miles from the North Pole, but we will move further away in order to follow the Mendeleev and Alpha Ridge system to the rendezvous with Oden.
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Monday, Aug. 22, 2005
Today was another overcast Arctic summer day with temperatures at or slightly below freezing and occasional snow to prove it. Most of the day was spent in transit to Station 7, which we reached after dinner. After a couple of hours of surveying to locate the best coring site and to learn more about the bottom and sub-bottom in this area on the Mendeleev Ridge, coring commenced with a jumbo piston core around 9:30 pm Alaska time. By the time the multicore was retrieved, it was nearly 1 am and the JPC core was not completely extruded and cut into 1.5 m segments until 2 am. This station was cored by the Columbia University group lead by Ken Hunkins on Ice Island T-3 back in the late 60's and was the basis for some of the early work to establish the stratigraphy and age of the upper few meters of Arctic sediments. We were able to retrive excellent core material that is 2-3 times longer (12.7m) and hopefully extending much farther back in time. The heavy ice conditions and the large "car-sized" blocks of ice flushing up from beneath the ship as we move have made the seismic group decide to retrieve the seismic gear until conditions improve or until we rendezvous with the Oden. She will cut a wide wake for us to tow our gear behind more safely.
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Sunday, Aug. 21, 2005
Today the coring group slept-in because coring operations were not completed until 6 am Sunday. Everyone involved is still al little tired. The seismic crew had some tense moments today when the air guns towed behind the ship were pushed out of the water by some rather large blocks of ice that surfaced directly behind the ship where the gear is towed. The 300 m long string of seismic phones that pick-up the returns from the noisy air guns also became pinched by ice when these phones were forced to the surface by ice blocks emerging behind the ship and we had to stop quickly to prevent them from snapping. Ever try to stop 35,000 tons moving 4 knots in a hurry??? It's not easy. Fortunately, nothing was seriously damaged.
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Saturday, Aug. 20, 2005
We arrived on station 6 shortly after noon today and after a brief 2.5 hr survey of the area started coring at 3:30 pm. We obtained 2 piston cores and 1 multicore. Both piston cores were over 10 meters (11 and 14 m, respectively), making them the longest piston cores from the Mendeleev Ridge. The ice deployment scheduled to set-up an ice monitoring buoy on a large multiyear floe nearby had to be postponed until a later station because of the abundance of ice floes in the vicinity of the ship that could endanger small boat operations. The ice close to the ship was not suitable for the buoy deployment. Tonight the science crew volunteered to cook dinner for the entire ship. Fortunately, Christine from the Healy's crew was on duty to assist us because none of us had ever cooked for 142 people before. We served pizza with homemade sauce, cheese sticks, soup, salad and ice cream for desert. The variety of pizza ranged from seafood to plain cheese and included at least 10 different kinds of pizza. By mid-rats at 11:30pm, all 50 pies were gone.
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Friday, Aug. 19, 2005
A medium size polar bear offered some entertainment for us today. The bear apparently thought we were chasing him/her and it remained about 200 yds off our bow for nearly 20 minutes until it moved to the right and we left it behind. We marveled over how graceful it leapt across small patches of open water and then ran with a noticeable waddle in front of us. Otherwise, Friday was another day of logging and opening cores to describe them. To date we have recovered 7 piston cores on this cruise to add to the 8 from the June cruise.
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Thursday, Aug. 18, 2005
Thursday, 8/18/05 The typical patchy summer fog and freezing conditions continue with temperatures hovering at or slightly below freezing. Today was a busy day for the coring group. Two jumbo piston cores were taken in about 800 meters water depth and both were longer than any previous cores from the Arlis by a factor of 4 or 5. The first core recovered 10.6 meters of alternating chocolate brown and light brown sediment and the second ~14.5m. An interesting disturbed interval from 1.5 to 2.5 m depth in this core may be due to gas migration laterally through the sediment. This core was taken close to a 20 m depression that is hundreds of meters across that may also be due to gas escape. Several of these depressions were discovered in this area. A multicore was also collected for the sediment - water interface. After about 13 hours of coring the Coast Guard techs and coring group wrapped up operations on station 5 and the seismic group deployed their gear and we set off for station 6.
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Wednesday, Aug. 17, 2005
Our current position is 172deg. 44'W and 78deg. 17'N enroute to station 5 at 176 deg 43'W and 78deg. 18'N. We expect to reach this station tomorrow shortly after noon. The fog prevented any flight operations and thus the ice observation group could not get out. The fog also hinders sightings of bears or seals. The seismic gear continues to collect high quality data as we are constantly reminded by the large bang every 20 seconds reverberating throughout the science lab. Today our TREC teacher, Ute Kaden held a teleconference with a group of mostly science school teachers in the states and Captain Oliver, MST Don Snider, and Operations Officer, Jim Dalitsch participated as did co-chief scientists Dennis Darby and Bernie Coakley as well as Don Perovich for the ice observation group. It lasted an hour and was a great success despite a shaky beginning where we lost the iridium phone connection several times. The teachers asked several questions of the participants about daily operations and the science. The crew and science party on Healy can still take advantage of this satellite phone link for short personal phone calls once every few weeks.
