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Mapping, coring and oceanographic station work in light ice and gale force wind
... expedition. I am now very glad for the decision to bring along a spare winch. Without it, the entire program of taking long sediment cores would have been over at this point! Winches have been the main problem on pretty much all my ...
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Photos from SWERUS-C3
... Stockholm University, in the lab examining a core. Photo: Björn Eriksson Johan Nilsson, Stockholm University, working the CTD. Photo: Björn Eriksson Laura Gemery, USGS, Tom Cronin, USGS, and Natalia Barrientos, Stockholm University, ...
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Today is bear day
... bear day. A lady bear and her cub came very close to the ship and sniffed around for a while. So fluffy and sweet looking it’s hard to believe they could kill you. Judging from the appearance they felt more like jungle book style wolves ...
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Sediment coring operation overlooked by polar bears
... although some large open leads existed which allowed us to collect some lines with high quality multibeam. Breaking ice is not good for multibeam mapping because large chunks of ice are frequently dragged below the icebreaker’s hull and ...
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Somewhere further north
... with the cruise plan and the scientific schedule around here. Once the engine goes off I know that something is cooking and I assume that they’re fishing for water or mud. Muddy mud mud. I was surprised to hear a disappointed voice longing ...
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The future Arctic Ocean?
... now we are steaming towards the southernmost part of the Lomonosov Ridge in completely open water. I cannot help thinking, is this how the Arctic Ocean will look like in the future if the trend of diminish summer sea ice continues? Without ...
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Cold hands, red ears, steel toes
... frown upside down. I would love to go deeper into the ice. Big fat blue ice hunks that shoot up in the air when breaking through it. PhD student Barrientos and I had a fun night in the bar talking to the russian colleagues the other night. ...
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Rendezvous with German research vessel Polarstern
... made in the very loose pack ice at about 80°30’N, 154ºE before we headed for the southern Lomonosov Ridge working area of Box 4. The birds to the left are Kittiwakes and to the right an Ivory Gull is sitting. Photo: Martin Jakobsson ...
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Another piece of the Arctic Ocean glacial puzzle
... milky white layer that covers large areas. Since we presently have a quite big ocean swell when the freezing is taking place, the milky white layer bulges up and down with the swell. Smaller turbulent waves that otherwise make the ocean ...
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Almost over
... up and switched from field to office work. It completely changed the scenery onboard and it’s almost a bit sad walking around the labs to see everything stuffed away and sea secured. Almost over. I still hope to keep going through the ...
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The waiting game...
We should have flown to McMurdo today. Instead: another baking hot summer’s day in Christchurch. Our shuttle to the US Antarctic Program base out at the airport was due to pick us up ...
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McMurdo
... “It’s just round that khaki coloured building over there”… as I looked out on a mass of brown industrial looking sheds and containers and dorm buildings. Two days later and it feels like I’m getting the hang of things, and it’s a ...
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Next stop: Hobart
... Sea with Principal Investigator John Anderson: www.earthscience.rice.edu) and a group from Louisiana State Univ, working in the Eastern Ross Sea with the Chief Scientist on board the ship, Phil Bart (www.geology.lsu.edu). We’re a small group ...
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Sea ice and science
... floor), chirp sonar (to ‘see through’ and record the stratigraphy of the upper ~20m or so of sediment) and we’re taking a large number of sediment cores to directly sample the surface and up to 6m of buried sediment. The sonars have been ...
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Time travel
... Date Line. The ship’s operating on New Zealand time, and the geophysical equipment is operating on GMT. I’m working the night shift in broad daylight. Confused? Good. You’re not alone.
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Time travel pt 2
... resolution. And in contrast to the chirp and multibeam, which are mounted on the ship’s hull and emit a short clicking sound, the seismic pulse is fired from an airgun towed ~60 m behind the ship. I think those of us who’ve never been ...
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Multibeaming
... that. The Lows seem to be leaving us alone right now. The Sun’s out, the water’s flat and littered with organic-looking patches of ‘sugar ice’, the data’s coming in beautifully, England kicked off this year’s Six Nations rugby with a win in ...
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Routines
... and more ocean and more ocean around us, for some reason it’s still important for my brain to know whether I’m looking out to the north or south. I check where we’re at with data import, processing, multibeam editing. There is always ...
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JPC's, KC's, XBT's, MT's, ET's, MMO's & OCD
... the Lab to be cleaned up, described, logged, sampled and archived. And the MT’s on the back deck have been working flat out to turn around core after core after core. We’re targeting various grounding zone wedge surfaces in the complex ...
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Be careful what you wish for
I asked for some wind, to disturb the forming sea ice and give us some open water and clean data. 40 knot winds and breaking waves was not what I had in mind. The blue and white skies and seas look beautiful outside; my multibeam computer screen ...