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Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2005
We arrived on station 4 shortly after midnight (01:00Hr) and after a short survey to locate the glacial scours in this area, the Chukchi Rise, we took a jumbo piston core and then a multicore. The entire station including survey time was less than 4 hours. The seismic group had some difficulty redeploying the seismic towed array but after 2 hours we proceeded toward station 5 and the seismic gear was successfully deployed a few hours later. The ice seems to be taking its toll on the metal tube protecting the towed array near the surface just behind the ship. Ice conditions remain somewhere between 80 and 100 % coverage but the ice is soft with abundant melt ponds on the surface and sometimes extending through the entire floe thickness. Thus the Healy is averaging 3.5 knots over a 24 hour stretch and is able to break through without backing and ramming. The ship needs to maintain about 3-5 knots in order to have enough momentum to break or push the larger floes aside. During the coring station, the ice people led by Don Perovich were transported along with their gear by small boat to a nearby floe for more ice measurements and another ice core. These cores are then stored in a large freezer and will be analyzed later for physical properties.
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Monday, Aug. 15, 2005
Today the fog returned and we spent the entire day transiting to Station 4 at 162 deg 35'W and 78deg 30'N. We expect to reach this coring site soon after midnight Alaska time, which is the time we are operating on. The coring group continued to open cores and log them. Meanwhile the seismic group continues to collect data along the track to Station 4.
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Sunday, Aug. 14, 2005
The fog lifted and flight operations resumed today, which made Don Perovich and his ice group happy as well as the pilots who were anxious to get up. Don surveyed an area several miles away and measured ice reflectance and melt pond abundance. It is becoming clear that this is one of the greatest melt summers on record. The ice is like Swiss cheese there are so many melt ponds. This is good for us on the Healy to transit but not for the animals like the polar bear that depend on the icepack to hunt seals. We occasionally hit a larger floe that shakes the entire ship. All the coring folks, or mud people as they are sometimes referred to, helped to carry the split cores the length of the ship to the bow where the refrigerated van is located. Nearly 30 boxes of split cores (5 sections of up to 6 ft length per box) were stacked in the van for transport back to core repository at Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University. There are still four cores to open from this and the earlier cruise, so that work will continue tomorrow while the coring tech, Dale Hubbard and the marine science techs on Healy prepare the corers for Tuesday.
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Saturday, Aug. 13, 2005
The fog continues with brief intervals of less dense pea soup. We continue to collect good seismic data enroute to coring station 4. We expect to arrive early Tuesday. Kazu Tateyama set-up a web site showing the ice thickness, temperature, etc. along our track. Unfortunately, this web site is only available on the ship, but we hope to provide this data after the cruise. Ute Kaden, our teacher with the TREC program (Teachers and Researchers Exploring and Collaborating) also set up a web site for the ships crew where photos can be posted and news items listed. We transited off the Northwind Ridge into the 3800 m deep Canada Basin in order to obtain a continuous seismic line across the ridge starting in the basin. The slope from the basin to the ridge is one of the steepest in the world but the faults that must cause it are still not clearly defined with only a few earlier seismic lines. We has a long 9 hour delay from late Saturday until early Sunday around 3:30 am local time to start our seismic line because of ice damage to the casing protecting the hydrophone array towed behind the ship. In some cases the ice lifted the entire airgun and stringer behind it out of the water and pulled it across the ice. It was a long day for the seismic crew.
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Friday, August 12, 2005
The fog continues as thick as ever and the temperatures are hovering just above freezing. With the humidity, it feels much colder. We cored two sites today on the Northwind Ridge, about 140 km north of the first coring station. The target here was one or possibly two tills that were deposited by giant ice shelves either during the last glacial or an earlier one. We recovered excellent core that penetrated the post till deposits and the till itself so that the age of the till can be determined later. The second core was in a deeper till that might be older and produced by a thicker ice mass, possibly more than 900 m thick (about 3,000 ft.). Don Perovich and his crew of ice specialists got onto the ice during one of the coring stations and made some traverses measuring ice thickness and meltpond depth and abundance. They used the inflatable boat but had to be recalled when the fog closed in so dense that the bridge lost sight of them. Still they collected some terrific data suring their hour or so excursion.
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Thursday, August 11, 2005
The fog returned today and flight operations for ice observations beyond the ship had to be canceled, but the excellent data from the bow-mounted sensors continue to collect great data on ice thickness as we transit to the next coring site. The seismic gear continues to provide great data thanks to the hard work and long hours of Yngve Kristoffersen, Hans Berge, and the rest of the seismic crew. They are on the aft deck 24/7 watching to make sure the towed hydrophones and airgun do not get caught in large "car-size" blocks of ice coming up behind Healy. The towed array is nearly 400 m long and is towed at about 20 m below the surface. The airguns are mounted on a sled towed about 10 m behind the ship at about 2-3 m depth. It fires every 20 seconds with a large bang that is easily felt in the science lab just forward of the aft deck and it produces a large mass of bubbles behind the ship. Thankfully, we cannot hear or fell the airguns in the forward sleeping berths.
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Wednesday, August 10, 2005
One of the most spectacular "sunsets" even the veteran Arctic folks have ever seen occurred today. The high thin clouds were highlighted by the late day sun and reflected off numerous meltponds on the ice. The science continues with the seismic gear deployed and collecting very high quality data of the strata several hundreds of meters below the seafloor. We took our first piston core today on the Northwind Ridge in the area where giant ice shelves, much like those extending from the coasts of Antarctica, eroded the top of the ridge. The core penetrated the recent sediments above the till deposit from this ice shelve and into the till itself. We will hopefully be able to date the time of this massive ice shelf, extending from probably the Laurentide Ice Sheet, which entered the Arctic Ocean around Banks Island in northern Canada some 1000 km from the Northwind Ridge. Besides coring, we continued to open the cores from the earlier cruise in June. It is now apparent from these cores that we have the opportunity to piece together a detailed stratigraphy of the last several climate changes (glacial/interglacial intervals).
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Tuesday, August 9, 2005
We arrived on station 1 around 8 am and took the planned multicore in less than 30 minutes. We were on our way to station 2 so quickly that many onboard didn't realize we had completed station 1 already. The plan was for a multicore, which is used to sample the upper 50-70 cm of the sub-bottom. Because the water depth was less than 200 m this did not take very long and we recovered a good sample of the sediment water interface and about 50 cm of sediment below this. We deployed the seismic gear soon after station 1 and will be collecting data until we reach station 2 around 3 am. At this time we will have to retrieve the 300 meter string of hydrophones towed behind the ship and set up for a jumbo piston core and then a multicore. We opened a second core from the June cruise and photos of some of these will be posted as soon as possible.
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Monday, August 8, 2005
The fog continues but is definitely less severe than two days ago. We were able to maintain 13-15 knots most of today depending on the visibility. We began opening and describing the cores collected in June once they are run through the Gamma-Ray logger. To the stratigraphers, this is like Christmas. We collected these cores a month ago but could not open them until the logger was set-up. Now we get to see what we collected. There were a few surprises in the first core, mainly a large sandstone dripstone (a 4 inch rock carried by an iceberg probably around 11,000 years ago and dropped to the seafloor when the berg began to melt. The seismic equipment is nearly ready to be deployed and everyone is anxious to see the data that it collects. We are less than 50 nautical miles from station 1 and the icepack.
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Sunday, August 7, 2005
The fog remains fairly heavy at times causing us to slow but we should still make our first station on schedule. The preparations for the high resolution seismic surveying has reached a fever pitch because we will be able to begin firing the large airguns and collecting seismic data on the structure below the seafloor as soon as we cross 74 deg N. That should be Tuesday around mid-day. The logging of the cores collected in June during the first leg of HOTRAX began today and the Gamma-Ray logger is operating round the clock to catch up with the backlog of 8 jumbo piston cores consisting of about 110 meters of sediment in 1.5 m lengths. The slight rolling (up to 15 deg) experienced in the Bering Sea has abated now that we passed into the Arctic but we don't expect to see ice until Tuesday. Stay tuned!
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Saturday, August 6, 2005
We will be crossing the Arctic Circle (67 N) in less than a day and have to send one of the helicopters into Nome, Alaska to pick-up more gear that didn't make it to Dutch Harbor in time. Most of the crew are holding planning meetings for the various projects (coring, seismic surveying, ice properties, ice drift, and ice thickness monitoring). Everyone seems to have acclimated well to life on the Healy and can't wait until we reach our first core site early Tuesday morning. Healy is making 15 knots and round the clock watches begin tonight. There have been training sessions all day by the Healy equipment techs so that the watch standers know how to properly run everything. All computers and other gear has to be secured with straps or bolts to prevent it from sliding onto the floor when the ship rolls. Several humpback whales were spotted yesterday and today. In fact, Healy made a short detour around a rather large pod of them to avoid running into any of them.
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Friday, August 5, 2005
HOTRAX '05 officially got underway at 10 am when we departed Dutch and headed north to the Bering Straits and beyond to the Arctic Ocean. The setting-up of gear continued with a flurry of activity on the aft deck where all the heavy gear is located. No one wanted to attempt moving large gear around if we encountered heavy seas. The science lab is beginning to look like a real lab now that everyone's equipment is set-up or nearly so. The winds are out of the south at 35 knots and the water temp is in the 50's, same for air temperature. The sea swells are expected to grow to 6-9 ft. but the Healy is rolling gently and rides quite well, especially for an icebreaker.
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Thursday, August 4, 2005
The HOTRAX '05 science crew arrived over the last several days to Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Islands and everyone was either setting-up scientific gear or getting in some last minute shopping and sight-seeing. The initial welcoming meeting was held today and the science crew was welcomed aboard by Capt. Dan Oliver and his officers. Then the usual safety drills were held to familiarize everyone with emergency procedures. Everyone is anxious to get underway.
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